own hand has engraven upon the consciences of men? “Far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity." The conception of sovereignty must have grievously overshadowed those of infinite goodness and wisdom, before we can accept such a view of God's dealings with the rebellious angels, when it departs so widely from the inference that flows naturally from all the consenting testimony of the word of God.

The further questions which grow out of this mysterious subject would be more conveniently examined in a further stage of the inquiry. For the present, we may receive provisionally a view of God's Providence towards the fallen angels, in which justice has been hitherto less conspicuous than infinite patience and long-suffering. The subtlety of evil is no less awful than its desperate wickedness; and in the person of the Great Adversary, whose first name is the Serpent, aspires to rival the wisdom of the Creator. If Judas remained long undetected among the twelve Apostles, it is conceivable that the crime of the Arch Deceiver may have remained concealed for a time, except from the eye of the Omniscient alone. We may conceive that the Adversary was still permitted to appear among the sons of God, and to seek, in the courts of heaven itself, to veil his dark malice under the show of a zeal for the Divine justice, and his fraudulent temptations under the specious show of genuine benevolence towards angels and men. We may conceive, further, that one main object of God's Providence in the creation and redemp

tion of mankind, may be to unmask all these subtleties of wickedness in the heavenly places, to expose the frauds of the Great Deceiver and his accomplices in their true colours, and only to execute upon them their righteous sentence, when the quiver of their deceits has been exhausted, and the awful consequences of their malice have been fully displayed. Thus hell from beneath will be moved to meet this King of Babylon in his final downfall; and not only the saved, who have been rescued by Divine grace, but the lost who see in Him the Destroyer who has effected their ruin, will own the awful righteousness of the Supremely Good and Holy, when this Deceiver of this universe is crushed under the victorious feet of the once crucified and now exalted Son of God.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN.

THE moral difficulties connected with the Fall of man, come nearer home to the heart and conscience of mankind, than those which refer to the history of angels. Self-love takes occasion, from the depth and obscurity of the Divine counsels, to awaken doubts, fears, suspicions, and questionings, which lead, in too many instances, to open blasphemy. Christian divines themselves have not been altogether blameless in this matter. They have had a zeal for God, but not always according to knowledge. Too often a sincere desire to maintain the authority of Scripture has been separated from a loving and humble spirit. In this case the sin of the Pharisees, with respect to the ceremonies of the law, has been transferred to the deeper mysteries of the Gospel; and heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, have been laid upon the natural conscience, which the imposers have not cared to lighten with one of their fingers. A strange notion seems almost to have been entertained, that faith was magnified, in proportion as the truths of revelation were presented in a shape repulsive to the moral instincts of thoughtful men. When conscience has been disposed to revolt against the burden, it has been sought to silence

it by an appeal to the authority of the Bible, without any answering efforts to enlighten it on the ways of Divine Providence. The great Enemy of souls has seized the advantage given him by a misdirected championship of truth. Objections have been dressed up in their most seductive and specious form; and distortions or exaggerations of revealed truth, in the writings of pious men, have been used to allure men away from the God of the Bible, whose character has been clothed in austere and gloomy colours; so as to transfer their worship to an imaginary Deity, who is satisfied with a vague, dreamy, sentimental religion, and who is supposed to be gifted with a more diffusive and all-embracing benevolence.

The history of the Fall, after being obscured by the additions or comments of human theology, and further disguised by the mists of the carnal heart, has been one favourite source of these infidel illusions. The thrice Holy One has been boldly defamed and maligned as a monster of reckless cruelty. Can we believe, it is asked, that the God of love should forbid the eating of an apple to our first parents, for no reason but to prove His own authority; and then, for so slight a transgression, should condemn countless millions of their posterity, who never saw or tasted the forbidden tree, to eternal and infinite torment in the flames of hell? Can such a picture of Divine Providence be reconciled with any just views of infinite benevolence? If such are the first lessons of the Old Testament, must we not cast it aside. as a superstition unfit for an age of light; and adopt

a purer and gentler creed from modern science, which looks through Nature up to Nature's God, and adores, in sun and plant and flower, a benevolent Deity, who is preparing all His creatures alike for a felicity without end?

There are several great questions which need to be answered, before the mists which have gathered round the history of the Fall can be cleared away, and disclose to us, in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, a landscape fairer than that of Paradise. Why was man created, flesh as well as spirit, since a new source of temptation was hereby added to those purely spiritual delusions which had proved so fatally potent in the angels that fell? Why were the whole race created in Adam, as the common stock and root of their being, instead of being formed separately, like Adam and the holy angels, since it was also foreseen that their common head and parent would fall, before their own separate existence had begun? Why was the tree of knowledge of good and evil planted in Paradise, within the reach of man, and then forbidden to be tasted, instead of every prohibition being removed, and the tree of life alone set before him, with its precious boon of immortality? Why was woman given to be a helpmeet, when it was known that her greater weakness would expose her more easily to temptation, and smooth the descent for man into a precipice of ruin? Why was so mighty a Tempter permitted to ply his seductive arts upon creatures weaker than himself, who proved unequal to contend with his sagacious wickedness, and fell at once into the snare he had woven