with the divine goodness, on the same, and also
on still higher, grounds. We will place their sufferings on a more solid
and a more definite foundation, than upon such vague and misty assertions
as that they "suffer with reference to a moral law."

We do not cut off infants from their relation to Adam; nor could we, if we
desired to do so, cut them off from their relation to the animal nature
which God has given them. It may be a very humiliating thought, it is
true, that _human beings_ should ever eat like mere animals, or sleep like
mere animals, or suffer like mere animals; but yet we cannot see how any
rebellion against so humiliating a thought can possibly alter the fact. We
do not deny, indeed, that a theologian may eat, and sleep, and suffer on
higher principles than mere animals do; but we seriously doubt if infants
ever eat, or sleep, or suffer on any higher principles. It may shock the
"noble sensibilities" of man that dear little infants should suffer as
_brutes_ do, especially when the term _brutes_ is so strongly emphasized;
but how it can relieve the case to have the poor little creatures
arraigned at the bar of divine justice, and condemned to suffer as
malefactors and criminals do, is more than we can possibly comprehend. To
have them thus arraigned, condemned, and punished as criminals, may
dignify their sufferings, and render them more worthy of the rank of human
beings; but this is a dignity to which, we trust, they will never aspire.

If we are not mistaken, then, the theory for which we contend is "not the
worst of all theories," nor "the most revolting to the noblest
sensibilities of man." It is a worse theory to suppose, with Edwards, that
they may be arraigned and banished into "eternal misery" for a sin they
have not committed, or the possession of a nature they could not possibly
have avoided possessing. It is better, we say, to rank the human race "for
a time," "during the interesting period of infancy," even with mere
animals, than to rank them with the devil and his angels. But, in truth,
we rank them with neither; we simply leave them where God hath placed
them, as a connecting link between the animal and the angelic natures.

But we may produce many instances of suffering among human beings, which
are not a punishment for sin. We might refer to the feeling of compassion,
which is always painful, and sometimes wrings the heart with the most
exquisite agony; and yet this was not planted in