But let the argument be rested upon our course of reasoning respecting divine contrivance. The existence of Evil is in no case more apparent than the existence of Disorder seems to be in many things. To go no further than the last example which has been given--the mathematician could perceive the derangement in the planetary orbits, could demonstrate that it must ensue from the mutual action of the heavenly bodies on each other, could calculate its progress with the utmost exactness, could tell with all nicety how much it would alter the forms of the orbits in a given time, could foresee the time when the whole system must be irretrievably destroyed by its operation as a mathematical certainty. Nothing, that we call evil can be much more certainly perceived than this derangement, of itself an evil, certainly a great imperfection, if the system was observed by the mind of man as we regard human works. Yet we now find, from well considering some things which had escaped attention, that the system is absolutely free from derangement; that all the disturbances counterbalance each other; and that the orbits never can either be flattened or bulged out beyond a definite or very inconsiderable quantity. Can any one doubt that there is also a reason for even the small and limited, this regular and temporary derangement? Why it exists at all, or in any the least degree, we as yet know not. But who will presume to doubt that it has a reason which would at once satisfy our minds were it known to us? Nay, who will affirm that the discovery of it may not yet be in reserve for some later and happier age? Then are we not entitled to apply the same reasoning to what at present appears Evil in a system of which, after all we know of it, so much still remains concealed from our view?