288 
THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. 
a future state alone rectifies all disorders: and if it can be 
shown, that the appearance of disorder is consistent with 
the uses of life as a preparatoi'y state, or that in some re¬ 
spects it promotes these uses, then, so far as this hypo¬ 
thesis may be accepted, the ground of the difficulty is done 
away. 
In the wide scale of human condition, there is not per¬ 
haps one of its manifold diversities which does not bear 
upon the design here suggested. Virtue is infinitely vari¬ 
ous. There is no situation in which a rational being is 
placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to 
the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not 
room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and 
display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and 
sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, 
knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty 
and bondage, civilisation.and barbarity, have all their offi¬ 
ces and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for 
when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, 
that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, 
but that they are generated also, and formed by circumstan¬ 
ces. The best dispositions may subsist under the most de¬ 
pressed, the most afflicted fortunes. A West Indian slave, 
who, amidst his wrongs, retains his benevolence, I, for my 
part, look upon, as amongst the foremost of human candi¬ 
dates for the rewards of virtue. The kind master of such 
a slave, that is, he who, in the exercise of an inordinate 
authority, postpones in any degree his own interest to his 
slaves’ comfort, is likewise a meritorious character: but 
still he is inferior to his slave. All however which I con¬ 
tend for is, that these destinies, opposite as they may be 
in every other view, are both trials; and equally such. 
The observation may be applied to every other condition; 
to the whole range of the scale, not excepting even its 
lowest extremity. Savages appear to us all alike; but it 
is owing to the distance at which we view savage life, that 
we perceive in it no discrimination of character. I make 
no .doubt, but that moral qualities, both good and bad, are 
called into action as much, and that they subsist in as 
great a variety in these inartificial societies as they are, or 
do, in polished life. Certain at least it is, that the good 
or ill treatment which each individual meets with, depends 
more upon the choice and voluntary conduct of those about 
him, than it does, or ought to do, under regular civil insti¬ 
tutions, and the coercion of public laws. So again, to turn 
