ministering, as it were, to its wants, lifting up and down its tides so as to rinse the reedy banks of the remote river, as well as to agitate, and thereby refine the ocean. And, on the other hand, it is by these inequalities that the grander bodies are kept in their orbits. § 137. Now, these analogies are not without value in determining the important relations of the different grades of rational as well as irrational creatures. 'Reduce the crea tion to a perfect equality," says Dr. Chauncey, (on the Benevolence of the Deity, p. 201,) "and all participation of that part of the Creator's happiness, the communication of good, is at once necessarily destroyed. For, where the same perfection and happiness, both in kind and degree, is at all times equally possessed by all beings, it is evident that good cannot possibly be communicated from one to another. And can it be imagined that the Deity would pitch upon a plan for the communication of good, which would render it impracticable for any of his creatures, either to resemble Him in that which is His greatest glory, or to partake, in any measure, of that which is His greatest pleasure? There is no truly benevolent mind but will readily be reconciled to a diversity in beings, rather than the pleasure of communicating good should be excluded from creation. cluded it must be, if there is not some diversity. Upon any other supposition, not one being in the creation could be the object of another's beneficence; and, consequently, the noblest and most truly Divine pleasure, that which arises from doing good, could not have place in the whole circle of existing creatures. So that it is evident a diversity of beings is so far from being an objection against infinite benevolence. And ex that it really flows from it as its proper cause. There could not have been the manifestation of so much goodness, if there had not been some difference between the creatures brought into existence. And the least attention will obviously lead any one to determine that, if goodness may be the cause of any diversity at all, no stop can be made without continuing it down through all variety of orders, so long as the balance shall turn in favor of happiness, or, in other words, so long as existence can be called a good, and pronounced better than not to be." § 138. b3. By a graduated scale the earth will be most thoroughly populated, and human comfort best promoted. "Its different elements and different climates," says Mr. Fleming, in his excellent Plea for the ways of God, "are obviously fitted for affording the means of life and enjoyment to different orders of beings, and, accordingly, every element and every climate have their appropriate inheritants. Multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures tread the sands of the southern zone: striped zebras and spotted leopards; while the frost-bitten regions of the north are traversed by the dull ox and the dark wolf. Even the cold ice is tenanted by the shaggy bear. The horse gallops across the plains, while the eagle builds his nest on the crags of the rock; the insect sports in the sunbeam, while the leviathan takes his pastime in the mighty waters." § 139. Now, this view might be extended so as to introduce the human race. The restless and adventurous temper of the pioneer leads him to those Western forests where, himself passing beyond the blazed oak, he surveys, by the instruments only of a hunter's instinct, the road which a com ing nation is to travel. He dies poor, and his solitary grave lies unmarked in the woods, but he has enjoyed a life of wild pleasure which he would not have exchanged for one on a monarch's throne, and he leaves his grave as the base on which civilization couches as it is about to make a new spring. And on each member of the procession that follows him, individuality sets its special stamp and gives to him its peculiar impulse. The brawny arm and strong nerve of one stations him in the blacksmith's shop, where, day after day, he strains and bakes himself over the anvil in an occupation most useful to the community, but, at the same time, very ungenial to those who may not be led to it by a special taste. An instinct for bartering and peddling drives forth another in the advance-guard of the same procession, and the clothing-store opens its windows and displays its goods in the new-built village. So it is throughout. Were there an equal uniformity of taste, of means, of capacity, either the northern seas would not be fretted with the harpoon, or, if we suppose the passion to be universal, the pursuit of the gigantic ocean-game would engross the great mass of the young energies of the land. So with that remarkable mechanical dexterity which, when whetted by poverty, moves, to take a single illustration, into the cotton field, and there, with a series of revolving spikes, disentangles the knotted 'fibres of the cotton-plant; then passes to the landing, and packs the bales on the deck of the low-pressure boat that disturbs the sluggish Southern stream; then drops to the factor's warehouse, and calls into its aid a new class of energies, those of ocean commerce; then puts in motion the factory, with its myriads of workmen, and, at last, the sew ing machine, which supports the solitary seamstress. Without diversity of gifts, and without the inequalities of fortune, on the one side to supply the capital, on the other the labor, this great element of national prosperity and personal comfort could not have existed. And the same reason applies to every other industrial enterprise by which the general good has been advanced. Inequality is the soul of enterprise and the spring of prosperity; horizontal wealth and uniform capacity would be nothing else than unbroken penury. c3. By a graduated scale a stimulus is afforded for enterprise and room for improvement. § 140. This proposition, in its first branch, has already been touched upon. In its second, it is self-demonstrative. Perfection must necessarily be stationary. To leave room for progress requires imperfection. Mr. Addison, with his usual elegance, likens the soul, in its relation to its Creator, "to one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another, for all eternity, without a possibility of touching and can there be a thought so transporting," he inquires, "as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?" : Having now shown that an ascending scale of beings, each of a distinct order and degree of power, is, of all schemes, the most consistent with the general good, we proceed to the minor premise, viz., that to such a scale, metaphysical evil, at least, is essential. § 141. Take, as the lowest phase, the mere evil of incapacity. That this is an evil,-that the struggling in even a single direction against an impassable barrier, the imprisonment even of one class of energies within a cell against whose grated windows they are ever chafing and torturing themselves in order to escape to the infinite beyond,—that these things are evils, no one can doubt. But some limitation is essential to all created beings. For, even supposing the creature to have no actual corporeal or even psychical limit, it is inseparable from the very fact of createdness that there should be the moral limit of a consciousness of having been created, accompanied, it may be, with that oppressive sense of dependence which Milton points out to us as the cause of the revolt of the Archangel Satan. But besides this, bounds are necessary to the existence of all created things. To people the world with a series of vagrant and penetrable spirits, each capable of occupying or passing through the other, with no coherence or shape, even if it were wise, would not be possible. For individuality there must be shape; for shape, deprivation; to deprivation, metaphysical evil is an essential requisite. § 142. But, it may be said, this difficulty might be obviated by creating only the highest of all orders of creation, and imparting to it the greatest degree of happiness. Now it has already been shown that this would not produce the desired end of the maximum of aggregate happiness. But the creation of an order such as is here spoken of is itself an absurdity. The pleasures of self-denial, of benevolence, of self-reliance, could not enter into the character of these desolate and unpitying inhabitants of such austere and baseless heights. And nothing is more limited than the very compact and unvarying mass of maximum beatitude which the |