former something to look down upon, and the latter, a badge that they will not be so proud of as they are of some things. The best men too want humbling occasionally and even moral evil may be useful in such cases to others of that class, as it was once to St. Peter, making him weep bitterly. Evil may be useful, therefore, if it be only to shew us, that we are not good. It is also useful for charity; to soften our hearts, to make us kind and gentle in our disposition towards others, and indulgent to their faults from a sense of our own demerit. It is useful for edification: the best men want to be thwarted sometimes as well as humbled; they must be crossed and opposed sometimes, even in good wishes and works, for the trial and exercise of their virtue, their patience, perseverance, fortitude, faith; to such, therefore, evil in this form is good and wholesome. Even in the form of sorrow, which is its extreme, or consummation, evil may be good by being useful many ways. Solomon pronounces this form of evil generally conducive to our spiritual improvement, observing that " sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better" (Eccl. vii. 3) and in a natural relation, there can be no doubt of such an effect. Thus, the father's sorrowful travail in this fallen state is conducive to his own physical health and strength, as well as to the support of his family; and the mother's is conducive to the remembrance and consequent care of her offspring; being for a boon both to her and it, to one as the foundation of maternal fondness and delight, to the other as that of early protection and nutriment. For the same bountiful Creator is Author alike both of good and evil for one end, which is invariably good; as pious Job would intimate in that saying, "What, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job ii. 10). As much as to say, How is it possible? For these two properties being so closely interwoven as they are in human affairs, it is not easy to conceive how one can be had always without the other. So the curse of Adam is followed by an immediate foretaste of blessing, and the multiplied sorrow of Eve, is to her a present fountain of delight, and a prospect of unspeakable honour in her future seed. And these are but a few instances of the utility of evil, or of many cases which are so considered. It gives a demand for hope, a zest to comfort, and an edge to all our faculties, making us quite other beings for any work to what we should be without it: insomuch, that one would almost think sometimes whether evil might not have been ORIGINALLY as well as consecutively ordained for good; which would clearly be making God its author. But of this enough for the present; and enough also of the utility of good and evil. In the fourth place, it were hard to draw a line between the utility of any thing and its Necessity; as they are only shades of difference, but this property also may be generally averred, both of good and evil, as well as that. And if good be necessary, as every one seems to think, both to the prosperity and very existence of order in the creation, we need not scruple to admit, that evil may be neces sary alike in every respect; whether physical, metaphysical, moral, social, or religious. Thus, in a physical respect, the evil of a less disease may be necessary either as a preventive or a remedy for a greater; in a metaphysical, the evil of forgetfulness is always necessary in a certain degree to the faculty of abstraction, which is one of the most important, and in fact most characteristic of the human understanding. In a moral respect too, the same evil of forgetfulness is necessary to assuage the pangs of grief, and quell the force of resentment. In a social respect evil may be necessary to enjoyment several ways, though in general nothing can be more destructive of social happiness. For first, how can there be joy in the presence of friends without grief at their departure? Or, what is more; how can the greatest, best, blessedest, and most desirable happiness of meeting again occur without the pangs of separation? So if pain be an evil, evil is necessary to every good purpose for the future, and to every improvement of the past. Without a painful impression we could not bear in mind what we mean to do well; nor what we have done ill either, so much as we ought. Without a liability to pain, we should not be capable even of self-preservation; but be burning and wounding our own bodies continually, and breaking our own limbs worse than children. Therefore, if pain and painful impressions are evil, evil must be more than useful: it is necessary, absolutely necessary, in these respects. Evil in short appears, and is to our conception, necessary both for the production of a free and happy, i. e., a moral agent, which may be thought its prime object, and also to counteract in some cases the effect of such a production on the agent himself as well as on his dependents: more especially is it necessary to satisfy him of the reality of a future state; and to teach him how to enjoy, as well as to wean him from the enjoyments of the present. One should not presume to say, that evil was necessary to Omnipotence in any of the forementioned respects; nor, that the Almighty Creator could not have formed that happy creature, a truly moral and religious creature without such an incumbrance, because no man nor angel either can understand the resources of Omnipotence. "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Mat. xix. 26). We can, therefore, only say, that we do not comprehend the possibility of such a formation under existing circumstances. In these circumstances most of the evil, whether physical, metaphysical, moral, social, or religious that we know of, may be considered as a sort of back game that is played by divine Providence, and rather as a supplement, than as an opposition to good. And so it may be said, that man is formed for happiness; and nothing but sin can prevent it: but by sinning he goes counter to nature, defeats his own happiness, and is VOL. I. miserable yet by a due sense of his own misery he is brought again into the way of happiness, and of happiness, of an higher cast than he had ever known without it. Thus the misery of man, a superlative evil, is the basis of a second and better creation; and through the fall of some others are exalted, as St. Paul observes of the Jews and Gentiles (Rom. xi. 11), through the merciful ordering of divine Providence. Man is here in a state of purgation and preparation, for which every sort of evil seems necessary; and the existence or duration of such evil being bounded by this necessity, it may well be asked, Where is the evil? For if evil be necessary in such a state, there must be evil for the necessity; or else what is necessary must be wanting, which itself were an evil. But still, is not evil, evil? Is not a violent, painful, and ignominious death an evil? for example. If it be no evil to the judge who inflicts, it must be some to the wretch who suffers it; or if it be not evil to the prisoner, it must be evil to the judge, or to some other party. There must be evil in this case somewhere. For judges are fallible, and in general have also a delegated power only; it may therefore happen, that in the case of an unjust execution, the same shall be evil, neither to the prisoner, nor yet to his judge entirely, but also to false wit nesses perhaps, or perhaps to a false government. Somewhere or other however the evil must alight, and ulti mately fix upon the guilty head: since evil is evil to him undoubtedly who does or chooses it, and to no other in the end. "There is nothing unclean of itself" (Rom. xiv. 14). Thus then evil is evil as well as good; and that evil is both useful and necessary at present we must also allow, But it may be allowed too, at the same time, that the necessity of evil is no proof of its eternity: and its being necessary in this mixed mortal state may be thought a valid argument for two immortal and opposite states hereafter; one in which evil shall be no longer necessary, and one in which it shall be more necessary as well as more intense than ever. But this is another consideration, and belongs to another head, v. g. 5thly, The Merit and Guilt of characteristics: and however one of these properties may deserve by and by a several and repeated consideration, on account of its particular relations, as well as its particular importance in the kingdom, they are now unitedly, and in the first instance ascribed to the spirits or characteristics to which they belong, rather than to the subjects or bearers of these characteristics, as attaching more immediately to them. In every reward, it is the action that we consider more than the agent; and in every chastisement our object is not so much the person as the offence; it is the chastisement of the offence, not the chastisement of the person properly speaking. A man's spirit or spiritual constituents, are his ministry in a manner, the ministry by which he governs and is supported: and being himself irresponsible, if he governs amiss, it is they must bear the blame; albeit, he will not find himself undamaged in the disgrace of his constituents, if they should draw it upon themselves by their ill advice. -- Both merit and guilt therefore are properties, of good and evil, as these are of actions and the subjects they constitute, and may be removed with the good and evil, or without them either, at the pleasure of One who has the command of both, as there may be occasion to observe, which shews their nearer proximity to those properties, than to their subjects. But since both good and evil happen of necessity, and in the moral department, as well as in those of Nature and Providence, with other circumstances also, as well as necessity, which prove them both to be good in their way, there may be, and have been, doubts respecting the merit of the one, and demerit or guilt of the other: which doubts have no sanction either in revelation or experience. For judging by these authorities, there can be no doubt of both good and evil generally receiving as good as they |