nts inevitable in the broken and
hitching affairs of earthly rulers, can be directly applicable,
the circumstances are so completely different. The true
illustration of the divine government must be adopted from
physiology and psychology, where the perfect working of the
Creator is exemplified, not from the forum and the court, where
the imperfect artifices of men are exhibited.

God forever sits in judgment on all souls, in the reactions of
their own acts. The divine retribution for every deed is the kick
of the gun, not an extra explosion arbitrarily thrown in. The
thief, the liar, the misanthrope, the drunkard, the poet, the
philosopher, the hero, the saint, all have their just and
intrinsic returns for what they are and for what they do, in the
fitness of their own characters and their harmonies or discords
with the will of God, with the public order of creation. Thus is
the daily experience of one man made a lake of peace threaded with
thrilling rivulets of bliss; that of another, a stream of
devouring fire and poison, or a heaving and smoking bed of
uncleanness and torment. The virtues represent the conditions of
universal good; the vices represent private opposition to those
conditions. Accordingly, the good man is in attracting and
cooperative connection with all good; the bad man, in antagonistic
and repulsive connection with it. In these facts a perfect
retribution resides. If any one does not see it, does not feel its
working, it is because he is too insensible to be conscious of the
secrets of his own being, too dull to read the lessons of his own
experience. And this self ignorant degradation, so far from
refuting, is itself the profoundest exemplification of the truth
of that wonderful word of Jesus: "Verily, I say unto you, they
have their reward." Those who consider themselves saints indulge
in an unspeakable vulgarity, when they feel, "Well, the sinners
have their turn in this world; we shall have ours in the next."
The law of retribution in the spiritual sphere is identical with
the first law of motion in the material sphere; action and
reaction are equal, and in opposite directions. This law being
instantaneous and incessant in its operation, there can be no
occasion for a final epoch to redress its accumulated disbalancements.
It has no disbalancements, save in our erroneous or defective vision.

The true conception of the relation of the all judging Creator to
his creatures is that of the Infin