lated, and admonish us to beware in future of a similar offence. The sensibility therefore with which the Creator has endowed our frames to the various forms of disease as well as injury, was intended to be the means of preserving them with all their powers and faculties healthy and entire, and of thus securing to us the conditions most favorable to our well-being. And whoever will consider how constantly during the whole of his past life, he has been indebted to it for safety and protection, will be convinced that by no provision of his constitution is he placed under greater or more unceasing obligation to gratitude. That the suffering arising from this endowment of our organization is occasionally excessive, or that it continues after the ends to which it is specially directed have ceased to be attainable, is no argument against the benevolence of its design. Being provided for in the constitution of the sensory nerves, it must necessarily continue so long as these retain their functions, although the malady may have assumed a character precluding all possibility of recovery. Nor is there anything peculiar in this. All the provisions of nature are general and therefore liable in particular cases not only to fail of their object, but to be turned to other and different purposes. The same sun which in the spring, quickening into life the innumerable vegetable tribes, clothes the earth with verdure and beauty, in the summer scorches it to barrenness. The same air which cools and refreshes us by its gentle breezes and from whose ample store we each moment inhale the breath of life, may bear upon its bosom the seeds of pestilence and disease or wrought into fury by the other elements, may sweep along in the resistless tornado, everywhere marking its track with ruin, desolation and death. The same fire which warms us and prepares our food, and to whose kindly aid in the different mechanical arts we are indebted for so large a portion of the conveniences and comforts of life, from a faithful ally and friend, may suddenly become our most fearful enemy, remorselessly destroying our property or even consuming us within our dwellings. Against this view of the design of pain in the animal economy, it is sometimes urged that God is all-powerful, and had he seen fit, might have so constituted matter as to render the beings composed of it incapable of injury. The necessity of a monitory system would in that case, it is said, have been avoided, and all the evils arising from it spared to his sensitive creatures. As such an idea is incompatible with the supposition of the absolute and unqualified benevolence of the Creator, and is yet, there is reason to believe, quite generally entertained, we are disposed to give a brief 1850.] Objection Considered. 675 space to its consideration. For, if we mistake not, men are accustomed to indulge on this subject, in an unwarranted license of speech. Our knowledge of the attributes of the Deity, as it seems to us, is too imperfect and our acquaintance with the consistencies of things too superficial, to enable us to say, à priori, what is or what is not possible. The disposition to ascribe limitless power to the Divine Being proceeds in many cases, we have no doubt, from a deep reverence for his character, and from an overwhelming impression of his power as manifested in the world around us. In others, it probably arises from mere habit; while in not a few instances, we fear, it springs from a desire to throw upon him the responsibility of all moral and physical evil, and thus to quiet the apprehensions of conscience under a sense of guilt. The objection asserts that God, if he had seen fit, might have so constituted matter, as to render the organized beings composed of it incapable of injury. Let us consider, for a moment what we can do towards forming an idea of the mode in which this could have been accomplished. In doing so, we shall take for granted that matter is in reality what it seems to be actual substance possessing inherent constitutional properties and that in the formation of our bodies, it is wrought into their several parts in such a manner as to confer upon them through these properties their respective endowments. On any other theory-more especially that which refers all material phenomena to the immediate agency of the Deity—the subject becomes involved both morally and physically in inextricable difficulties. If matter be wholly inert, the animal organs formed of it can have no real part in the functions associated with them. Their elaborate structure is consequently unmeaning and nugatory. It accomplishes nothing, and indicates nothing. No argument whatever can be drawn from it in favor of an intelligent and designing author. Adopt this absurd dogma and the divine light which beams so brightly not only from every part of the human frame, but from the organization of each one of the lower animals and from the whole outward world, is suddenly extinguished. Not a single ray of intelligence or beauty comes from aught above, beneath, or around us; but an impenetrable veil spreads itself over the entire physical creation, robing it in profound darkness. There is nothing left from which the mind. can infer the existence even of a Supreme Intelligence, but its own sensations and perceptions. Shut out from every other source of knowledge, it must seek in these, considered in their relations to itself and to one another, the sole proof of the transcendent perfections of the Almighty, with which every part of this wide universe, to him who views it aright, is so gloriously radiant. If matter possess no inherent powers, and every change, whether in our physical organizations or in the outward world, be produced by the immediate power of God, then are all these changes, of what sort soever they may be, equally an indication of his will and character. We cannot regard some as ends and others as means; some as directly intended and others as connected with the object designed to be accomplished, but forming no part of it. The idea of both the instrumental and the incidental, on this strange supposition, so repugnant to reason and common sense, is necessarily excluded. The devastation of the whirlwind is as much intended by God and as immediately dependent upon his agency, as the refreshing coolness of the summer breeze upon the flushed cheek and moistened brow of the laborer, or the life-giving influence of the same fluid as he each moment expands his chest and bathes his lungs in it. The fire which rages in our dwellings is kindled by Him and sustained by the continual exertion of His power; and the subtle element is under these circumstances as truly accomplishing His will as when it diffuses its genial rays through our apartments, or lends its ready aid, in melting the brass and forging the iron, in driving the steam car and turning the spindle. In the wasting pains of prolonged and hopeless disease and in the last expiring agony, it is not the deranged, shattered and convulsed body, acting upon the sensitive spirit still held in connection with it, that causes the suffering; it is God by his own immediate and direct agency. He inspires the sense of weariness; He inflicts every pang; it is under the pressure of His hand that the dying groan is extorted. He, too, at man's bidding rivets the fetters of the slave, bars the door of the prisoner, applies the torture of the wheel and the rack, binds to the martyr's stake, and piles the fuel, and kindles the flame, and presses it to the bared and quivering flesh of the innocent sufferer. It is He also that gives edge to the knife of the assassin, and infuses energy into the poisoner's cup. It is His power that is seen and felt on the battle-field; He sends the cannon's iron hail through the serried ranks of the warriors, marring and rending to pieces the fairest specimens of His most perfect handiwork, and strowing the earth with carnage and slaughter. Such are the unavoidable consequences of the philosophy which denying to matter the possession of inherent, constitutional properties, ascribes all the phenomena exhibited by it to the immediate agency of Deity. So abhorrent to every right sentiment are the views of the Divine character to which this monstrous doctrine necessarily leads. Admit it and there is no escaping the conclusion that God is the direct author of each and every event that be 1850.] Occasion of Liability to Accident and Disease. 677 fals us; the good and the evil, the joy and the woe, the bliss and the agony are alike from him, and alike intended by him. With those, therefore, who adopt as their philosophical creed any form of idealism, whether absolute or virtual, we shall hold no argument. We frankly confess that with such ideas in regard to the mode of the Divine government, we see no way of reconciling that government with the sentiments of our moral natures. The world without and the world within, for aught we are able to perceive, must forever remain in mysterious and inexplicable discordance. But, if we take the only rational view of the physical universe, if we see in the different kinds of matter so many instrumentalities employed by the Supreme Being in the accomplishment of his purposes, then light breaks in upon the subject. The peculiar difficulties which before surrounded it, vanish. We now behold in the outward world a vast system of means, adapted to the production of wise and beneficent ends. We are able to trace the connection between the several parts of that system, and the particular objects to which they are subservient; and although we do not see these objects in every instance accomplished, or in any, it may be, so perfectly, as we are able to conceive of their being accomplished, yet all the provisions of the system look towards them, and are such as in the great majority of cases to secure more or less fully their attainment. Keeping in view, therefore, the general plan which the Divine Being has seen fit to adopt in carrying forward his designs in our world either because it was best suited to the ends proposed or because it was most in harmony with his own nature - we proceed to inquire whether it be possible to imagine any change in the constitution of matter which would remove the necessity of the monitory provisions incorporated in the structure not only of man but of all the lower orders of the animal creation. The liability to accident and disease, under the existing constitution of things, arises from the fact that our corporeal frames are endowed with the same general properties and governed by the same general laws, as the bodies by which they are surrounded, and therefore capable of entering into relations with them; of acting upon them on the one hand, and of receiving impressions from them on the other. Did the material atoms on becoming a part of the living organization lose all their elementary properties, did they from that moment cease to hold relations to other bodies, we should no longer be exposed to any form of outward danger. Neither caloric or electricity, gravity or chemical affinity could in any way harm us. Our bodies would in that case be as incapable of injury as our spirits. At the same time they would have as little power over the other forms of matter. We could no longer employ them in accomplishing any of the purposes of our existence. Our limbs would cease to be of any use to us as instruments of motion, and our senses would equally fail us as organs of perception. We should be unable to effect the slightest change of any kind whatever, in the world around us, nor could we ever gain a knowledge of that world. We should be as completely cut off from all intercourse with it as if we were without bodies. The entire assemblage of instrumentalities included in our physical organizations, and designed to put us in communication with surrounding existences, would be annihilated. Nor could the interior processes necessary to the support of life itself be maintained. It is only through the powers and properties of the matter from which they are organized, that the heart, lungs and stomach perform their respective offices. Suspend these and they would at once cease to act, and the vital phenomena connected with them would no longer be manifested. Whether we consider, therefore, the external parts of our bodily frame, as the limbs and senses, or its internal organs, we find them alike dependent, in the exercise of their functions, upon the general properties of matter the same properties in which our liability to injury, and we may add to disease, has its origin. It is not any particular quality or qualities of the material atoms that cause this liability, but the power possessed by them of acting and reacting upon one another; and it is this power which qualifies them for entering into the constitution of organized beings-through which alone such beings can exercise their functions. Nay, it is this power that lies at the foundation and source of all physical causation. - But although we are unable to conceive of any change in the properties of matter which would exempt our bodies from the liability to accident and disease, may we not suppose these latter differently constituted out of matter as it now exists, and the evil in this manner avoided? It is well known that every part of the animal structure is endowed with a vital force or energy which enables it, within certain limits, to resist the action of causes tending to its injury. May we not suppose this vital endowment to be greatly exalted, so as in fact to afford our corporeal frames adequate protection against all the dangers, whether external or internal, to which they are naturally exposed? The complex system of nerves, which at best only informs us of these dangers, leaving us to escape them as we best may, would then be unnecessary. However plausible this mode of dispensing with the monitory pro |