be safe; the world would be full of toothless striplings. The pain of poverty and want, of ignorance, of disappointed ambition, of affections bereaved or disappointed in a sadder sort; of the accidents to individuals by flood and field, to nations by war; of the diseases which prey upon mankind-the rats and mice of the world's housekeeping, -it all has this meaning and this use. See with what scorpion whips Poverty drives the Irishmen out of Ireland; and pursues them in America, forcing them to work and think. The American beggar hears the lash which once he felt, and avoids the blow. In half a century we shall see the result-the Irishmen will be also industrious, thoughtful, well-fed, well-clad. Men run trains of railroad cars together, or attempt to pass a river when the drawbridge is up; and there is the wreck of matter and the crush of men. The remedy for the pain is at hand. The great annual destruction of human life in America, by the carelessness of men who control the land and water carriages wherein the public ride, is a warning against our folly; the evil perfectly within our own control. All these things must needs have been foreseen. The attendant pain is the perpetual check on human caprice, the constant of Nature which controls our variable whim.

See how pain occasioned by loss of friends, with the wide sympathy it calls out, forces us to study the laws of health, to cure the sick, to keep men sound. Famine makes men creative to produce, and prudent to spare. The cholera teaches temperance and cleanliness, which once the plague bid mankind learn. Every case of typhoid warns us of broken law; a shipwreck rings the bell to notify us to have stouter vessels, or have them better sailed, with fitter apparatus on board, and better beacons on the coast. If men are too indolent, and will not rule themselves, the tyrant binds on his burdens, which grow more and more difficult to be borne. The suffering from bad political institutions in Naples, Spain, Hungary, and all the world, is not more than sufficient to warn mankind, to make them seek out and avoid the cause of smart. A nation, like a man, shivers long at night, before it gets courage to rise, to hew wood, to build a fire and so be warm again. Is the pain of Europe at this day too great for this end? The frost

does not yet bite sharp enough to wake mankind from savage sleep. Before us Pain, a flitting messenger, hurries to warn us; behind stands Misery to drive. But the one warms us from our bale; the other drives us to our bliss.

If we pursue the inductive course as far as we can see, and then follow the way of deduction from the Idea of the Infinite God, to this conclusion must we come at lastthat the present physical pain and misery in the world of animals and men is not an Absolute Evil; quite far from it, it is a partial Good; that it is disciplinary, preparing us for the Ultimate and Absolute Good.

But after all this is clearly made out, it must still be confessed that there are millions of men who from no conscious evil of their own suffer a great deal of misery, and pass out of life apparently unrecompensed;-the men who are cut off in early life, tortured by disease, stung by poverty, sacrificed to the purposes of the race, and leave their lesson to others; men disappointed in their tenderest affections; those whose hearts are so sadly bereaved that they go mourning all their days. For the negative, or positive, evil they suffer here, the only adequate compensation must come in another state of being, beyond the grave. I know not the means, no man knows; perhaps no man can ever know in this life. But as God is Intinite, and creates all from a perfect motive, of perfect material, for a perfect purpose, and as a perfect means thereto, it is absolutely certain that the ultimate welfare of each animal or human creature must at last be made sure. This does not follow from any of the finite conceptions of Deity-from Jupiter or Zeus, from the Jehovah of the Old Testament, or the God of the popular theology; but it follows unavoidably from the idea of the Infinite God. As a fluent point generates a line, so the Infinite God generates blessedness, and ever blessedness, and only blessedness. So all the pain and misery God's creatures suffer, must one day be abundantly repaid. It was all foreseen and provided for by Him

"Who is of all Creator and Defence,"

as a part of His scheme, here a resultant of necessitated force, there the contingent of individual freedom acting in contact with other forces. But in both cases must it

be perfectly provided for. This is as certain as that one and one make two. For as the last conclusion of a geometric demonstration follows unavoidably from the axioms of mathematic science and the data of the problem, so ultimate, complete, and perfect Welfare follows from the Infinite Perfection of God. He has made pain and misery part of the discipline of this life; it must have been in infinite benevolence that He did so. Mankind is doubtless saved by present suffering from suffering worse. Not by the pains of Jesus, but its own, is mankind saved. Our own pain and misery are educational discipline; if the roots of culture be bitter, doubtless the blossom will be fair and fragrant, and the final fruit sweet to our soul. The pain and misery which others suffer from ignorance, and causes beyond their own control, help teach us charity; the time, the means, the effort we expend in their behalf is often so much devoted to our highest culture,the education of Conscience, of the Affections, yea, of the Soul which by nature turns to God.

Now then where is the Absolute Evil of Pain and Misery of this character? There is none such! Two angels, archangels if men will name them such- Gabriel and Michael,-come to warn us; not exceptions to God's Providence, ministers thereof, they come to man and bird and beast, on the same errand of benevolence-to warn us of a mistake; not angels with a flaming sword turning every way to keep us from the Tree of Life; angels they are who walk between us and the Tree of Death to keep man from the Upas of ruin.

If the universe were to end to-day, it would seem a failure, for now only the spring-time of the world's long year is present, and man goes forth, ignorant and weeping, and with pain scatters seed which one day, all and each, are to bear manifold the bounteous harvest of immortal joy. But all around us seems made for stable duration, and is auspicious of a glorious future for mankind on earth. The coldest of men feel deeply and by instinctive nature, that the misery of the world is only a pain of growth, not of decay.

"Slight symptoms these; but shepherds know
How hot the mid-day sun shall glow
From the mists of morning sky."

I have often asked you to notice how the material forces of Nature work together, how wisely they are distributed; how beautiful are its statical and dynamical laws; how wonderfully Centripetal and Centrifugal, those two strong horses of the Almighty, sweep this earthly chariot through the sky; how chemical and vital forces serve the economy of the Universe, and how the minimum of means produces the maximum of end therein. Yet even there, in Nature, we see but little of the whole, and know but little of what we see. Things yet uncomprehended continually appear. It is but a single page in Nature's book we have learned to read.

So far as human science reaches it is plain that the sensibility to suffering is distributed with the same wisdom as the organic forces of the world; that Pain and Pleasure have each their calculated work to do, both foreknown at creation, and eternally provided for. In this vast and much-entangled labyrinth of living things it is more difficult to see our way than among the material elements,

"-the eldest birth

Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix
And nourish all things."

But when we see the whole we recognize the bountiful benevolence of God. Bacon devised his New Instrument for human thought, the Novum Organum of physical science; Newton wrote out in mathematic poetry the Principia of the Universe, the laws that govern quantity in space; La Place yet more magnificently set forth the fair Mechanics of the Sky, the mathematic laws of the heavenly machine, of whose composite forces Beauty and Harmony are the perpetual result; Von Humboldtlaborious still, grown old in being taught and teaching, his mind youthful with all the scientific riches of the world swept into the German Ocean of his long living consciousness,-groups into a harmonious whole this Kosmos of material force, painting in words the Universe, this majestic, Amazonian Flower of God floating upon the sea of space. And what a world of harmonious beauty it is, as seen by the material eye and then reflected in the educated mind of these philosophers!

But when some man, with mind greater than the greatest of these, shall gather into his more affluent consciousness a corresponding knowledge of the world of animals and men; shall devise the New Instrument of a higher science; write in more than mathematic poetry the Principia of this sensitive universe, the Laws that govern Life in time and space, magnificently setting forth the fair Mechanics of the Vital World, its Metaphysic Laws, whose ultimate resultant is lovelier Beauty and Harmony of a yet more sweet accord; and grouping to a harmonious whole this other Kosmos of vital and personal forces, painting in words this white, Amazonian Lily of Human Life floating on the river of God-why, what a wealth of wisdom, of justice, of love, and holiness will it not reveal in the Infinite Father and Mother of all that are! Then by the inductive mode alone, without deduction from the idea of God, but only by the study of facts and history, shall men prove, what I can only postulate, the perfect workmanship of God.

In the pain and suffering of mankind, and of our feebler attendants, I see the promise of a glorious future for mankind. I know there is a recompense for every sparrow robbed of her young, or prematurely falling to the ground; that the infinite Herdsman of the universe takes thought for oxen, and is a perfect Providence for the individual and for all mankind. The history of the world is indeed the judgment thereof, but not the final; and what it bears off unrewarded it carries to the great ocean of Eternity, where exact justice shall be done in love to every creature of the dear, eternal God.

X.

THE ECONOMY OF MORAL ERROR UNDER THE UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

HE HATH MADE NOTHING IMPERFECT.-ECCLESIASTICUS XLII. 21. LAST Sunday I spoke of one form of Evil, of the physical Pain and Misery in the World of Animals and