But the greatest historical mystery--the deepest and most complicated enigma of the world, is the permission of evil on the part of God, which can find its explanation and solution only in the unfettered freedom of man, in the destination of the latter for a state of struggle, exposed to the influences of two contending powers, and which commences with the first earthly mission of Adam. This is nothing else but the real and entire exercise,--the divinely ordained trial of the faculty of freedom, imparted to the firstling of the new creation,--the image of God, in the conflict and the victory over temptation, and all hostile spirits. That man only who recognizes the permission of God given to evil in its at first inconceivably wide extent--the whole magnitude of the power permitted to the wicked principle, according to the inscrutable decrees of God, from the curse of Cain--and the sign of that curse--its unimpeded transmission through all the labyrinths of error, and truth grossly disfigured--through all the false religions of Heathenism,--all the ages of extreme moral corruption, and eternally repeated, and ever increasing crime, down to the period when the anti-christian principle--the spirit of evil shall usurp entire dominion of the world; when mankind sufficiently prepared, shall be summoned to the last decisive trial--the last great conflict with the enemy in all the fulness of his power:--that man only we say, is capable of understanding the great phenomena of universal history in their often strange and dark complexity, as far at least as human eye can penetrate into those hidden and mysterious ways of Providence. But he who regards every thing in humanity, and the progress of humanity, in a mere natural or rationalist point of view, and will explain everything by such views; who though perhaps not without a certain instinctive feeling of an all-ruling Providence--a certain pious deference for its secret ways and high designs, yet is devoid of a full knowledge of, and deep insight into, the conduct of Providence--he to whom the power of evil is not clear, evident, and fully intelligible; he will ever rest on the surface of events and historical facts, and satisfied with the outward appearance of things, neither comprehend the meaning of the whole, nor understand the import of any part. But the matter of greatest moment is to watch the Spirit of God, revealing itself in history, enlightening and directing the judgments of men, saving and conducting mankind, and even here below admonishing, judging and chastising nations and generations; to watch this Spirit in its progress through all ages, and discern the fiery marks and traces of its footsteps. This three-fold law of the world--these three mighty principles in the historical progress of mankind--the hidden ways of a Providence delivering and emancipating the human race--next the free-will of man, doomed to a decisive choice in the struggle of life, and every action