partial knowledge of their contents, and from the opinions of others. During this time, I had also read several works on the evidences of their authority. This I thought satisfactorily proved; and my difficulties now were with the scriptures themselves. I wondered at the opposite doctrines (as I supposed) which Travers believed. I could not reconcile the attributes of God with his treatment of his creatures. Travers insisted on my writing my objections, and allowing him to answer them in the same way. His reason for this seemed to me very extraordinary.

The enemy of our souls,' said he, magnifies every objection to the Bible. There are but very few that cannot be answered easily, and these few he presents to us as insurmountable, when the truth is, that the difficulty does not lie in revelation, but in want of revelation. No philosophy, no reasoning, no search, has ever accounted for what scripture

has left in darkness with regard to God, or his dealings with men.'

I felt how true this was when I began to write my first difficulty. Yet it was one which, while it retained its influence over my mind, prevented my being able to experience one feeling of love towards God. I wished at times that I had never read the Bible,-that I could dis believe its authenticity. I tried the last, but could not succeed. I shall give you, my dear Father, the difficulty as I stated it, and the answer I received from Tra

vers.

Many of those attributes which the scriptures ascribe to God, and which you, my dear Travers, seem to love so ardently in the supreme Being, such as mercy, compassion, patience, long-suffering with his guilty creatures, are only manifested in consequence of the existence of evil, which must exist by the permission of that eternal and all-power

1

ful Being, without whose permission nothing can exist, or rather, I should say, can cease to be such as he created it; for Pevil is not itself the existence of a new thing, but the disorder, or disorganization of what was created perfect. Who then produced this disorder? If you answer, Satan; I must ask, was not he, too, originally a pure, perfect, faultless spirit, the creation of a perfect Being, to whose nature evil was abhorrent? What indeed is evil, but that which is contrary to the nature and will of him who has named himself, the Holy One, truth, light, love.' Whence, then, the first taint of evil, the first evil thought in the first spirit who fell? Can you, Travers, answer this question! Or can you, while it is unanswered, bend your -heart and reason in humble adoration of Vattributes called forth by an extent of misery too desolating and tremendous to endure contemplation, all which might Towoq als bus ice 2lt to mujer nitq

6

have been prevented, must be permitted, es by the Being you adores ved selv 9da089q aid to 998mi 23qza su

mid tug of role aid to agrid of que grit Answer, buson-,tity of ilu -i dosti sa bit and morÍ 7KWD 2269 fi Yes, Howard, I can bend my heart, and every power of my soul, in adoring gratitude for the manifestation of those t attributes, when I contemplate them in? the crucified Son of God. There I seent: the proof that God is holy, and that God is love. Insee la proof of them truth of what is revealed, so ample, sop overpowering, that I can at his cross be lieve, that he who so loved the world, as to give his own Son to suffer in the places of every one who will accept of pardon through his blood, does most assuredly" abhor evil, and has so constituted all his u moral creatures, as to make misery its inevitable consequence.. consequence. There Lalsody see, that he so loves us, blinded, cor

T

rupted as we are by this abhorred taint,

as to lay all thẻ sufferings we must other an wise have endured,on his own! Son, 'the express image of his person, the brightness of his glory.' He put him to grief,—would not suffer the cup to pass away from him till he drank it,—till he endured all that is comprehended in the felt wrath of God, the withdrawing of his presence from the soul,the being forsaken of him. When I contemplate this manifestation of God's abhorrence of evil, and of his pity and compassion for guilty creatures, I can, without your question being answered, rest satisfied, nay pleased, to wait till that day, when my faith insall his revealed attributes shall be swallowed up in vision; and those apparent inconsistencies reconciled, which he has at present withheld from us the power of reconciling. Nay, I can even thank God for the deep secrecy

which he has involved the answer to your question. Had the enemy of our souls been permitted to place before us that