all-working power of God, undergoing
changes to fit it for a higher life. In due time it puts off its form of
death, and rises, "like a winged flower," from the cold earth into a warm
region of life and light. In like manner, the bodies we inhabit,
wonderfully and fearfully as they are made, are destined to moulder in the
grave, and become the food of worms, before they are raised like unto
Christ's glorified body, clothed with power and immortality. Nature
itself, with all its teeming forms of beauty, must decay, till "pale
concluding winter comes at last, and shuts the scene." But the scene is
closed, and all its magnificence shut in, only that it may open out again,
as it were, into all the wonders of a new creation. Even so the human
soul, although it be subjected to the powers of darkness for a season, may
emerge into the light and blessedness of eternity. Such is the destiny of
man; and upon himself, under God, it depends whether this high destiny be
fulfilled, or his bright hopes blasted. "I call heaven and earth this day
to witness," saith the Lord, "that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and cursing; therefore choose life."

Section VIII.

The little, captious spirit of Voltaire, and other atheizing minute
philosophers.

It will be objected, no doubt, that in the foregoing vindication of the
divine holiness, we have taken for granted the Christian scheme of
redemption; but it should be remembered, that we do not propose "to
justify the ways of God to man" on deistical principles. We are fully
persuaded, that if God had merely created the world, and remained
satisfied to look down as an idle spectator upon the evils it had brought
upon itself, his character and glory would not admit of vindication; and
we should not have entered upon so chimerical an enterprise. We have
attempted to reconcile the government of the world, as set forth in the
system we maintain, and in no other, with the perfections of God; and
whoever objects that this cannot be done, is bound, we insist, to take the
system as it is in itself, and not as it is mangled and distorted by its
adversaries. We freely admit, that if the Christian religion does not
furnish the means of such a reconciliation, then we do not possess them,
and are necessarily devoted to despair.

Here we must notice a very great inconsistency of atheists. They insist
that if the world had been created by an infinitely pe