distinction between _right_ and _wrong_. We dare not assume that God, could, by an act of volition, make the _right_ to be the _wrong_, and the _wrong_ to be the _right_--good evil, and evil good! It is absurd to assume that God can do things that are in themselves contradictory. Omnipotent, we know, he is; but such things are not the objects of power, any more than things which _are_ the objects of power, are, in the same sense, the objects of Omniscience. To affirm that he could make the _right_ to be the wrong, is as _false_ as it would be impious to affirm that he _would_ do it, if he could--false, because, if he can, he has not deposited the truth in that great master-work of his hand, the mind of man; for, by the power of the intuition he has given us, we are assured that the idea is in itself a gross absurdity. And if this be not decisive of the question, then neither intuition nor the deductions of intuition are of any authority. Man is the victim of a false guide within! He may “eat and drink, for to-morrow he dies!” There will be no more of him; or, what is worse, he is but a link in a chain of sentient beings who are governed by a cruel fate, which regards not the distinctions of _right_ and _wrong_; and he may be the sport of wickedness in the world to come, as he has been the victim of deception in this! I think it more than error to reason thus! I think it profane! We may take ground back of this--ground as honorable to God as it is exalting to man and encouraging to his hopes. It is true, that both rectitude and duty, together with liberty, are resolvable into the essential good. Or, in other words, _freedom_, _rectitude_, and _duty_ are the modes of thought in which we conceive of the good as existing in the soul of man, and that they are, each of them, in their distinct nature and harmonious union, the true ideal of the good--the modes of thought, also, in which the intuition of man perceives the good in the case of every moral action which is good. And concerning the good in itself, which is thus in an humble degree perceived by us, it is certainly a reality which is immutable and eternal. God did not make it--nor was it made. It is of the essential nature of God, and eternal. He is the great impersonation of the good. His will, his volitions, in all cases, are but the expressions of this high attribute. His will, therefore, always conforming to the essential good, is a perfect rule of what is right in itself, and proper to be observed by us, as a rule of duty or conduct. Such a rule, it will be seen, is eminently adapted to the wants of humanity; but, at the same time, his will and the good are different realities. The one is an essential quality of his holy nature, and the other is, to a certain extent, an expression of this attribute in the form of volitions. That the will of God did not make the right in itself, will readily appear. Is it to be conceived that there ever was a period in eternity past,