e case, we daily see them, have become
accustomed to them and, what is more than all, cannot deny them,--which
last we can so promptly do in the other case; for Moses is not here to
contradict us. But I rather think, that a being constituted morally
and intellectually like us, who had never known any but a world of
happiness, would just as promptly deny that God could ever perform
such feats as are daily performed in this world! I repeat, that, if
for some reasons ('inexplicable,' I grant you) God does not mind
doing such things, he is not likely to hesitate to enjoin them; for
reasons perhaps equally inexplicable. I say perhaps; for, as I
compare such an event as the earthquake in Lisbon, or the plague in
London, with the extermination of the Canaanites, I solemnly assure
you that I find a greater difficulty, as far as my 'intuitions' go,
in supposing the former event to have been effected by a divine
agency than the latter. If we take the Scripture history, we must at
least allow that the race thus doomed had long tried the patience
of Heaven by their flagrant impiety and unnatural vices; that they
had become a centre and a source (as we sometimes see collections of
men to be) of moral pestilence, in the vicinage of which it was unsafe
for men to dwell; that, as the Scriptures say (whether truly or falsely,
I do not inquire), they had, filled up the measure of their iniquities.'
Let this be supposed as fictitious as you please, still the whole
proceeding is represented as a solemn judicial one; and supposing the
events to have occurred just as they are narrated, it positively seems
to me much less difficult to suppose them to harmonize with the
character of a just and even beneficent being, than those wholesale
butcheries which have desolated the world, in every hour of its long
history, without any discrimination whatever of innocence or guilty;
which, if they have inflicted unspeakable miseries on the immediate
victims, have produced probably as much or more in the agony of the
myriad myriads of hearts which have bled or broken in unavailing
sorrow over the sufferings they could not relieve. Such things
(I speak now only of what man has not in any sense inflicted) are,
in your view, as undeniably the work of God as is the extermination
of the Canaanites according to the Bible. Why, if God does not mind
doing such things, are we to suppose that he minds on some occasions
ordering them to be done; unless we suppose tha