Judging from the instructions which were afforded to man, it is only reasonable to conclude that the longer his obedience continued, lesson after lesson would have been imparted and multiplied on everything essential to his safety and enjoyment. The goodness which left him not to discover what were wholesome fruits by leaving him to partake of unwholesome, but which surrounded him with such only as were "good for food," would have maintained consistency in every other respect.

9. Animal pain and death, rightly considered, appear to be perfectly compatible with Benevolence; for they are only the necessary limitations of a progressive system.* But sinless man was to be exempted even from these. Not only was his sentient nature, like that of the animal world into which he had come, constructed for enjoyment, actually provided with the means of enjoyment, and designed to find existence synonymous with enjoyment, but, as the partaker of a higher nature, he was to know nothing even of the incidental evil, death. He was to live in the happy consciousness of an invulnerable and indissoluble life. It imported not, whether, after a season of preternatural security, he was to be translated bodily to a benigner stage of being; or whether his pure spirit was so to assimilate its material frame to its own immortal nature, as to render all the laws and substances of the earth alike innocuous and even congenial to it. Every change around him told him to look only for good, for all the changes which preceded his coming had been made to minister to his advantage. While every change within him was to be a change from glory to glory. His path was to lie ever onwards, upwards, towards a future stored with unknown forms of good. Happy as he already was, his eye had not seen, nor his heart conceived, the blessedness which awaited him.

10. Nor does the Divine. benevolence suffer any abatement from the nature of man's probation. It was a covenant, not of "works," but of the richest grace. Specially defended from danger at every point except one, and that one the easiest and the least, man had merely to leave a single object untouched, on his way to a state where crowns of life were piled up, reaching from earth to heaven, awaiting himself and all his posterity. Infinite goodness alone could have made such an arrangement possible.

11. "But man was made not only with the power of sinning,

Pre-Adamite Earth, 180-184.

- (this his moral freedom rendered unavoidable,) but with the Divine foresight that the possibility would be actualized." Granted. We believe that God was under no natural necessity for creating a free being such as man; that man was made such as he was, therefore, because it pleased the Creator so to constitute him: that God was so pleased, for the attainment of an end infinitely honorable to himself; and that of that end He is infallibly certain. But if that end be worthy of Divine Benevolence, the foresight and permission of evil must be compatible with that Benevolence also. Accordingly, we believe that, while man's moral power makes the guilt of sinning exclusively his own, and while the Divine Being could have protected man from evil at all points if He had aimed only at an inferior good, He permitted evil to enter only because it was incidental to a sublimer good. In other words, we believe that Infinite Benevolence would not have suffered man to abuse his freedom, supposing that in all other respects the system to which he belongs, and the ends to be attained by it, would have been equally good; that the foreseen evil, therefore, is permitted, not for its own sake, but for the sake of that greater good which the system makes possible; and further, that, in relation to this entire system, the amount of evil permitted to exist is precisely that amount which can be made subservient to the greatest amount of good; and that the amount of the good would be reduced by any change in the amount of the evil, either more or less. While, in conducting the great scheme to its remotest issues, it will be seen that the power of man was always made the measure of his responsibility, and that no form of evil ever came into being for which that scheme did not contain the most benevolent provision.*

12. Into such a scheme the new-made man was introduced. The world into which he came had long been one of the unnumbered residences of Goodness already. Nor could man have read the records of former animal creations, written on the mountains and in the valleys; and then have heard of the hundreds of thousands of living species, and have known that the actual multiplication of some of them, prodigious as it is, is as nothing compared with their possible increase, without feeling that, subjectively, the Creative goodness can know no limitation; and that, objectively, He is all-sufficient for replenishing alike a single planet, or ten thousand worlds, with

* Supra, p. 413.

sentient enjoyment, and for sustaining the whole for an age, or forever. As a proof of such all-sufficiency, then, man's coming was unnecessary. And yet his capacity for enjoyment exceeds that of all the prior creations combined. As a sinless being, all causes of dread were unknown to him. He had a property in everything around him. He lived in conscious harmony and joyous fellowship with all the purposes of God. He could commit himself to the great laws and elements of nature as to an ark in which nothing but good could come to him. The enjoyment daily of even one sensation of pure happiness would have been much; the unlimited enjoyment of one source or form of happiness, more; but man's nature was a permanent constitution for happiness, physical, intellectual, and moral, with the external world studiously adjusted to his desires; with the power of reaching to other worlds, and of commanding their resources; and with the prospect of endless increase. Moving in the light of the Divine complacency, he radiated joy around him, and received in return the commending looks, and mute homage, of the creation.

13. But rich and varied as were the manifestations of Goodness to unfallen man, could he have been conscious of those which the family and society would develop, and those which the discoveries of successive ages would bring to light, with what a fulness of gratitude would he have exclaimed, "The whole earth is full of His goodness." Could he have known how nicely the productiveness of the soil on which he stood was calculated for the intellectual as well as the bodily wants of man -requiring labor, but not labor without leisure; how liberally the earth was stored up to the surface with the fuel, the minerals, and the metals, on which the temporal welfare of his posterity would depend with the provident savings of successive worlds, arranged and laid up in the only way in which they could be accessible to man; how time would bring to light, and turn to account, the correspondences of earth with other planets, showing that the good of man was blended with the vast generalities of a universal system; or could he have foreseen the provision made for infantine happiness, and have foretasted the stream of enjoyment which, through all generations, would be flowing through the parental heart, and issuing from the other relations of life, what an expanded view would it have given him of the benevolence of Him who is the Fountain whence all these streams descend! But his views of the Divine beneficence were limited, at first, to such as his constitution and relations required;

and this limitation itself was an illustration of that beneficence. Nothing was wanting to his present enjoyment; while before him lay a cloudless and unbounded prospect.

SECT. IV. - Holiness.

1. What are the conditions on which the conclusion, that the constitution and condition of the first man are calculated to illustrate the all-sufficiency of the Divine holiness, might be reasonably accepted? There was a point in the flow of duration, when the question first received an objective answer, whether or not the creation of a holy being, capable of moral government, was possible. A race of angelic beings formed the Divine reply. And when some of their order sinned, the Holiness which had radiated complacency upon them as long as they retained their moral excellence, now further vindicated its claims by flaming against them in acts of retributive justice. Neither those who retained their holiness, nor those who had lost it, probably, required any illustration additional to that which their own experience supplied, to convince them of the infinitude of the Divine holiness.

man

2. But as if to place this fact beyond question, He created a being with a different constitution, and placed in a different condition - and yet designed to exhibit the same spiritual excellence. But was the first man formed for the manifestation of holiness? Our first reply to this inquiry is, that even his body is evidently meant to be the ark of moral law. The Jewish tabernacle, built after a Divine model, was, in the very act of its dedication, lighted up with the Divine glory. What more could be necessary to denote that it was sacred to the Holy One of Israel, except that judgments should alight on any who dared to profane it? In the case of the human structure, the proof that it was destined to the service of truth, and temperance, and chastity, and benevolence, is still stronger. Every violation of these moralities is an outrage which the very temple itself resents. "The stone crieth out from the wall." The fleshly shrine, protesting against its profanation, dissolves connection with the sacrilegious spirit, and hastens to rejoin those physical laws which cannot disobey their Maker's will.

3. Still more apparent is the rectitude of the Creator in the remarkable fact, that our instincts should have been made subservient to our virtue, and our self-love to our highest well

being. These instincts, such as anger, fear, and parental affection, are possessed by animals in common with man. But as the animal is incapable of virtue, they can only be regarded, in its case, as so many special provisions, by which Divine benevolence secures the continuance and enjoyment of animal life. In the instance of man, however, besides increasing his enjoyment, and thus exhibiting the goodness of God, the very fact that they do not terminate on their immediate objects, but that they tend to subserve a moral purpose, speaks emphatically of a moral administration. The pity which prompts man to relieve distress, leaves less for virtue to perform. The anger which, by kindling against injustice or evil solicitation, keeps both in check, leaves less for virtue to resist. Thus, these instinctive emotions "may at once lighten the tasks, and lessen the temptations of virtue." But these very actions, impulsively performed, are subsequently susceptible of moral approbation; and thus, besides affecting his condition, they are carried forwards to his character. Impulse comes to the aid of principle. The prophet not merely lives in the den of lions, but is guarded by them. Or, like the animal forms which sustained the brazen laver in the temple, our instincts and impulses are brought into the very sanctuary of our nature, and subordinated to its holiest ends. Those pre-existing parts and passions which we share in common with inferior beings, and which illustrate the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God, are here seen ministering to its moral excellence as means to an end; and thus proclaiming that man is made for holiness.

4. Ascending from the physical structure of man, and from his sensibilities, to his intellect, we find him made for apprehending the eternal and irreversible nature of moral distinctions. Reason takes him into a region where immutability reigns. Here, right and wrong are seen in unchangeable hostility. Truth never becomes inexpedient; nor gratitude unnatural; nor obligation unsettled. Every principle is beheld on its way from one eternity to another; or rather forms a part of the arch which spans both, and on which the Eternal himself is enthroned.

5. The office of conscience renders the Divine rectitude still more apparent. Should we be ready to admit that we were under a moral administration, if we could see the throne of God, however dimly and distantly, and hear his voice, though only in a whisper, addressing us in the language of authority, and behold his smile or his frown following our every act? By