which may follow from our inability to foresee consequences, that is only one particular of our imperfection and is not to be considered as an evil positively inflicted. Neither is he to be charged as the author of the evils which men bring on each other. Men are endued with certain powers, which they may exert either in doing good or evil; he means they should do good, but if they choose to do evil, he is not for their faults to be expected to change the course of nature at once, and new make it, as if he had formed it upon a wrong plan. He knows when to interfere; and till he chooses to interfere more directly, he shews his wisdom and goodness in making even these wicked actions subservient to his ultimate purpose of producing good. And this is one of the mysterious parts of his government, that he so directs all the actions of inferior agents as to produce good, where they meant evil.

Again, the natural evil which is interwoven in our constitution, and follows from the present state of things is, if it be considered with respect to its ultimate effect, good and not evil, from the moral good which it produces. The evils arising from the want of food, clothing, and other necessary accommodations of life, are among the great springs which set every created being in motion; the sickness and mischief to which our bodies are subject, keep the mind in perpetual exercise to find means of warding them off; and the various

calamities, to which we are perpetually subject, form a school of resignation, benevolence, and virtue, peculiarly suited to a state of trial: the whole produces a spring of action so powerful, that without this necessity for exertion the face of nature would be one lifeless blank.

But beside this remote production of natural evil, the Supreme Being may be considered more immediately as the inflicter of it, when he interposes as moral governor of this lower world. He hath so constituted the world that, as far as is consistent with a state of trial and not of retribution, his laws maintain their own authority by the natural evils which the violation of them inflicts. In general, virtue produces present happiness, and vice present misery. But the Scripture expresses more than this, that he controuls and employs the powers of nature, so as to punish the wrong doers and preserve the righteous, with a view to that dispensation, by which he has declared that all shall hereafter be judged. All great calamities are to be considered as warnings and punishments of sin: but we are not warranted in judging the immediate sufferers to be worse than others, unless the word of God expressly point them out as such. Neither can we determine, without the like authority, whether any calamitous event be the regular march of the laws of nature, or a sus

3

Xen. Memorab. Soc. Lib. iv. c. 4. §. 24.

pension or increase of the usual powers of nature, by the immediate fiat of Him, in whose hand they are. The creation of the universe, and all the great effects depending upon it, prove the exertion of an Almighty power, and may be called a system of miracles. While these wonderful operations proceed in a regular order, and effects follow their causes in an uniform method, we are not called upon to notice any especial interference of the Maker of all. But should we see a man like ourselves enabled to overrule the powers of nature and produce great and unusual effects, different from the ordinary constitution of nature, and much beyond the natural or acquired ability of any man to accomplish them, we immediately recognize the finger of God, who alone can derange what he has established, and we call this interference a miracle; allowing it to be an undeniable proof that he who performs this miracle, speaks by the authority of God. The Deity may, if he please, make his immediate interposition as evident to us in producing great changes in nature by the agency of the usual natural causes, as if he were to act without them, or contrary to them. If a change of this kind be foretold, when it was absolutely impossible to be foreknown by any man, and follow in as unexpected a way; the especial interference of the Almighty is exhibited with equal evidence by whatever means he fulfils the word of his servant.

One

This train of thought is occasioned by the turn which the philosophic spirit of the times sometimes takes, when it would represent the great miracles recorded in Scripture as no more than the common effects of natural causes; and then by inference exclude his agency upon whom those causes depend: as if the discovery of a second cause disproved the operation of the first. instance, taken from the accounts of the volcanic appearance of Syria, published by the French traveller', will be sufficient. He, by neglecting any intimation of the miraculous part of the destruction of Sodom and the adjoining cities, evidently means it should be considered as the. effect of a common volcanic eruption. But if to discover the true causes of things, and to distinguish them from the falsely assigned ones be the object of philosophy, one should rather have expected that the ruins which lay before him, the tradition of the ancient inhabitants, which he quotes from Strabo, and the positive assertion of such a record as the book of Genesis, which he neglects, would have proved to him that there was something in the destruction of the cities of the plain, different from that of any others which have perished by the like convulsions. He has done nothing to disprove the immediate divine agency by representing the

Travels through Syria and Egypt, in 1783, 4, 5. Two vols. 8vo. By C. F. Volney. Vol. I. cap. xx. §. 4.

whole country round Sodom and Gomorrah as stored with volcanic matter. For even supposing volcanic matter to have been from the creation lodged in that neighbourhood; "Volcanic matter is as inert as the common earths, until it is acted upon by an agent, which produces new combinations." If that agent were not applied till the wickedness of the inhabitants had arisen to its height, and even then, after solemn warning given, had been suspended, till the only righteous man in it was removed from the danger, the destruction of the cities, and their inhabitants, under these circumstances, was as much a miraculous judgment, as if they had been consumed by any supernatural means. The phrase also which gives an account of it,

66

Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heavens," is as accurate a one as could be used. It points out the instrument of destruction, preternatural fire, and the agency of him, who dwelling in heaven, inflicted that destruction. It is highly descriptive of such a convulsion, attended with thunder and lightning, which both ancient and modern observers tell us are cir

5 Gen. xix. 24.

6 Letter from Sir Wm. Hamilton to Matt. Maty, M.D. dated Naples, Oct. 17, 1769.-Read at the Royal Society, Jan. 18, 1770. Letter from the same, dated from Villa Angelica, near Mount Vesuvius, Oct. 4, 1768.--Read Feb. 2,

1769.

D