consistent with the justice of God to do in relation to the world, if
there had been no remedy provided for its restoration. Perhaps it might
never have been created at all. The work of Christ is the great sun and
centre of the system as _it is_; and if this had never been a part of the
original grand design, we do not know that the planets would have been
created to wander in eternal darkness. We do not know that even the
justice of God would have created man, and permitted him to fall,
wandering everlastingly amid the horrors of death, without hope and
without remedy. We find nothing of the kind in the word of God; and in our
nature it meets with no response, except a wail of unutterable horror. We
like not, we confess, those vindications of God's goodness, which consist
in drawing hideous, black pictures of his justice, and then telling us
that it is not so dark as these. We want not to know whether there might
not be darker things in the universe than God's love; we only want to know
if there could be anything brighter, or better, or more beautiful.

The most astounding feature of this vindication of the divine goodness
still remains to be noticed. We are told that the constitution in question
is good, because it was so likely to have had a "happy issue." And when
this constitution was established by the sovereign will and pleasure of
God, the conduct of Adam, it is conceded, was perfectly foreseen by him.
At the very time this constitution was established, its Divine Author
foresaw with perfect absolute certainty what would be the issue. He knew
that the great federal head, so appointed by him, would transgress the
covenant, and bring down the curse of "death, temporal, spiritual, and
eternal," upon all his posterity. O, wonderful goodness! to promise
eternal life to the human race on a condition which he certainly foreknew
would not be performed! Amazing grace! to threaten eternal death to all
mankind, on a condition which he certainly foreknew would be fulfilled!

This cannot be evaded, by asserting that the same difficulty attaches to
the fact, that God created Adam foreseeing he would fall. His
foreknowledge did not necessitate the fall of Adam. It left him free as
God had created him. Life and death were set before him, and he had the
power to stand, as well as the power to fall. He had no right to complain
of God, then, if, under such circumstances, he chose to rebel, and incur
the penalty. But if the scheme