the world, or is vice always punished? Is there not a most apparent inequality of good and evil, which has been the theme of poets, and the puzzle of moralists? Nine-tenths of mankind can see neither design nor order in creation for their well-being and happiness. Nor can a satisfactory refutation be given, upon such an argument, to the Spencean doctrine of a community of interests and possessions. Why should the poor man be content? because contentment is a virtue! The moral nature of that virtue may be apparent to the wealthy, or to the metaphysician; but the history of the world has shown, that it is insufficient for the moral government of man. There requires not only a reason in the mind, but also a capability in the heart, which is not naturally found there, and which it is one object of the gospel to give, to enable it to receive the lessons of content and resignation upon which the argument of design must be placed. A man of great hereditary wealth may be content with his situation in life; but his dependant has natural cause for discontent : and how can we reconcile these opposite conditions? Speak to the labourer of the beauty of natural objects; he is insensible to it. Tell him of the design and order of the productions of the earth; he has laboured upon it until his bones are weary, and its fruitfulness, he will say, is not for him- he labours for others, and only seeks a

short respite from the grave, in the work-house. But where philosophy would fail to convince him that he was placed in a condition of happiness, revelation would speak with a voice of wisdom and truth, and tell him that, instead of being subject to moral rewards and punishments, he had been subject to that decree of his God, which had placed him where the design of providence was manifest in every event, through the course of his life, as most divinely calculated to wean him from the world, to fix his trust and confidence in God, and to ensure the salvation of his soul.

So far, therefore, from the design of moral rewards and punishments showing the order, and ensuring the happiness of mankind, and thereby proving a designer; there is no perceptible design in the world, as wickedness is often successful, and treachery and fraud have the advantage over fair dealing and honesty; nor can we reconcile the ways of life to the notion of a designing providence, until we are instructed how to look upon them, by God himself. So far, therefore, from the design of creation proving the existence of a God; before God reveals it to us, we cannot even know that there is a design. We see the weak oppressed, and worth and "merit clothed in rags;" we see the vicious prosperous, and the virtuous in poverty and misery, and we know not the end of these

things, until like David, we learn it in the sanctuary."

It is unnecessary thus to try every metaphysical argument. The subtilty with which some of them abound, is both curious and harmless. The eloquent Fenelon stands pre-eminent in this intellectual dexterity: and one passage, which I will quote from a divine of our own establishment, is a specimen of unequalled skill: "Space and time," he says, " are only abstract conceptions of an immensity and eternity, which force themselves on our belief, and as immensity and eternity are not substances, they must be the attributes of a being, who is necessarily immense and eternal." Such reasoning would have immortalized a Grecian sage, but in the light of this day, only shows how the imagination of a Christian divine may sport with itself. Of immensity, we can form no conception; of eternity, we know not that it can be, before we learn it from God. That space, therefore, which is extension, and time, which is duration, should be the abstract conceptions of immensity, which has no extension, and of eternity, which has no duration, is the refined sentiment of a metaphysical imagination. May we not say to the most dexterous of these mental gladiators,

"Canst thou by reason more of godhead know
Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero ?"

Thus in every system of man, the connecting link, which would unite him to the Deity, is wanting. Was the chain ever perfect? How was it broken? If in the earliest days of creation, the mind of man had power to bind itself to its own source of existence, how comes it that the art decreased, as the power of intellect expanded? The book of revelation can only answer such questions. In it we learn that there has been a spiritual fall, and that the mind, now shrouded in darkness and error, can only perceive its own relation to God by the influence of that light, which will, through faith, beam upon us from the Sun of Righteousness.

"All nations and languages" speak to the truth of this argument. That people whose mental faculties were in the highest state of cultivation previous to the Advent, attempted, but in vain, to lift the sacred veil which hid the mystery of godliness: they reasoned upon the immortality of the soul, but declared that all further search into the sacred mystery would be nugatory, without a teacher from Him, to whom they erected an altar, as the last effort of their "The unknown God," " whom," power said St. Paul, in the light of revelation, “I declare unto you." To Cicero, however, rather than to Plato, I would look for the clearest views of the ancients, and he could only speak of a "Numen aliquod præstantissimæ mentis." Had

the Roman known more than the Athenian, he would have spoken in more decided language. Of Cicero, says Ellis, "His mighty genius could add nothing to what every pagan knew; talks of the deification of Romulus, the eternity of the soul, from the old but false argument of its being the principle of motion, and a self mover; and instead of the certainty of a future state, concludes with the stale Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration."

Thus instead of the ancient philosophers having either discovered the Deity, or handed down to us a process, whereby the divine existence might be proved, they only attempted, and that attempt was vain, to restore the corrupt traditionary knowledge, which had reached them, of the numen aliquod præstantissimæ mentis.

Like the path of a comet, which is known no longer than it is seen, the moment men lose sight of actual experience, they wander in trackless, and boundless extension. Would it have been necessary for the Deity to have revealed himself, could the peripatetics have declared Him in the Lyceum? Or are we to look upon the "man of Uz," and "Jesse's son," as promulging a doctrine as a divine truth, for they both declare, that man by searching cannot "find out God," when the only ground of their assertion, was a