necessarily be at an end, and the study will even cease to be an
improving exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so vast
and incomprehensible an idea that the mind of man must
necessarily be bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the
crude and puerile conceptions which we sometimes form of this
attribute of the Deity, we might imagine that God could call into
being myriads and myriads of existences, all free from pain and
imperfection, all eminent in goodness and wisdom, all capable of
the highest enjoyments, and unnumbered as the points throughout
infinite space. But when from these vain and extravagant dreams
of fancy, we turn our eyes to the book of nature, where alone we
can read God as he is, we see a constant succession of sentient
beings, rising apparently from so many specks of matter, going
through a long and sometimes painful process in this world, but
many of them attaining, ere the termination of it, such high
qualities and powers as seem to indicate their fitness for some
superior state. Ought we not then to correct our crude and
puerile ideas of infinite Power from the contemplation of what we
actually see existing? Can we judge of the Creator but from his
creation? And, unless we wish to exalt the power of God at the
expense of his goodness, ought we not to conclude that even to
the great Creator, almighty as he is, a certain process may be
necessary, a certain time (or at least what appears to us as
time) may be requisite, in order to form beings with those
exalted qualities of mind which will fit them for his high
purposes?

A state of trial seems to imply a previously formed existence
that does not agree with the appearance of man in infancy and
indicates something like suspicion and want of foreknowledge,