and irregularly is it fupplied! How much of it falls upon the fea, where it can be of no ufe; how often is it wanted where it would be of the greateft! What tracts of continent are rendered deferts by the scarcity of it! Or, not to speak of extreme cafes, how much, fometimes, do inhabited countries fuffer by its deficiency or delay!-We could imagine, if to imagine were our businefs, the matter to be otherwise regulated. We could imagine fhowers to fall, just where and when they would do good; always feasonable, every where fufficient; so diftributed as not to leave a field upon the face of the globe fcorched by drought, or even a plant withering for the lack of moifture. Yet does the difference between the real cafe and the imagined cafe, or the seeming inferiority of the one to the other, authorize us to say, that the present disposition of the atmosphere is not amongst the productions or the designs of the Deity? Does it check the inference which we draw from the confeffed beneficence of the provifion? or does it make us ceafe to admire the contrivance ? The The obfervation, which we have exemplified in the fingle inflance of the rain of heaven, may be repeated concerning moft of the phenomena of nature: and the true conclufion to which it leads is this, that to enquire what the Deity might have done, could have done, or, as we even sometimes presume to speak, ought to have done, or, in hypothetical cafes, would have done, and to build any propofitions upon fuch enquiries against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not do in natural religion, which cannot therefore be applied with fafety to revelation. It may have fome foundation, in certain fpeculative à priori ideas of the divine attributes; but it has none in experience, or in analogy. The general character of the works of nature is, on the one hand, goodness both in design and effect; and, on the other hand, a liability to difficulty, and to objections, if fuch objections be allowed, by reafon of feeming incompleteness or uncertainty in attaining their end. Chriftianity participates of this cha racter. racter. The true fimilitude between ne ture and revelation confifts in this; that they each bear ftrong marks of their original; that they each also bear appearances of irregularity and defect. A system of strict optimism may nevertheless be the real system in both cafes. But what I contend is, that the proof is hidden from us; that we ought not to expect to perceive that in revelation, which we hardly perceive in any thing; that beneficence, of which we can judge, ought to fatisfy us, that optimifm, of which we cannot judge, ought not to be fought after. We can judge of beneficence, because it depends upon effects which we experience, and upon the relation between the means which we fee acting, and the ends which we fee produced. We cannot judge of optimifin, because it neceffarily implies a comparison of that which is tried, with that which is not tried; of confequences which we fee, with others which we imagine, and concerning many of which, it is more than probable we know nothing; concerning fome, that we have no notion. If If Christianity be compared with the state and progrefs of natural religion, the argument of the objector will gain nothing by the comparifon. I remember hearing an unbeliever fay, that, if God had given a revelation, he would have written it in the fkies. Are the truths of natural religion written in the skies, or in a language which every one reads? or is this the cafe with the most useful arts, or the most neceffary fciences of human life? An Otaheitean or an Esquimaux knows nothing of Christianity; does he know more of the principles of deism or morality? which, notwithstanding his ignorance, are neither untrue, nor unimportant, nor uncertain. The exiftence of the Deity is left to be collected from obfervations, which every man does not make, which every man, perhaps, is not capable of making. Can it be argued, that God does not exist, because, if he did, he would let us fee him; or discover himself to mankind by proofs (fuch as, we may think, the nature of the subject merited), which no inadvertency could mifs, no prejudice withstand? If Christianity be regarded as a providential inftrument for the melioration of mankind, its progrefs and diffufion resembles that of other caufes by which human life is improved. The diverfity is not greater, nor the advance more flow in religion, than we find it to be in learning, liberty, government, laws. The Deity hath not touched the order of nature in vain. The Jewish religion produced great and permanent effects: the Chriftian religion hath done the fame. It hath disposed the world to amendment. It hath put things in a train. It is by no means improbable, that it may become univerfal; and that the world may continue in that ftate fo long as that the duration of its reign may bear a vaft proportion to the time of its partial influence. When we argue concerning Chriftianity, that it must neceffarily be true, because it is beneficial, we go perhaps too far on one fide: and we certainly go too far on the other, when we conclude that it must be falfe, because it is not fo efficacious as we could have fuppofed. |