parture from this principle, by seeking the less good of the individual in modes not consistent with his greater good; or the good of the individual in modes not consistent with the good of the whole; or the good of the whole in modes not consistent with the good of the individual. Sin, therefore, cannot be reconciled with pure goodness; but is founded in a different and opposing principle. If sin can be imputed to God, therefore, his goodness will be necessarily impeached. But God is not charged with committing sin. His hands are pure, and his heart, so far as his own direct agency is concerned, is clean. It is only his creatures that have sinned.

§374. We come then to inquire what relation God sustains to the sins of his creatures. Has he given a single creature any license to sin? Not any. Has he connived at the sins of his creatures generally? Or at those of any one, or any class of his creatures, in particular? Not any. Has he given his creatures any law on the subject? Any expression of his will in regard to their moral actions? And has he held out any rational inducements to lead them to do right or wrong ? God has given his creatures a law in favor of doing right; and has furnished the greatest inducements to right action by a system of eternal and infinite rewards, to be dispensed to the morally good. He has forbidden evil doing, connected many embarrassments, and other evils with it, in this life; and denounced against it eternal death. What then is the precise relation of God to sin? He creates beings liable to sin, and allows them to be placed in circumstances in which this liability leads to actual sin. We reduce the matter then, to the questions; Why does God create beings liable to sin? And why does he allow them to be placed in circumstances in which this liability leads to actual sin? Both these questions are virtually resolved in the solution of either; and are comcomprehended in the single question: Why does God permit moral beings to sin? To this it is sometimes replied, that God permits moral beings to sin because their sins in the cases in which they are permitted, are best on the whole; and because it is better to have sin in the universe than to have a universe without it. This answer involves an assumption which is contrary to our fundamental conceptions of the nature of sin; and requires us to found virtue not in the good of each consistently with that of all, and the good

of all consistently with that of each; but in the good of a part to the prejudice and ruin of another part. Such a system is conceivable; but it is not a system of virtue; it is a system of seinshness. It accounts for the permission of sin not in consistency with the perfect goodness of God, but by the virtual denial of his perfect goodness. It is of no avail to charge such a system on the Creator; and infer that it is morally good because it is the system of the great Supreme. If it was the system of the Supreme, it would be a system of goodness only to a part; and to the rest a system of misery and death. But reason and the Scriptures both concur in claiming for God the attribute of perfect moral goodness. We cannot, therefore, admit the gratuitous assumption, that God permits sin because it is best on the whole. It is not best on the whole; but it is evil on the whole. It is not best even for a part; still less is it best of all. If we account for it all, we must account for it in its true character as sin, and not in the borrowed character of holiness. The question then resolves itself into this: Why does God permit moral beings to do what is not best on the whole? And what is injurious on the whole both to themselves and others? This question admits of but one answer in consistency with the doctrine of the perfect goodness of God; that is, that the prevention of sin is impracticable without preventing holiness. Holiness is the means of the good of each, in consistency with that of all; and of the good of all, in consistency with that of each; and under the administration of God, will eventuate in a vast and eternally increasing aggregate of good. If it is impracticable for the Creator to administer a system of holiness without permitting sin, he may permit it in consistency with perfect goodness. Reason and the Scriptures both concur in proving that this is the fact ; and thus furnish the means of solving the greatest problem in human science, after that of determining the existence and spirituality of God; for the next in importance to the knowledge of God as our eternal Creator and sovereign, is the knowledge of his perfect goodness.

§ 375. In the foregoing inquiries we have accounted for the permission of sin. In that permission it is regarded in its true nature as an evil, and a source of evil; and not as a means of good. But why does God punish sinners? What are the ends of punishment? On this subject there are different theories.

Some suppose that God punishes sinners in malice, on a principle of retaliation without any respect to beneficial results. They admit that benefits result from the punishment of the wicked; but regard them as incidental and not as exclusive grounds of punishment. The supporters of this theory found the right of punishment entirely on the demerit of the sinner, and consider it due to him in consideration of past action solely.

Others suppose that the punishment of sinners has respect solely to the prevention of sin among holy beings, without any benevolent regard for the sinner.

A third theory is, that punishment is an expedient solely for the prevention of sin, both in the case of the sinner, and of others; and that like virtue it is founded in a regard for the happiness of all, not excepting that of the sinner.

The first two theories are not sustained by any facts, within the sphere of our knowledge in this world; neither are they consistent with the doctrine of the perfect goodness of God. The Providential punishments of this life are not malicious nor purely vindictive, but have a manifest subserviency to the promotion of virtue and happiness, both among the punished, and among others. The last theory is supposed to be incompatible with the eternal punishment of the wicked. But this is not the fact. Nothing can be more evident than that the design of temporal punishments is to restrain sinners from sin, and to repress their sinful dispositions as well as to furnish examples of terror to deter others from sin. The Scriptures nowhere inform us that the eternal punishments of the wicked will not have a similar design, and accomplish a similar purpose. Neither is there any ground in Reason or the Scriptures, to infer the contrary. The Scriptures teach us that the wicked who pass their state of earthly probation without repentance, will be banished from the world of the holy and happy, and will suffer eternal punishment. The precise ends and purpose of that punishment, they do not explain. All that they do, is to give us the fact. From this and other known facts pertaining to the character and government of God, we draw several important conclusions. But we have no authority to conclude, either that the wicked are punished in malice, or that no salutary restraints are exercised upon them by means of these punishments.

376. It is a common opinion that the wicked are destified to sink eternally to deeper and still deeper depths in sin and misery. The Scriptures, however, are silent on this subject. They teach us that there will be a separation of the righteous from the wicked; that the former will be received into a condition of eternal happiness and glory; and that the latter will be condemned to go into everlasting punishment. The nature and intensity of that punishment are described by most terrific images, and there the whole matter is left, under a veil of profound and awful mystery. As there is no evidence, however, either from the Scriptures or reason, that the eternal punishment of the wicked will be purely vindicatory; or that it will ever cease to exercise salutary restraints on the sufferers, we are not obliged to vindicate the pure and perfect goodness of God, against any imputations which depend on that hypothesis. There is no department of moral action in which the glory of moral goodness is more conspicuous than in the sentiments which it inspires towards the wicked. The wicked repel the wicked with malice; the good regard them with love. The wicked punish the wicked with malice, and call it vindicatory justice; the good punish the wicked in love, taking into the account the interests both of others and themselves, and inflicting upon them what evil is necessary; and no

more.

As there is a general harmony of interests, by which under the moral government of God, what is for the greatest good of all, is for the greatest good of each; so, for aught we know, there may be a similar harmony of interests in respect to punishments, so that those very eternal punishments which are inflicted on the wicked to uphold the Divine government, and subserve the greatest possible happiness of the good, may by their restraining influence on the wicked, hold them back from greater lengths in sin, and greater consequent miseries, in which they would have. involved themselves, if no positive inflictions of the Almighty had fallen upon them. Men may hold to the doctrine of the goodness of God in words, and deny it in reality. No part of the Divine character is developed with more clearness than this in the Scriptures. The goodness of God was in various instances exhibited and pressed upon the attention of mankind by the Old Testament writers, and was celebrated in sacred songs of the greatest beauty and sub

limity. The mission of Christ was a mission of love, and his work a work of love. But the most sublime and affecting manifestation of the perfect and universal goodness of God is exhibited in the death of Christ, in which the Father gave up the Son, and the Son surrendered up himself to die for this lost world. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his infinitely beloved Son to suffering, that he might make a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Christ died as the friend of sinners; not in the exercise of a partial friendship, but in that of a noble and generous philanthropy, wide as the world; for "he tasted death for every man.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PHILOSOPHY OF WAKEFULNESS AND SLEEP.

§ 377. Men and animals are subject to two remarkable conditions which usually succeed each other at regular intervals, denominated wakefulness and sleep. Wakefulness is a state of the continued and easy exercise of sensations and thoughts, and of other exercises dependent on thoughts, together with the frequent occurrence of voluntary actions. During wakefulness, sensations and thoughts are incessant, but are capable of great varieties in respect to vigor and intensity of intellectual action.

Sleep consists in a suspension of intellectual exercises depending on a diminished sensibility of the organs of sensation. In a state of wakefulness, the action of the external world on the mind through the organs of sensation, tends to promote the general exercise of ideas. In sleep, the organs of sensation lose a part of their usual sensibility, and the faculty of ideas its accustomed stimulus. Consequently thinking usually ceases in sleep, for want of sensations to excite thought. In the above explanation of sleep, the suspension of ideas is attributed solely to the suspension of sensations, which are the usual conditions of ideas. This hypothesis is possible and not improbable, but has not been established with certainty. The suspension of sensations