might have been hateful in the extreme. Had such a state of things existed, how very clearly we should have inferred the malevolence of the Author of nature! Or if such a state had been witnessed about as often as its opposite, we might reasonably have said that he was indifferent to the happiness of his creatures. Why, then, may we not, with equal reason, infer his benevolence, when we find, in a vast majority of cases,--nay, for aught I know, universally,--that pleasure is superadded to animal enjoyment where it was wholly unnecessary to the perfect operation of nature's laws? The fact is, God has made all nature "beauty to our eye and music to our ear," when it was wholly unnecessary for the perfect operation of her laws; and the inference is irresistible, that he delights in the happiness of his creatures. Nor can the fact that evil exists in the world destroy the force of this argument, unless that evil is so general as to be obviously the design of the Creator in devising and arranging the system of the world. While we admit its existence, we say that it is only incidental, and that pleasure is so often superadded unnecessarily, as to prove happiness to be the design, and evil the exception. The two arguments above presented are the evidence on which Dr. Paley relies to prove the divine benevolence. They are, indeed, as it seems to me, unanswerable. But if I mistake not, they do by no means exhaust the storehouse of nature's proofs of this fundamental principle of natural and revealed religion. I derive a third argument for the predominance of benevolence in the works of nature from the variety of means often provided for the performance of important functions; so that animals and plants can adapt themselves to different circumstances, and prolong their existence. The examples which I have in mind to illustrate this argument are all derived from the organic world. I refer, for instance, to the fact that nearly all our muscles, and many other important organs, as the hands, the feet, the eyes, and the lungs, are in pairs, so that if one meets with an injury, or is destroyed, the other can, to some extent, perform the office of both. The brain has two hemispheres, and one of them may be seriously wounded without destroying the healthy action of the other. But perhaps the most appropriate example is in the blood-vessels, whose inosculations are so numerous that even though large arteries and veins be tied, the blood will find its way through the smaller ones, which ultimately will so enlarge as to keep up the circulation nearly as well as before the injury. And, in fact, almost every one of the large blood-vessels has been tied by the surgeon with little ultimate injury to the patient.