felt themselves called upon to do anything to prevent them; but they make it a part of their religious duty to submit to these dispensations when they come. Diseases are indeed the servants of God, but the poet has not told for what purpose they serve him; nor do the people seem to understand their object. They come not on account of our general sins, our Sabbathbreaking, our pride, our irreligion, but on account of our special violations of those laws of God established for our physical wellbeing. They are not sent to the infidel and the atheist, but to those idolaters "whose God is their belly,' who sacrifice their sleep to mammon and to their lusts. They are not sent to wean us from this world, but because we have already weaned ourselves so far from the milk of life. Those, who tell us that diseases are visitations for general sins, do not understand their message. From the least neglect of any law comes the loss of that comfort and strength, which follows a strict fulfilment of our duty. Debility, pain, disease ensue. The evil is slight at first, proportioned to the extent of our error, to warn us of danger. If we disregard the warning, it speaks again and louder. If we persevere, we are prostrated by sickness. If then we have not reduced the vital energies below the power of reaction, we may recover. But if we have disobeyed the law and been deaf to the repeated warnings, we sink beneath the weight of the judgment; our probation is ended; and we pass to the Great Judge to give an account of our stewardship here.

From the belief, that diseases are the especial interpositions of Providence, men are led into a second and a corresponding error, that another especial interference is needed to heal them; and therefore, if never before, they now acknowledge the hand of God and implore his mercy to restore them. They do not pray for greater wisdom to know, and more faithfulness to obey his laws thereafter; but they request, that those laws may now be suspended for their particular benefit. But God's ways are not as man's ways. The ebb and flow of life, and the ebb and flow of the tide, are equally established in his eternal counsels, and neither of them waits nor changes purposes for man; for till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law that governs them. If we breathe air over and over, weakened by repeated respiration or corrupted with other gases and smoke, just so much strength is given as its

reduced power can impart and no more. This is debility. If we feed ourselves with innutritious and ill-prepared food, we shall have as much regularity in our organs as these can give and no more. This is derangement. If we overwork our frames, we shall waste our powers and be exhausted. If, then, we pray that God will give to a corrupt and weakened air the effect of the pure and the invigorating, and to unsuitable food the effect of the suitable, or that our strength may hold out beyond its measure, - if, in any case, we pray that the wrong and the inadequate may be followed by those consequences which God has appointed to follow only the right and the sufficient; or if, when those consequences shall have come upon us, we ask that they may be removed, and others, the greater and more desirable, be substituted in their stead, asking for as certain and as hopeless reversions of the eternal laws as would the chemist, who should pray that weak and impure acids may make as perfect salts as the strong and the pure; or as the mariner, who should pray that the water might not leak through the crevices between the planks of his vessel, which he had selected of improper materials and imperfectly joined together; or as the merchant, who should pray that God would not permit his bark, which he has overloaded, to sink.

we are

It is also made a part of our religious instruction, that for every man there is a fixed bound of life, and therefore no one dies before his time. Mourners are consoled with the reflection, that nothing could have arrested the hand of death, for he was the messenger of God. This is indeed a great and melancholy truth. Death is the messenger of Heaven. But death is appointed as the natural effect of disease, and we have already seen how disease comes. We do not, however, receive it, as a universal truth, that no one dies before his time. The suicide, who suddenly extinguishes his life with a pistol, is admitted to be an exception. He, who voluntarily plunges into the midst of deadly contagions, will be excepted also, because he has shortened his days by his own hand. So every one, who, by the misuse or neglect of his faculties, by excessive labors on his farm, among his merchandise, or in pursuit of others' good, exhausts his powers of life, shortens his days by his own hand, though not by his own volition, and dies before his time.

The suicide, who eats poison and dies, strikes us with a just horror, for we feel it a heinous sin to spurn God's blessing of

life. We are also shocked at the sight of one, who voluntarily cuts off a limb or puts out an eye, because he thus impairs his life, and has inflicted upon himself partial death. But all impairment of life is partial death. And he, who is sick, feeble, or wanting in the command of his faculties, is so far dead; and if this be produced by his disobedience, he has committed partial suicide.

We may now be told, that it is useless to strive with God; that we cannot resist his will, and prevent disease or ward off death. But we are not striving against God, in the maintenance of health, and prolongation of life. In doing this, we are co-workers with Him. He invites us at all times to drink from the fountain of life, and enjoy its cheering invigoration. His loving kindness spreads every where the elements of health. It is by refusing or neglecting to appropriate them to our use, as he has appointed, that we strive against his will.

We may be asked, if we are so presumptuous as to suppose, that we can add one cubit to our stature, or one day to the period of our existence? We have before said, that though the laws of life are fixed, yet the circumstances of life are variable. These are left very much to our control. We have availed ourselves of this privilege in the better development of life in the vegetable creation, and even in the lower animals. Our delicious fruits, our nutritious roots, and our gorgeous flowers, in unfavorable circumstances, were very different from what we now find them. By our diligent study of their conditions of life, and our faithful application of the means of protection and support, we have transformed the acrid and disagreeable apium graveolens into the delicious celery: we have improved the bitter crab and sloe into the luscious and almost infinitely varied apple and pear. By the same attention to the law of growth and development, we have improved our cattle and our swine. Applying the same attention to the law of human life, we see no reason to suppose, that our bodies might not all be preserved in health and maintained in unremitting vigor until old age, as well as those of the brutes.

We do not pretend, that the whole of this law is yet ascertained, or that we could, by any faithfulness to all that is now known, avoid every physical evil. Far be it from us to be thus presumptuous.

"Of course," says Mr. Mann, "I do not mean, that all diseases could be abolished at once, even by the universal diffusion

of a knowledge of their causes or that the era foretold by the prophet would be ushered in, when the child shall die a hundred years old,' and when there shall be no 'old man that hath not fulfilled his days.' The violation of those beautiful and benign laws, which the Creator has inwrought into our system, has been too heinous, and too long persevered in by the race, to be expiated or atoned for in a single age. Disease and debility transmitted through a long line of ancestors have acquired a momentum, by the length of the descent, which cannot at once be overcome.' p. 71.

We have hereditary diseases the seeds of consumption, scrofula, insanity, and imperfect constitutions, which we have received from our parents. The effects of disobedience are not confined exclusively to the offender, for God is now "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and to the fourth generation." But we believe, that if we would give the whole power of our intellect to learn the conditions of our existence, and our moral powers to fulfil them as correctly and as faithfully as we study the nature and watch the interests of our cattle, or our machinery, we should in a single generation be saved from many diseases, and very materially prolong life.

E. J.

THE MINISTRY OF EVIL:

BY THE LATE MARTIN L. HURLBUT: WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

IT appears to me, that the great practical distinction of Christian philosophy, the distinctive aid it has furnished to human virtue, and peace of mind, as well as the new light it has poured on the human intellect, is to be found in the views, the peculiar views, it has given of the nature and uses of evil and suffering. The origin of these, their introduction into the system of things, their place, purport, and relations, have darkened the spirits and perplexed the reasonings of thoughtful men in all countries, and at all times. On this topic Metaphyscians have expended all their ingenuity and wearied even themselves in investigations boundless, endless, and without profit. It has been the favorite theme of the scoffer, the fruitful source of recklessness and crime; and it has furnished the dark ground on which the poet has spread his colors, and drawn out his tragic delineations. Uncontrollable Destiny, stern, avenging, unrelenting Fate, these were the designations. given to the mysterious agencies of sorrow, suffering, and wo, in the lot of mortals; and they only show how dark and inscrutable the subject appeared to the most gifted minds of antiquity, and how utterly they despaired of attaining to a solution of the problem.

The stoics alone seem to have caught a glimpse of the truth, a glimpse which led them, however, to no satisfactory results. They seem to have reached the perception, that evil could not be absolute and ultimate. That it did not exist for itself. That it could not have been the end designed by the Contriving Power. So far their system led them. But here it failed. Their boasted optimism, in consequence, was little better than verbal. It offered nothing to satisfy the wants of the soul; because it furnished no basis, and no sustenance for the sentiments of faith and love; and without these the reasonings and convictions of the highest intellects, in the emergences. of life, prove utterly powerless. Thus their philosophy, like other systems, became little else than a theme of debate, an exercise of polemical skill, in which the contest was for victory rather than for truth. Their reasoning powers operating