This aspect of the Divine government, which Dr. Whedon has felicitously styled "the equation of probational advantages," relieves our sadness in view of the moral condition of the world. "The Judge of all the earth will do right" in the case of every human soul that has passed through this probationary scene. His omniscient eye can take in at one view all the influences and circumstances, favorable or unfavorable, which have surrounded each individual, and fix the precise amount of responsibility. He will "overlook" the "defect of doubt and taints of blood," the faults of education and sins of ignorance, and He will make a due allowance for the power of temptation, the trammels of evil associations, and an enfeebled and perverted nature. "He is full of compassion, and his tender mercies are over all his works." "He knows our frame, and He remembers that we are dust." We may safely conjecture that a negro hamlet in Central Africa, however inferior in its temporal moral aspects, may, in its prospect for an eternal destiny, be superior to many an American village. And in the dregs of our large cities there are numbers who are excluded as effectually from the knowledge of the truth as the heathen, and are scarcely developed to the level of responsibility. These may be the least in the kingdom of heaven, but by the law of moral equation they can not be excluded.[560] In every nation under heaven, he that has feared God and wrought righteousness, according to his knowledge and ability, will be "_accepted of God_." The moral government of God secures an infallible and equitable retribution by binding _character_ and _consequence_ in indissoluble bonds, and evolving a reward or a punishment out of that permanent moral state of the soul which has been induced by the free self-determination of man. "Character," says Novalis, "is a completely fashioned will (_vollkommen gebildeter Wille_). It is that ultimate stress and determination of the soul which results from the coherence and complexure of habits, and habit is the result of repeated acts of voluntary choice. From the persistence of habit a fixed disposition and cast of the inner man is evolved which constitutes his _moral individuality_."