instinct of man, than any other. It seems to me that, though it
leaves many dark and sorrowful mysteries all unsolved, yet that it
alleviates the blackest of them, and flings some rays of hope on
them all. It seems to me that it relieves the character and
administration of God from the darkest dishonour; that it delivers
man's position and destiny from the most hopeless despair; that
though it leaves the mystery of the origin of evil, it brings out
into clearest relief the central truths that evil is evil, and sin
and sorrow are not God's will; that it vindicates as something
better than fond imaginings the vague aspirations of the soul for a
fair and holy state; that it establishes, as nothing else will, at
once the love of God and the dignity of man; that it leaves open the
possibility of the final overthrow of that Sin which it treats as an
intrusion and stigmatises as a fall; that it therefore braces for
more vigorous, hopeful conflict against it, and that while but for
it the answer to the despairing question, Hast Thou made all men in
vain? must be either the wailing echo 'In vain,' or the denial that
He has made them at all, there is hope and there is power, and there
is brightness thrown on the character of God and on the fate of man,
by the old belief that God made man upright, and that man made
himself a sinner.

2. _Heaven restores the lost Eden_.

'God is not ashamed to be called their God, _for_ He hath
prepared them a _city_.'

The highest conception we can form of heaven is the reversal of all
the evil of earth, and the completion of its incomplete good: the
sinless purity--the blessed presence of God--the fulfilment of all