1195. Human lawgivers may enact constitutions which result in practical failure, because they do not foresee the issue. Such failures are ascribed to their deficiency in practical wisdom. But the failure of measures for the production of any result proving it unwise, must demonstrate that it did not originate with an all-wise author; in other words, with the Almighty. 1196. It is manifestly absurd to ascribe to that Being any measures which have failed to effect the ends for which they have been specially devised. Knowing that Mohammed would have more followers than Christ, that the largest portion of mankind would remain pagans, that even in Christendom the Christian religion would be a source of bloody contention and theological hatred, making scarcely any real Christians,—how could it originate with a wise and prescient Deity? 1197. “By their fruits ye shall know them?” It being premised that God is omniscient, all-wise, and omnipotent, can any fruit proceed from that high source which has not proved to answer well the purpose for which it was intended? 1198. The actual morality of Christendom being the inverse of that excessive and impracticable restraint, which Christ enjoined as the object of his mission, must prove that his doctrine could not have originated with a being by whom its failure must have been foreseen. 1199. Arguments such as I have used are met often by referring to the evils, to which all animated nature is subjected, in the way of misery, mutilation, disease, or death. But when the government of the universe is attributed to general laws, it may be inferred that evil results from a want of power to render those laws free from bad consequences. Nothing but such limitation of power, or an indisposition to prevent those evils, can account for their occurrence. But this is widely different from assuming, in the first place, with self-called orthodoxy, that God is omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise, and all-good, and then representing him as resorting to measures for the accomplishment of his ends which are utterly inefficacious. This is accusing the Almighty of acting like an idiot. Can any thing be more preposterous, than that an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, and all-foreseeing Deity should require the services of human missionaries to carry out his will? Would he not at least require that such messengers of his word should first agree as to what that word ought to be? A pagan might remain during his whole life a pagan, should he, before adopting any creed, require that professed Christians, in general, should agree as to the tenets which he should espouse. 1200. Agreeably to the attributes assigned to the Deity by orthodoxy, the state of things which exists in the universe cannot be otherwise than as God wishes it to be, to the falling of a sparrow; so that any change sought by man, beyond the immediate sphere of his necessities, must be an officious interference with God’s providence.