hypothesis assumes. "A triangle," says Mr. Hayes, in his very ingenious essay on Divine Benevolence, "may be made as large as you please, yet the largest possible cannot be; for such a one could not be a triangle, which is a surface bounded with three straight lines. In like manner, we may, I apprehend, speak in relation to the happiness and perfection of the universe. God may make it as happy and as perfect as He pleases, and may continually increase this in any proportion He thinks fit; but still, I apprehend, it is capable of this increase, without limits, and without end; and that to suppose the greatest possible quantity of happiness or perfection diffused through it, is to suppose that there is a certain fixed and determinate quantity of happiness and perfection, beyond which it is impossible even for the power of God to proceed, which, I must own, seems to me absurd. So that to argue against the goodness of God because there is not the greatest quantity of happiness and perfection in the universe, is to use an argument that can have no force, since, if put into form, one of the premises is unintelligible."

d3. What may to the human eye be a lower and inferior scale of happiness, may to a higher vision occupy a reversed position.

§ 143. "We can see," says Hugh Miller, in the last and most graphic of his works,* "how in the pre-Adamic ages higher should have succeeded lower dynasties. To be low was not to be immoral; to be low was not to be guilt-stained and miserable. The sea-anemone on its half-tide rock, and the fern on its mossy hill-side, are low in their respective

*The Testimony of the Rocks, p. 262.

kingdoms; but they are, notwithstanding, worthy, in their quiet, unobtrusive beauty, of the God who formed them." And even after the human period this truth holds good. The aged pauper in the work-house, who, when taunted with his uselessness, and asked what he was doing, replied, "only waiting," may in the divine scale be a happier as well as sublimer object than even the archangel, who, with the most splendid powers and the most exquisite sensibilities for delight, is engaged in the active service of the Most High. Milton touches on this in these fine lines,—

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask but patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve, who only stand and wait."

§ 144. Now even assuming that the nominally inferior classes, whether in the moral or physical creation, are endowed with a degree of happiness which, though lower in grade, is still definite and positive, are we to limit the divine power, and say, that after the creation of the higher and more perfect order, the divine energies are exhausted and are incapable of further creative action?

To these remarks it may be added-and on this point I must acknowledge my indebtedness to an eminent living psychologist, Mr. Isaac Taylor-that in a human state limitation is an ingredient in a full perception of beauty. "The beautiful in nature seldom presents itself otherwise than under some conditions of imperfection and limitation. The flower-garden has its cankers and its blights, and its fading and decaying splendors. The bright landscape of June suggests a contrast with the rigors and discomforts of February. The beauty of the material world is just bright and fair enough to stimulate that imaginative faculty the creations of which could never be acclimated to earth. So it is that this sense, which opens to us so much of pure and intense enjoyment which can never be realized unless it be in some brighter and distant sphere. From the cottage flowergarden such as shows itself on a summer morning, there is a pathway which the imaginative man does not fail often to tread, leading to the unknown and infinite, even to a world of absolute beauty, and of beauty never to decay.

its

On a path that is still more direct, the human mind finds

way toward the unknown and the infinite, when we stand in presence of those objects in nature which give rise to the emotions of sublimity. In front of Alpine altitudes, with their vast upheaved masses, commingled cloud, rock, glacier, cataract, there is excited not simply admiration and awe, but there is a feeling that these terrestrial marvels are samples only, shown off upon this planet in order to suggest to man the idea of scenes in some other world still more stupendous. If earth has its Alps, and its Andes, and its Himalayas, what shall be the spectacle of awe which a world unknown might open to our gaze?

Telluric catastrophes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, deluges, and whatever else combines ideas of destructive force with the conception of sublimity, has a further influence in carrying the mind, if it be sensitive in this manner, into those abysses of imaginative terror where the unknown and the infinite may be conceived of as unveiling their powers to the utmost.

There is yet a path which may be trod with less trepidation and with more fruit and advantage. The nocturnal heavens may, at first glance, seem more magnificent than sublime; but undoubtedly it is sublime when, by aid of reason, we penetrate this magnificence and become cognizant of the reality beyond. Now, there is here to be noted a change in our modes of thought which has been long in progress, and which is now advancing toward its consummation. This consummation will bring with it a consciousness of relationship, to the unknown and infinite of a far more substantial and impressive kind than hitherto has been admitted."*

d. The defects and evils complained of are, in many cases, productive of positive good.

a2. Sorrow.

§ 145. Longfellow gives but a sad view even of sorrow in the following lines :

The air is full of farewells to the dying,

And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,

Will not be comforted.

* World of Mind, p. 316.

Let us be patient! these severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors

Amid these earthly damps;

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers

May be heaven's distant lamps.

Far different is the confidence of the Christian :

I KNOW, is all the mourner saith,
Knowledge by sorrow entereth,

And life is perfected in death.

§ 146. Sorrow may also be not only the guide to, but the test by which true religion may be discovered. It may be opaque enough when merely worldly comforts attempt to illuminate it; but when a light from above falls on it, it not only receives that light itself, but, like the camera, collects and exhibits the truth all the more vividly from the darkness in which it is itself enveloped. Sorrow thus has come to us possessed with a wonderful gift of discrimination. The soul goes to the world for aid, and turns sadly away with her face all the darker, for there she finds no response. It is otherwise in religion. It is not that the religious man does not grieve. He does so, and all the more deeply from the fact that the narcotics taken by men of the world have no effect on him. But the very profoundness of his grief gives him a depth and fullness in his hope. He may be crushed by the death-bed of one whom he loves, but there is a grand