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SECTION XI.

"metaphysics."

Having now hinted at certain necessities of all being, it becomes our pleasant task to show that, these necessities being admitted, God is doing all for us that we can suggest in our own behalf,—in truth, that reason promises us, through Him, all things but his throne. Assuming now that there can be but one Perfect Being, the harmony of whose reign insists on the eternal docility of all others who shall be favored with existence in the system, we shall find that all our evils are most beautifully good. We shall find that there is no sin against God, nor punishment as such, nor divine wrath in the world—but that all is in love and harmony, and good will to men.

But as we advance to this exposition, the world confronts us with a mountain of metaphysics concerning the will, and the responsibility of man. Not content that the term evil should be synonymous with pain, or that which produces it, and that good should be synonymous with joy and its efficients, all time considered — these being in their conceit very low and brutish admissions—men have conceived a notion of a higher good than pleasure, and a notion that evil is not so great in the pain that comes of it as in the "sin" of violating high law—especially the Scriptural law. Violation of the written law is considered sin in an entirely different sense from that of violation of the unwritten laws. The unwritten laws are of

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