Who would complain, then, that he is subject to the evils of this life, since he has been subjected in hope? Everything around us is a type and symbol of our high destiny. All things shadow forth the glory to be revealed in us. The insignificant seed that rots in the earth does not die. It lives, it germinates, it grows, it springs up into the stately plant, and is crowned with beauty. The worm beneath our feet, though seemingly so dead, is, by the secret all-working power of God, undergoing changes to fit it for a higher life. In due time it puts off its form of death, and rises, “like a winged flower,” from the cold earth into a warm region of life and light. In like manner, the bodies we inhabit, wonderfully and fearfully as they are made, are destined to moulder in the grave, and become the food of worms, before they are raised like unto Christ’s glorified body, clothed with power and immortality. Nature itself, with all its teeming forms of beauty, must decay, till “pale concluding winter comes at last, and shuts the scene.” But the scene is closed, and all its magnificence shut in, only that it may open out again, as it were, into all the wonders of a new creation. Even so the human soul, although it be subjected to the powers of darkness for a season, may emerge into the light and blessedness of eternity. Such is the destiny of man; and upon himself, under God, it depends whether this high destiny be fulfilled, or his bright hopes blasted. “I call heaven and earth this day to witness,” saith the Lord, “that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life.” Section VIII. The little, captious spirit of Voltaire, and other atheizing minute philosophers. It will be objected, no doubt, that in the foregoing vindication of the divine holiness, we have taken for granted the Christian scheme of redemption; but it should be remembered, that we do not propose “to justify the ways of God to man” on deistical principles. We are fully persuaded, that if God had merely created the world, and remained satisfied to look down as an idle spectator upon the evils it had brought upon itself, his character and glory would not admit of vindication; and we should not have entered upon so chimerical an enterprise. We have attempted to reconcile the government of the world, as set forth in the system we maintain, and in no other, with the perfections of God; and whoever objects that this cannot be done, is bound, we insist, to take the system as it is in itself, and not as it is mangled and distorted by its adversaries. We freely admit, that if the Christian religion does not furnish the means of such a reconciliation, then we do not possess them, and are necessarily devoted to despair.