It is very questionable whether any human analogy will enable us, even approximately, to fathom what are designated "the designs of Providence." Every example that I can at the present remember given by theologians is bad. Take, for example, the most common one which draws a comparison between God and a father, Ps. ciii. 13, "like as a father piti-eth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" Prov. iii. 12, "Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth;" Heb. xii. 6, 7, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "If ye be without chastisement, whereof all men (are) partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons." These enunciate the idea that God, being the universal father, treats mankind as a judicious parent treats his offspring, and that as a child cannot at all times know why he is punished until many years have passed over his head, so human beings cannot tell, until they reach another world, why they were punished in this. To assist this assertion the text is quoted "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7.) If there be any truth in the analogy, it must follow that all who in this world "endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19), are children of God, whom he is educating for a better world. If that, again, be so, then--when Christians persecuted Mahometans, Romanists burned Protestants, and Spaniards slaughtered Mexicans and Peruvians--it follows that the vanquished, and not the conquerors, were the elect of the Father. But this deduction directly opposes those promises said to be made to the Jews by Jehovah, viz., that victory should be the reward of their piety. As it is a poor system which declares that two opposite results come from the same cause, we must refuse to believe that both victory and defeat are proofs of a Father's love. I am quite aware that some reader may retort that a kind parent may punish one child at the same time that he rewards another. I grant it at once, but that only demonstrates, if it proves anything, that all creatures must be regarded alike as the offspring of the Creator, and that none are favoured peculiarly on the one hand, or are outcasts on the other.