To have right notions of the goodness of God, we must conceive of it as wise and rational; as impartial and universal; WE must conceive of the goodness of God as wise and rational. It is not like the kindness of man, which is always accompanied with infirmity, and which is often nothing more than the effect of mere instinct, or some mechanical and involuntary impulse. The goodness of God is, in every case, guided by unerring reason, and operates by the laws of eternal truth. It is not a blind disposition to communicate happiness to all indiscriminately; but only a disposition to proportion happiness to the different degrees of virtue that obtain in the universe. God is pure and perfect reason, and can therefore love that only which is truly lovely. Devoid of passion, and judging by the nature of things, and not by mere sensations, of which he is gloriously incapable, his goodness must be in complete harmony with his perfect intelligence. BUT we must conceive of the goodness of God, as also impartial and universal. It is not unjustly confined to a select few: it is shewn to all without exception, who will cordially receive it. God is no respecter of persons: he has no favourites but those who are friends to truth and righteousness. He is good, and continually doing good, and doing it in the most perfect manner through the boundless regions of the universe. He hath not only created this magnificent earth, and stored it with the riches of his bounty, but also created, (amazing thought!) other and innumerable worlds, and peopled them with an unknown multiplicity of beings, rising one above another, in an endless gradation of still richer endowments and still nobler capacities— and he hath done all this with the glorious view of transfusing his exuberant kindness, and imparting felicity in all its forms.Hence the Scriptures emphatically say there is none good but one, that is God:' -none truly and essentially good: none whose goodness extends itself in an infinite variety of blessings to all capable objects, or who is ever dispensing his favours from the sole principle of free and disinterested benevolence. : BUT we must conceive of the goodness of God, not only as wise and rational, as impartial and universal, but likewise as immutable and eternal. God, who is independent and self-existent, must be always the same: no attribute of his nature can, at any period, be either destroyed or impaired. If goodness then is an attribute of his nature, it must partake of his own durability it can be subject neither to failure nor to change. It has been in divine exercise from eternity, and to all eternity its exercise will continue. Like an overflowing fountain which is ever emitting its streams, and yet never emptied; which is for ever flowing, and yet never either exhausted or diminished; so the Divine Goodness will be diffusing for ever and ever through all space, life, and knowledge, and perfection, and happiness.What a sublime and delightful idea of God! His goodness, like all his other attributes, is wondrous in our eyes: it passeth all knowledge.' SUCH are the ideas which we should en tertain of the Divine Goodness. Let me now endeavour to point out what evidence we have for believing in it. AND, first, the perfect goodness of God appears from the consideration of his perfect intelligence. This argument, though it may be considered as somewhat abstract, is quite intelligible, even to the commonest mind that will bestow upon it any tolerable degree of attention. I hope that the following statement of it will appear, to every one who is capable of judging, sufficiently plain and convincing. THERE is a manifest andimmutable distinction between actions and between characters. Right and wrong are so essentially different that no power can confound their separate natures, and make them unite and absolutely coalesce in one abstract, uniform idea. What is right has a tendency to contribute to general and ultimate happiness, and what is wrong, has a tendency to contribute to general and ultimate misery.In the present case then, the only question is, whether it is better to do good or to do evil :-Whether those actions are preferable which lead to order and felicity, or those which lead to disorder and infelicity: -and whether those characters are more eligible which are benevolent and beneficial, or those which are malevolent and mischievous? A question, which (I presume) must be at once decided by all mankind. For can we hesitate a moment about preferring the former class of actions and characters to that of the latter? We necessarily feel the preference of pleasure to pain: we know that the one, with respect to all sensitive natures, is to be chosen before the other. How is it possible to doubt whether we ought to communicate the greatest possible pleasure to our fellow creatures, when we know that this is absolutely best? Here no reasonable being can have the smallest scruple, though he had not one implanted instinct, but were directed purely and solely by intellectual influence. If then it is true, that there is an immutable distinction between happiness and misery, and consequently between the actions and characters which lead to the one and those which lead to the other, and if every reasonable being must immediately perceive this distinction, it follows, of course, that God who is per E |