6. Even if we limit our views to this world, but extend them to all our acquaintances, we cannot doubt that the tendencies, though not always the effects, of vice are to misery, and those of virtue to happiness. These tendencies are especially clear if our view embraces a whole life-time, and the clearer the longer the period we embrace. The Psalmist was at first envious at the foolish, when he saw the prosperity of the wicked; but as his views became more comprehensive, and he understood their end, his language was, "How are they brought into desolation as in a moment; they are utterly consumed with terrors." The progressive tendency of vice and virtue to reap each its appropriate harvest is finally illustrated by Bishop Butler, best of all perhaps in his picture of an imaginary kingdom of the good, which would peacefully subvert all others, and fill the earth. Indeed, as soon as we leave what is immediately before our eyes, and glance at the annals of the world, we behold so many manifestations of God, that we may adduce as a sixth proof of Providence the facts of history. The giving and transmission of a revelation, as the Mosaic and the Christian--the raising up of Prophets, Apostles and Defenders of the Faith--the ordination of particular events, such as the Reformation--the more remarkable deliverance noticed in the lives of those devoted to the good of the world, etc., all indicate the wise and benevolent care of God over the human family. But the historical proof of a Providence is perhaps strongest where the wrath of man has been made to praise God, or where efforts to dishonor God have been constrained to do him honor. Testimony in favor of piety has fallen from the impious, and has had a double volume, as coming from the unwilling. They who have fought against the truth have been used by God as instruments of spreading the knowledge of it, awakening an interest in it, or stimulating Christians to purify it from human additions, and to exhibit its power. The scientific researches also with which infidels have wearied themselves to overthrow a revelation have proved at last fatal to their daring scepticisms. Too many histories, like Gibbons', have been written as if there were no God in the heavens, swaying the sceptre of the earth. But a better day is approaching; and it is exhilarating to observe that Alison, the first British historian of the age, writes in the spirit which breathes in the historical books of the Bible, where the free actions of man are represented as inseparably connected with the agency of God. If we may judge of the future by the past, as the scroll of time unrolls, we, or our posterity, and some think glorified spirits in a yet higher degree, shall see more and more plainly the hand of God operating, till every knee shall bow. Judgments, now a great deep, shall become as the light that goeth forth. The tides of ambition and avarice will all be seen to roll in subserviency to the designs of God.