ingenuity to phenomena so vast and so unique; a misgiving which is strengthened by reflecting on all those to him incomprehensible inferences to which the admission of the argument leads him, and which seem almost to involve contradictions.  Let him ponder for awhile the ideas involved in the notion of Selfsubsistence, Eternity, Creation; Power, Wisdom, and Knowledge, so unlimited as to embrace at once all things, and all their relations, actual and possible,—­this ‘unlimited’ expanding into a dim apprehension of the ’infinite’;—­of infinitude of attributes, omnipresent in every point of space, and yet but one and not many infinitudes;—­let him once humbly ponder such incomprehensible difficulties as these, and he will soon feel that though in the argument from design, there seemed but one vast scene of triumph for his reason, there is as large a scene of exertion left for his faith.  That faith he ordinarily yields; he sees it is justified by those proofs of the great truth he can appreciate, and which he will not allow to be controlled by the difficulties his conscious feebleness cannot solve; and the rather, that he sees that if he does not accept that evidence, he has equally incomprehensible difficulties to encounter, and two or three stark contradictions into the bargain.  His reason, therefore, triumphs in the proofs, and his faith triumphs over the difficulties.

It is the same with the doctrine of the Divine government of the world.  In ordinary states of mind man counts it an absurdity to suppose that the Deity would have created a world to abandon it; that, having employed wisdom and power so vast in its construction, he would leave it to be the sport of chance.  He feels that the intuitions of right and wrong; the voice of conscience; satisfaction in well-doing; remorse for crime; the present tendency, at least, of the laws of the universe,—­all point to the same conclusion, while their imperfect fulfilment equally points to a future and more accurate adjustment.  Yet let the man look exclusively for awhile on the opposite side of the tapestry; let him brood over any of the facts which seem at war with the above conclusion; on some signal triumph of baseness and malignity; on oppressed virtue, on triumphant vice; on ’the wicked spreading himself like a green bay tree;’ and especially on the mournfull and inscrutable mystery of the ‘Origin of Evil,’ and he feels that ‘clouds and darkness’ envelope the administration of the Moral Governor, though ’justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne.’  The evidences above mentioned for the last conclusion are direct and positive, and such as man can appreciate; the difficulties spring from his limited capacity, or imperfect glimpses of a very small segment of the universal plan.  Nor are those difficulties less upon the opposite hypothesis:  and they are there further burdened with two or three additional absurdities.  The preponderant evidence, far from removing the difficulties, scarcely touches them,—­yet it is felt to be sufficient to justify faith, though most abundant faith is required still.