ble grandeur and variety to the scenery
of the moral world. Without it, all would be clear, it is true, but
nothing grand. There would be lights, but no shadows. And around the very
lights themselves, there would be nothing soothing and sublime, in which
the soul might rest and the imagination revel.

Hence it is no part of our object to pry into mystery, but to get rid of
absurdity. And in our humble opinion, this would long since have been
done, and the difficulty in question solved, had not the friends of truth
incautiously given the most powerful protection to the sophism and
absurdity of the atheist, by throwing around it the sacred garb of
mystery.

Section VI.

The spirit in which the following work has been prosecuted, and the
relation of the author to other systems.

In conclusion, we offer a few remarks in relation to the manner and spirit
in which the following work has been undertaken and prosecuted. In the
first place, the writer may truly say, that he did not enter on the
apparently dark problem of the moral world with the least hope that he
should be able to throw any light upon it, nor with any other set purpose
and design. He simply revolved the subject in mind, because he was by
nature prone to such meditations. So far from having aimed at things
usually esteemed so high and difficult with a feeling of presumptuous
confidence, he has, indeed, suffered most from that spirit of despondency,
that despair of scepticism, against which, in the foregoing pages, he has
appeared so anxious to caution others. It has been patient reflection, and
the reading of excellent authors, together with an earnest desire to know
the truth, which has delivered him from the power of that spirit, and
conducted him to what now so clearly seems "the bright and shining light
of truth."

It was, in fact, while engaged in meditation on the powers and
susceptibilities of the human mind, as well as on the relations they
sustain to each and to other things, and not in any direct attempt to
elucidate the origin of evil, that the first clear light appeared to dawn
on this great difficulty: and in no other way, he humbly conceives, can
the true philosophy of the spiritual world ever be comprehended. For, as
the laws of matter had first to be studied and traced out in relation to
bodies on the earth, before they could be extended to the heavens, and
made to explain its wonderful mechanism; so