passing through the dark labyrinths of human folly to sit at thy
feet and drink in the lessons of heavenly wisdom! How pleasant to the
soul--how inexpressibly cheering is it--to turn from the harsh and revolting
systems of men, and listen to the sweet accents of mercy as they fall from
thy lips!

The great law of suffering, then, is that it is intended for the benefit
of intelligent creatures. This is the case, even when it assumes the
character of punishment; for then it is designed to prevent moral evil.
Such a view of natural evil, or suffering, does not give that horrid
picture of the world which arises from the sentiment that all pain and
death must be a punishment for sin. This causes us to see the black
scourge of retributive justice everywhere, and the hand of fatherly
correction nowhere. It places us, not in a school or state of probation,
to train us up for a better and brighter world, but in the midst of
inquisitorial fires and penal woe. It teaches that all mankind became
guilty by the act of one man; and that for one deed, millions upon
millions of human beings are justly obnoxious, not only to temporal and
spiritual, but also to eternal death.

We are perfectly aware of all the arguments which have been drawn from
Scripture in support of such a doctrine; and we are also perfectly
satisfied that they may be most easily and triumphantly refuted. But at
present we do not mean to touch this argument; we shall reserve it for
another work. In the mean time, we must be permitted to express the
sentiment, that a system of theology, so profoundly unphilosophical, so
utterly repugnant to the moral sentiments of mankind, can never fulfil the
sublime mission of true religion on earth. It may possess the principle of
life within, but it is destitute of the form of life without. It may
convert the individual soul, and lead it up to heaven; but it has not the
radiant form and power of truth, to command the admiration and conquer the
intellect of the world. It may elevate and purify the affections, even
while it depresses and confounds the understanding; but it cannot
transfigure the whole mind, and change it into its own divine image.
Nothing but the most fixed and rooted faith, or the most blind and
unquestioning submission, can withstand the fearful blasts and dark
impulses of such a system.

No wonder, then, that under a system so deplorably deficient in some of
the most sublime features of Christianity, infidelity