never able to make
out a system of optimism. I mean, that there are few cases in which, if
we permit ourselves to range in possibilities, we cannot suppose
something more perfect, and, more unobjectionable, than what we see. The
rain which descends from heaven is confessedly amongst the contrivances
of the Creator for the sustentation of the animals and vegetables which
subsist upon the surface of the earth. Yet how partially: and
irregularly is it supplied! How much of it falls upon sea, where it can
be of no use! how often is it wanted where it would be of the greatest!
What tracts of continent are rendered deserts by the scarcity of it! Or,
not to speak of extreme cases, how much sometimes do inhabited countries
suffer by its deficiency or delay!--We could imagine, if to imagine were
our business, the matter to be otherwise regulated. We could imagine
showers to fall just where and when they would do good; always
seasonable, everywhere sufficient; so distributed as not to leave a
field upon the face of the globe scorched by drought or even a plant
withering for the lack of moisture. Yet, does the difference between the
real case and the imagined case, or the seeming inferiority of the one
to the other, authorise us to say, that the present disposition of the
atmosphere is not amongst the productions or the designs of the Deity?
Does it check the inference which we draw from the confessed beneficence
of the provision? or does it make us cease to admire the contrivance?
The observation which we have exemplified in the single instance of the
rain of heaven may be repeated concerning most of the phenomena of
nature; and the true conclusion to which it leads is this--that to
inquire what the Deity might have done, could have done, or, as we even
sometimes presume to speak, ought to have done, or, in hypothetical
cases, would have done; and to build any propositions upon such
inquiries against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a
mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not
do in natural religion, which cannot therefore be applied with safety to
revelation. It may have same foundation in certain speculative a priori
ideas of the divine attributes, but it has none in experience or in
analogy. The general character of the works of nature is, on the one
hand, goodness both in design and effect; and, on the other hand, a
liability to difficulty and to objections, if such objections be
a