llowed, by reason of seeming incompleteness or uncertainty in attaining
their end. Christianity participates of this character. The true
similitude between nature and revelation consists in this--that they
each bear strong marks of their original, that they each also bear
appearances of irregularity and defect. A system of strict optimism may,
nevertheless, be the real system in both cases. But what I contend is,
that the proof is hidden from us; that we ought not to expect to
perceive that in revelation which we hardly perceive in anything; that
beneficence, of which, we can judge, ought to satisfy us that optimism,
of which we cannot judge, ought not to be sought after. We can judge of
beneficence, because it depends upon effects which we experience, and
upon the relation between the means which we see acting and the ends
which we see produced. We cannot judge of optimism because it
necessarily implies a comparison of that which is tried with that which
is not tried; of consequences which we see with others which we imagine,
and concerning many of which, it is more than probable, we know nothing;
concerning some that we have no notion.

If Christianity be compared with the state and progress of natural
religion, the argument of the objector will gain nothing by the
comparison. I remember hearing an unbeliever say that, if God had given
a revelation, he would have written it in the skies. Are the truths of
natural religion written in the skies, or in a language which every one
reads? or is this the case with the most useful arts, or the most
necessary sciences of human life? An Otaheitean or an Esquimaux knows
nothing of Christianity; does he know more of the principles of deism or
morality? which, notwithstanding his ignorance, are neither untrue, nor
unimportant, nor uncertain. The existence of Deity is left to be
collected from observations, which every man does not make, which every
man, perhaps, is not capable of making. Can it be argued that God does
not exist because if he did, he would let us see him, or discover
himself to man kind by proofs (such as, we may think, the nature of the
subject merited) which no inadvertency could miss, no prejudice
withstand?

If Christianity be regarded as a providential instrument the melioration
of mankind, its progress and diffusion that of other causes by which
human life is improved diversity is not greater, nor the advance more
slow, in than we find it to be in learning,