rder and beauty of the world. Hence, in grappling with the
supposed great difficulty in question, we do not undertake to remove a
veil from the universe--we simply undertake to remove a sophism from our
own minds. Though we have so spoken in accommodation with the views of
others, the problem of the moral world is not, in reality, high and
difficult _in itself_, like the great problem of the material universe. We
repeat, it is simply to refute and explode the sophism of the atheist. Let
this be blown away, and the darkness which seems to overhang the moral
government of the world will disappear like the mists of the morning.

If such be the nature of the problem in question, and such it will be
found to be, it is certainly a mistake to suppose that "it must be
entangled with perplexities while we see but in part."(1) It is only while
we see amiss, and not while we see in part, that this problem must wear
the appearance of a dark enigma. It is clear, that our knowledge is, and
ever must be, exceedingly limited on all sides; and if we must understand
the whole of the case, if we must comprehend the entire extent of the
divine government for the universe and for eternity, before we can remove
the difficulty in question, we must necessarily despair of success. But we
cannot see any sufficient ground to support this oft-repeated assertion.
Because the field of our vision is so exceedingly limited, we do not see
why it should be forever traversed by apparent inconsistencies and
contradictions. In relation to the material universe, our space is but a
point, and our time but a moment; and yet, as that inconceivably grand
system is now understood by us, there is nothing in it which seems to
conflict with the dictates of reason, or with the infinite perfections of
God. On the contrary, the revelations of modern science have given an
emphasis and a sublimity to the language of inspiration, that "the heavens
declare the glory of the Lord," which had, for ages, been concealed from
the loftiest conception of the astronomer.

Nor did it require a knowledge of the whole material universe to remove
the difficulties, or to blast the objections which atheists had, in all
preceding ages, raised against the perfections of its divine Author. Such
objections, as is well known, were raised before astronomy, as a science,
had an existence. Lucretius, for example, though he deemed the sun, moon,
and stars, no larger than they appear to the eye, a