OP THE ANIMATED CREATION. 



193 



there is one important consideration which is pressed 

 Upon us from many quarters, namely, that moral condi- 

 tions have not the least concern in the working of these 

 simply physical laws. These laws proceed with an en- 

 tire 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 per- 

 sons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a virtuous, 

 the other a vicious man, the former, being the less cau- 

 tious 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 save this 

 virtuous man. So it might be that, of two physicians, 

 attending fever cases in a mean part of a large city, the 

 one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a position 

 with respect to the beds of the patients as to catch the 

 infection, of which he dies in a few days, while the other, 

 a bad husband and father, and who, unlike the other, 

 only attends such cases with selfish ends, takes care to 

 be as much as possible out of the stream of infection, and 

 accordingly escapes. In both of these cases man's sense 

 of good and evil— his faculty of conscientiousness — would 

 incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and 

 save the virtuous. But the Great Ruler of Nature does not 

 act on such principles. He has established laws for the 

 operation of inanimate matter, which are quite unswerv- 

 ing, so that when we know them we have only to act in 

 a certain way with respect to them in order to obtain all 

 the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with them. 

 He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, 

 which are equally unswerving (allowing for their wider 

 range of action,) and from obedience to which unfailing 

 good is to be derived. But the two sets of laws are in- 

 dependent of each other. Obedience to each gives only 

 its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to 

 the other. Hence it is that virtue forms no protection 

 against the evils connected with the physical laws ; 

 while, on the other hand, a man skilled in and attentive 

 to these, but unrighteous and disregardful of his neigh- 

 bor, is in like manner not protected by his attention to 

 physical circumstances from the proper consequences oi 

 neglect or breach of the moral laws. 



