are not hid from thee: though I be made secretly and fashioned
beneath in the earth, thine eyes did see my substance yet being
unperfect; and in thy book were all my members written, which day
by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. Do I
not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am I not grieved with
them that rise up against thee? Yea, I hate them right sore, as
though they were mine enemies." (Psalm CXXXIX.) There is not a
word of this which we cannot endorse with more significance, as
well as with greater heartiness than those can who look upon God
as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort,
therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of receiving
from these and kindred passages, we intensify rather than not. We
cannot, alas! make pain cease to be pain, nor injustice easy to
bear; but we can show that no pain is bootless, and that there is
a tendency in all injustice to right itself; suffering is not
inflicted wilfully, [sic] as it were by a magician who could have
averted it ; nor is it vain in its results, but unless we are cut
off from God by having dwelt in some place where none of our kind
can know of what has happened to us, it will move God's heart to
redress our grievance, and will tend to the happiness of those
who come after us, even if not to our own.

The moral government of God over the world is exercised through
us, who are his ministers and persons, and a government of this
description is the only one which can be observed as practically
influencing men's conduct. God helps those who help themselves,
because in helping themselves they are helping Him. Again, Vox
Populi vox Dei. The current feeling of our peers is what we
instinctively turn to when we would know whether such and such a
course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul clenches his