perfections of the Supreme Architect are limited, because he did work after such a model, he only displays the impotency of his own wisdom, and the blindness of his own presumption. Hence, the error of the atheist is obvious. He does not consider that the only way to place all creatures beyond a liability to sin, is to place them below the rank of intelligent and accountable beings. He does not consider that the only way to prevent “sin from raising its head” is to prevent holiness from the possibility of appearing in the universe. He does not consider that among all the ideal worlds present to the Divine Mind, there was not one which, if called into existence, would have been capable of serving and glorifying its Maker, and yet incapable of throwing off his authority. Hence, he really finds fault with the work of the Almighty, because he has not framed the world according to a model which is involved in the most irreconcilable contradictions. In other words, he fancies that God is not perfect, because he has not embodied an absurdity in the creature. If God, he asks, is perfect, why did he not render virtue possible, and vice impossible? Why did he not create moral agents, and yet deny to them the attributes of moral agents? Why did he not give his creatures the power to do evil, and yet withhold this power from them? He might just as well have demanded, why he did not create matter without dimensions, and circles without the properties of a circle. Poor man! he cannot see the wisdom and power of God manifested in the world, because it is not filled with moral agents which are not moral agents, and with glorious realities that are mere empty shadows! If the above remarks be just, then the great question, why has God permitted sin, which has exercised the ingenuity of man in all ages, is a most idle and insignificant inquiry. The only real question is, why he created such beings as men at all; and not why he created them, and then permitted them to sin. The first question is easily answered. The second, though often propounded, seems to be a most unmeaning question. It is unmeaning, because it seeks to ascertain the _reason why_ God has permitted a thing, which, in reality, he has not permitted at all. Having created a world of moral agents, that is, a world endowed with a power to sin, it was impossible for him to prevent sin, so long as they retained this power, or, in other words, so long as they continued to exist as moral agents. A universe of such agents given, its liability to sin is not a matter for the will of God to permit; this is a necessary consequence from the nature of moral agents. He could no more deny peccability to such creatures than he could deny the properties of the circle to a circle; and if he could not prevent such a thing, it is surely very absurd to ask why he permitted it.