supposing, that because these distinctions are not always plain to our perception, that therefore they do not exist : neither must we suppose that because the good are not always rich and healthy, nor the wicked always in indigent or afflictive circumstances, that therefore the former are not sufficiently rewarded, nor the latter sufficiently punished.

"For what if virtue starves, while vice is fed,

What then? Is the reward of virtue bread ?"-Pope.

Solomon saith," He that spareth the rod hateth his son,” [and so he does virtually-for he pursues toward him a course ad apted for his ruin, and hatred could do no worse] "but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." (Prov. xiii. 24.) It is unaccountable that a different conduct should be thought of for a moment, as ascribable to the deity! "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right "" (Gen. xviii. 25.)

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Conversing once with a preceptor of youth, who was of the opposite opinion-I advised him, with affected gravity, to adopt for his school a similar plan of government. "Instead," said I, "of rewarding your meritorious, or punishing your culpable scholars, day by day, as they may deserve-enter against their names in a book every good or bad action which they may commit-and at the end of the year call them to an account for all their past conduct, and then reward or punish them respectively in gross this will at once save you much trouble, and afford you an opportunity of vindicating the rectitude of your government to the collected mass." My friend stared upon me in surprisefor I had taken care not to connect this advice with any allusion to his religious opinions-"Oh sir!" he exclaimed, "this plan would prove most weak and ruinous! The meritorious scholars finding themselves so long neglected, would become disheartened; the vicious ones would grow reckless and hardened from long impunity, and the school in that case would dissolve before the term expired; but even if this consequence did not ensue, to inflict upon the culprits altogether the punishment they had demerited by their several misdemeanours thoughout the term, would be to destroy them utterly-No, no, sir, it would not answer! I should be foolish and weak indeed to govern my school by such a plan !"-" And yet, my friend," I rejoined

"your creed ascribes precisely such a system of government to the sovereign of the universe!"

In nothing, perhaps, is the weakness of man more conspicuously displayed, than in his lowering the divine character even far beneath his own, and then affecting to reverence it as the very infinitude of perfection! Let an earthly ruler but act as we represent Jehovah as acting, and he would earn for himself the unenviable reputation of a miscreant-a monsterwe would assign him a niche in the temple of infamy with Caligula with Domitian-with Marius-with Henry the eleventh of France-and eighth of England-and others of like hard heart and dark spirit, who stand prominent amongst the loathed and hated of mankind,

By merit raised to that bad eminence."

And yet we affect to regard with lavish praise those self-same odious attributes, when connected with an idol of our imagination to which we impiously apply the name GOD!!! It can surely then not be much wondered at, that so much depravity of character has been found among the worshipers of such a deity; and that in the train of this radical and leading error so much that is absurd, in theory, and nauseating and blighting in influence, should be found. The purest of hearts will in time be vitiated by constant communion with a bad being, and what worse being can be found in the universe (if we may except the devil) than he whom millions of blinded devotees adore as God? Unsinning infants themselves, 'have been supposed the objects of his wrath! The successive generations who have been born and perished in heathen lands, and without their own fault have never heard of him, it has been believed, will have to do penance for their ignorance in never-ceasing groans! Many to conciliate him have traversed burning and sandy wastes; many have clad themselves in sackcloth and denied themselves all the comforts of existence; many have crouched down and been crushed under heavy cars; walked barefooted over burning coals; &c. &c., and even in our own time and country, how much anxiety of soul is experienced-how many hearts are crushedand over how many a tender and amiable spirit is thrown the blasting and blighting influence of fear? Does infinite hatred

occupy the throne of the universe? Is the king of heaven an almighty tyrant? Why-oh ye children of men, are ye not assured by the instructions of the bible? It calls upon you to rejoice, because God reigneth-it represents his goodness as unto all, and his tender mercy as over all his works-it tells you that the unthankful and the evil are also the subjects of his kindness— It points to God as the pattern and the perfection of those virtues which ye yourselves should practice it sets forth the Lord Jesus to you as the embodied representative of those perfections-and was he a Being to break a bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax? were his ministrations such as were adapted to break the heart-or to paralyse it with despair?

I have before alluded to the conclusion we should form concerning a sovereign; from the reports of a traveler respecting the condition of his subjects-that if he found a great deal of suffering and oppression which were never to be brought to a beneficial termination, we should thence infer that said sovereign was a tyrant. Let us now imagine a celestial tourist to have just returned to the abodes of bliss from a wide flight for observation among the works of God-the hosts of heaven gather around him-each harp suspends its melodies, and each angelic minstrel bends forward with eager attention, not doubting that the disclosures about to be made will develope new mysteries of love and goodness on the part of their king, which shall awaken their harps to still loftier notes of praise.-But who can conceive their astonishment and dismay when they are told of a vast, vast world of liquid fire-and of myriads upon myriads of ill-fated spirits who are the sport of its angry billows-tempest-tost by the breath of omnipotent wrath-and live but for suffering-for ruin-for despair? And what has been their crime? Perhaps for long, long ages, they outraged their sovereign's laws-disturbed the harmony of his dominions-repaid his kindness with repeated rebellions and ingratitude-and multiplied their provocations in proportion as his blessings were multiplied upon them—until at length even infinite goodness was wearied out with their obstinate resistance to its influences, and abandoned them to their inevitable fate. But no; such is not the ground on which their ruin stands justified; on the contrary, their trespasses were of but momentary duration-committed in much ignorance,

and under strong temptations-from motives of self-gratification merely—and not of injury or arrogance to their Lord, who, indeed, is by his own nature, infinitely above the reach of evil. "And oh, my com peers!" continues the celestial narrator, "Could you see that dreadful abode of woe-and hear those frightful shrieks-those imploring groans-to which is rendered no other response than the echoes of their own despair! You would then see that our creator's character has dark and odious aspects, such as are not dreampt of in this world of light! would that I could report, that from these miseries is to arise some ultimate object of benevolence to the sufferers! Alas! no such object is proposed; on every bolt which secures the portals of that horrid place I saw deeply engraven the dreadful word— ETERNITY—and the key, (I was informed,*) when the last spirit doomed to pass through these portals shall have enteredis to be hurled by the hand of omnipotence to immeasurable depths in the abyss of space-and decreed there to rust for everlasting ages!"

Reader, can the truth of the above picture be admitted, and at the same time the infinite goodness of Jehovah be believed, without a solecism as gross as language was ever framed to express? Human ingenuity could scarcely be more poorly employed than when engaged to reconcile such flagrant contradictions; and there is no calculating the injury to the christian cause, which has ensued from this very source.

Who that has been, in imagination, with the indefatigable LATUDE, in his long and painful incarceration in the Bastile-with the no less dauntless and indomitable TRENCK, in the horrid hells of Prussia-or with the amiable SILVIO PELLICO, in his ten years'

*We must suppose the poet, Young, the informant in this case, as we know of no other to whom the secret touching the key of hell has ever been entrusted. "What ensues?

VOL. I.-I

The deed predominant! the deed of deeds!

Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven.

The goddess, with determined aspect, turns

Her adamantine key's enormous size

Through destiny's inextricable wards,

Deep driving every bolt, on both their fates:

Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven,

Down, down she hurls it through the dark profound,
Ten thousand thousand fathom; there to rust,

And ne'er unlock her resolution more.

The deep resounds; and hell, through all her glooms,
Returns in groans the melancholy roar."

No. 5.

confinements in the dungeons of Spielburgh,-who that has in these cases been made acquainted with the dark and systematic expedients of oppression by which the unfortunate victims were kept for long and lingering years (to them ages) on the rack of mental and bodily suffering, and has not, in his very heart of hearts, cursed the odious tyrants by whom this suffering was inflicted? And yet these monsters in human form were angels of mercy in comparison with the almighty tyrant of the universe, if the doctrine of endless misery be true! They could not be present with their victims-they could not hear their affecting groans, nor know all their secret pangs-they could not sympathize in their feverish longings after liberty, the enjoyment of the sweet air of heaven, a sight of ever-varying and ever-beauteous nature, of kindred and friends-nor could they appreciate the depth of anguish which the wretch must feel who views himself as a link stricken out of the chain of human existence, and denied the privilege of acting his allotted part on the theatre of life. No, earthly kings cannot fathom the depth of woe their hapless victims experience; besides that their personal attention is not directed to them, but is engaged with their own pleasures and the affairs of state. But not such is the case with the Omniscient Being, and therefore the greater, and more inexorable tyrant he, if the acts imputed to him by human systems of faith be according to fact.

I have now gone through with the argument from the relations of God; as our Creator, Father, and Moral Governor: they lead us to the same conclusion as that to which we arrived from the consideration of his attributes; immense stores of argument to the same effect are still before us; have I, as yet, committed the smallest departure from candor? Has my reasoning in any instance been overstrained, or far-fetched? Have the premises been begged? or the deductions been illogical? If on any of these grounds I have offended, I am content, reader, to forfeit my credit with you to that amount. But if otherwise, I pray you to let your mind be open to the influence of truth, and to remember, that a true knowledge of our Creator's character, and of his relations to us, forms the basis of all vital and practical religion; and the basis too, of all true and lasting enjoyment.