electing the child most dear to him, and effecting his escape with that one; when, however, he came to the business of selection, he found it impossible to fix his preference in favour of one to the exclusion of the rest; and he therefore resolved on making a desperate effort for the rescue of the whole. Accordingly, he drove them on before him, interposing his own person betwixt them and the fire of the savages, and thus, at his own imminent risk, he succeeded in his noble undertaking of saving all his children. What a beautiful instance of paternal love! A father throws his own life between his children and ruin-mere temporal ruin-and that father but a man-a child of dust! But the infinite Being, we are told, will abandon millions-ay-millions of millions of his offspring-the work of his hands-to a doom of infinite woe! Reader, are you a father? Have you a child after your own likeness, or the likeness of her whom you love as yourself? If so, look now upon that child, and tell me, if you have the heart of a man, whether any-the worst conceivable provocation on his part, can so utterly alienate your affections from him, and blunt your sensibilities in regard to him, that you could abandon him to utter and hopeless ruin-to a state in which he would be lost-in the most absolute sense of the word-lost to virtue, to happiness, to you, to his God, even to hope itself, (the last to desert the miserable,) and to all the purposes of his existence? Can you, sir, render affirmative answers to these questions? The Lord pity you for a wretch, if you can! and if you cannot, then, I pray you, avoid the blasphemy of imputing to the "Father of mercies," acts of cruelty, at which even your better nature revolts! Oh! how many an earnest prayer has gone up to the throne of Heaven, from the hearts of parents, who mistakenly conceived their children to be liable to a doom of ceaseless fire! And to that all-seeing eye, which can analyse all human thoughts, what intense-what poignant solicitude is often discernible in these supplications! "Oh! my God," (we may conceive to be the substance of these parental breathings,) "compassionate the sorrow-stricken heart of a father! and arrest the steps of my thoughtless and wayward child, that they take him not down to depths of ruin, beyond the reach of thy grace. Oh! let not my soul in his loss deplore the eternal blight of its hopes, and all the fond expectations of my trusting heart that as thou hadst given him to me in love, that same almighty love would charge itself with his safekeeping, until he reached the bliss at thy right hand -oh! let not these expectations issue in a harvest of despair! And, oh Lord! pity also the mother on whose bosom he hung, and who watched over his infancy with the vigilance of a love, which among finite beings, none but a mother can know. Oh! how can she endure, that a plant she so cherished, should grow up but to be blasted by thy wrath! Pity us! pity us, Lord! and if the bolt of thy displeasure must have an object, let it fall on me, but let the mother and her offspring live! Oh, let not our sun go down in so dark a cloud, as that which bodes his ruin!" Alas! alas, old man! know you not, that the love of heaven for the subject of your solicitude, even infinitely exceeds your own? Think you that your son has a stronger hold in your regards—all frail and limited as you are-than in those of the God that made him? Does the affectionate mother need to be implored to be kind to the infant at her breast? much less does the love of our Father in heaven, need to be moved toward his offspring, by their feeble supplications can a little drop agitate an ocean? or an atom discompose the order and harmony of the universe? Then will infinite love require to be moved by that which is finite. Hence with the poet we may say― "And will Jehovah condescend Then let my songs with angels join, Heaven's secure if God is mine." And here I may as well stop, for there is no end to the argument for the ultimate salvation of mankind from the paternal relations of God. 3. AS OUR MORAL GOVERNOR.-We usually account a ruler to be wise and good, in proportion as the subjects of his government are prosperous and happy. The best of earthly sovereigns, however, cannot entirely prevent crime, and its attendant miseries from infesting their dominions, but in proportion as they can and do secure this result, are their administrations admired, and they themselves accounted the benefactors of their people. Suppose that we were informed by an intelligent traveller, that in journeying through a certain country, he found the people in the most degraded situation conceivable—that in whatever direction he went amongst them, he could hear little else than descriptions of the terrible vengeance of their king-his horrid prisons-solitary cells-racks, pullies, and other torturing instruments-and the groans and screams of the hapless inmates of these drear abodes. And suppose this traveller should further inform us that the officers of this king, and those who assumed to know his character and interpret his designs, were in the constant habit of enforcing his mandates upon the people by appeals to their fears in reference to these horrors. Should we not from this description, conclude that said king was a monstrous tyrant? If it be asked whether an earthly ruler would be justified in allowing crime and suffering to enter his dominion-supposing he had the power to keep them out? it must be answered, No-except he could secure some ultimate good to his subjects by their admission—and that ultimate good must be so great, as fully to compensate for the temporary evils and misery which they occasioned, insomuch that in the issue, his subjects would be gainers by their admission. In that case he would be fully justified. On this ground alone, as I conceive, can the almighty ruler of the universe be acquitted of folly or cruelty, in having permitted sin and suffering to enter the world-for none are so weak as to suppose that he could not have had it otherwise. And do we not grossly slander his character when we affirm, that he permitted this state of things with the certain foresight that it would never be remedied, but would to all eternity be growing worse, and would involve in irreparable ruin many millions of his unfortunate subjects? They who can vindicate so cruel, and unwise an administration of affairs, must be entitled to some credit for their ingenuity! A certain sovereign, whose empire was large and populous, and whose defences were so strong that no foe could invade his dominions, without his permission, who knew, moreover, that nothing would more gratify his malignant enemies than to be able to gain an entrance among his people, and by enticing them from their allegiance, to involve them in wretchedness and ruin. Yet this king gave orders that all the entrances and defences of his empire should be left unguarded, and every obstruction to the ingress of the foe removed: which being done, they rushed eagerly in, and all the disastrous consequences which it was foreseen would follow, were soon apparent. Whereupon, he was wroth-very wroth-and ordained that the evils thus introduced among his subjects should never be wholly extirpated, and that all of his people who should omit to return to their allegiance within a certain brief space of time, should be abandoned irredeemably to the consequences of their rebellion, in addition to the most horrid tortures which it was in his power to inflict! Can you tell me, reader, who that sovereign was? Is the above, then, a true representation of the ruler of the universe? It undeniably is if the theory of ceaseless punishment be true, but it by no means corresponds with God as he is revealed in the bible, however it may as he is revealed by Milton, for does the former teach that the universe will always be a scene of rebellion and suffering? Shall hatred eternally divide God's empire with love?-Sin with holiness? Hell with heaven? Shall the tide of ruin-deep, widespread, everlasting, be allowed to roll over his fair works by his own consent or connivance? No-no-no! this cannot be. On the contrary, if any dependence is to be put on inspired testimony, Jehovah shall reign throughout the universe in the supremacy of almighty, all-subduing loveto him shall every knee bow, and every tongue swear, that in him they have righteousness and strength, (Isa. xlv. 23.) every power inimical to the order and harmony of his government, shall be destroyed, (1 Cor. xv. 24, 25, 26.) corruption, dishonor, mortality, death, hades; shall be swallowed up in a victory of incorruption, glory, immortality, life and heaven, and God shall be all in all. (ibid.) Such will be the triumphant issue of the divine government; and with great propriety therefore, does the Psalmist exclaim, "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice!" (Psl. xcvii. 1.) Oh! this cheering truth! what a guarantee does it afford, that all events-however complicatedhowever dark and unpromising to our imperfect perceptionsshall nevertheless issue in a final consummation, most cheering and salutary to every intelligent being! It is enough to know that love reigns-infinite love-to be assured that the affairs of the universe are wisely and benevolently administered, and that though “sorrow endureth for a night," yet the shades of that night shall ere long pass away, and "joy cometh in the morning." (Psl. 1. 30.) It is an inquiry of grave moment, whether in the government of Jehovah a suitable distinction is maintained between the good and the bad in his present dispensations, or whether he defers the making of such distinction until the parties arrive in eternity. That the former is the case is evident from several considerations, but these it is not my purpose to introduce until I come to treat upon a future judgment; suffice it for the present to observe, that if the good were not now rewarded, and the wicked now punished, the former would become discouraged, and the latter emboldened, and thus great injustice would be done to both. Moreover we should not know virtue to be a good, nor vice to be an evil, but for their respective effects-nor is it enough that we merely observe these effects, we must experience them-Should we ever be likely to abandon a fountain whose waters were uniformly sweet to our taste? Or a tree, whose fruit was delicious? And can it comport with the justice (not to say goodness) of our divine ruler, to have so framed the moral system, that the very actions which tend to our final undoing, should be agreeable in their present influences, and that those actions which are promotive of our eventual good, should yield no present enjoyment to the actors? As well would it comport with the regards of a father to the welfare of his child to strew with flowers, and with tempting fruits, a path in which lies hidden a frightful precipice; for in such case he might assure himself of his child's destruction. The laws of nature, it is true, have an equal operation upon all classes of men. God" maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,” (Mat. v. 45.) all classes are alike liable to sickness, poverty, pain, death, &c. Is there therefore no present and sufficient distinction among them? There undoubtedly is. "Great peace have they that love God's law, and nothing shall offend them," (Psl. cxix. 165.) but "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." (Isaiah lvii. 21.) The ways of wisdom (meaning virtue) are said to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." (Prov. iii. 17.) On the contrary, "the way of transgressors is hard." Ibid. xiii. 15.) We must therefore not commit the mistake of 66 |