" But further, it is necessary to re collect, that this life seems never to have been intended for perfection in knowledge and truth. Our present has been considered a state of moral and intellectual discipline, preparative for a future existence; and a degree of obscurity, as to our duty, and on what it depends, is most conform able to such a situation. We are accountable creatures: faculties and talents are given us by heaven, and we are answerable for the use which we make of them: But, where would be the field for our employing them, were every thing around us easy and plain? Where would be the merit of safety, if there had been no danger; or of knowledge, where there was no difficulty? In common science, an acquaintance with the axioms merely is accounted nothing, while the investigation of its abstrusest doctrines is attended with advantage and renown. It is the same in religion; and those assimilations made in Scripture, of its duties to the hazard of the battle, and the strenuous exertions of the race, are natural and reconcileable to the order which we observe in every department of human life. Now, this view of the subject, I consider, to answer the objection which has been stated, of religion requiring demonstration. The knowledge of its evidences, like the practice of its rules, is a duty incumbent upon us; but an instinctive possession of that knowledge, is inconsistent with a state of discipline which ours upon earth seems to be. Nor is it only the difficulty attending the evidences of Christianity which has been objected: the partial distribution of those lights which we enjoy, is urged against us; and it has been argued, that a religion from heaven, instead of hav ing been promulgated at so late a period, and to particular nations only, would have been at once made known by heaven to the whole of the human race. But this objection like the former, has arisen from want of due attention to the state of man, The Deity, in his government of the world, acts, in most instances, not by partial, but general laws. Of this truth, our present subject is an example; and various others might be given of similar dispensations. Thus, the sciences and arts have been designed for the advantage of mankind, yet every land is not equally acquainted with them. Even the moral feelings of our nature, which more closely resemble our present subject, are not equally strong in every stage of society ;* nor are the inhabitants of every quarter of the globe blessed with the knowledge and possession of them in an equal degree. Among the whole of the works of God an analogy is found to exist; and, therefore, though a more immediate interposition of the divinity by prophecy and miracles was necessary, in the first introduction of his religion, to establish it among men, the after advancement of it in the nations, and the growth and propagation of it, have been hitherto left by him to the general order of things, and the common course of events. * Kames' Sketches, vol. 4. p. 127. et seq. 4 But let us not scan the works of the Almighty by the limited conceptions of man. Because the knowledge of the Gospel is but partial in the world at present, and may continue so during the period of our residence here, it does not follow that it shall remain so for ever. We know not how trivial a portion of time may already have run; and, with the Lord, even the revolution of ages is no more than as the lapse of a day. The sublime doctrines of our religion shall yet extend to the remotest corners of the earth; and every race of men shall through them be blessed and happy. "The solitary place shall rejoice t, and the barren rock break forth into singing; the desart shall blossom as the roses; the wilderness shall become a fruitful field ||; and the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea." "¶ But it is not only on doubts and Isaiah liv. 1. || Isaiah xxxii. 15. + Isaiah xxxv. 1. difficulties, and supposed defects, that infidelity has founded her attack: with strange versatility, even perfection and greatness have been urged against us; and those very heavens, which, with the Psalmist, "declared the righteousness of the Lord," have been argued from, to overturn the testimony of his religion. The immensity of the universe has been vauntingly described: the insignificance of our race and of all our concerns has been depicted;† and conclusions have thence been drawn, that we were beneath the notice of the Deity in so magnificent a dispensation as that of the mission of Jesus. This is, however, to judge of the Deity as of feeble and limited man. "But his thoughts are not as thy thoughts, nor his ways as thy ways." The infinitude of nature does not distract Him, nor does the greatness of the whole withdraw Psalm 1. 6. + See the works of Mons. De la Place, and Paine's Age of Reason, Part 1. Isaiah lv. 8. |