NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 275 



certainly lies in those occurrences of disease where the 

 niHicted individual has been in no degree concerned in 

 bringing the visitation upon himself. Daily experience 

 shows us infectious disease arising in a place where the 

 natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and 

 then spreading into regions where there is no blame of 

 this kind. We then see the innocent suffering equally 

 with those who may be called the guilty. Nay, the 

 benevolent physician who comes to succour the miserable 

 beings whose error may have caused the mischief, is 

 sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his 

 patients recover. We are also only too familiar Avith the 

 transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent 

 children, who accordingly suffer, and perhaps die pre- 

 maturely, as it were for the sins of others. After all, 

 however painful such cases may be in contemplation, 

 they cannot be regarded in any other light than as 

 exceptions from arrangements, the general working of 

 which is beneficial. 



With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, 

 there is one important consideration which is pressed 

 upon us from many quarters — namely, that moral con- 

 ditions have not the least concern in the working of 

 these simply physical laws. These laws proceed with an 

 entire independence of all such conditions, and desirably 

 so, for otherwise there could be no certain dependence 

 placed upon them. Thus it may happen that two 

 persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a 

 virtuous the other a vicious man, the former, being the 

 less cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, 

 falls, and is killed, while the other, choosing a better 

 footing, remains uninjured. It is not in what we can 

 conceive of the nature of things, that there should be a 

 special exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to 



