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What a heathen would have called "the blind and infamous dispensations of fortune," Christians speak of as the unlikelihoods and inequalities of the providence of God. The facts, however, are not altered, though you may alter their representation This world of ours, in its moral aspects, is not a likely world. Not that even in the absence of a special revelation, still less with this in our hands, it giveth us the idea of terrestrial affairs being left to take their chance; but that there is, on the part of a Superior Power, a design to regulate these affairs so differently from as at times to be the reverse of what might have been expected. Design there is, but it is not in those directions in which we should look for it. It does not appear with what intent men, whether philosophers or theologians, have been so anxious to frame apologies for God's providence; bending the stubborn truths of human history to some theory of their own devising, and using worse for better reasons to support that theory. This hath been called, after Milton, "the justification of the ways of God to man." It is a very supererogatory work. Man need not be more anxious to justify God than God is to justify Himself. God will be justified by and by; but, at present He requireth not us to assist Him by explaining away appearances. "God is love." Believe it always; question it never. You throw a doubt over it the moment you set about proving it. Let us take the facts, and forego the apology. To write books to the sons and daughters of affliction, from comfortable parlours and luxurious drawing rooms, in vindication of the providence of God, is worse than impertinent. No, take the facts of providence as they are. They will do our minds good, not harm, in the contemplation. Men are not to be argued into resignation to God's will; nor are they to be reasoned into affection for His chastisements. All they need to believe is that what happeneth unto them is God's will; then will there be resignation: to see that God doth chastise them; then will they love His chastisements. We do not in any degree oppose this view, by returning to our remark, that this world of ours is an unlikely world. Neither to the righteous nor to the wicked is it such as we should expect it to be. Its order is apparent confusion; its rule a seeming misdirection. God, here and there, appears as though He were opposing Himself; frustrating purposes in one direction, which He appears to be forwarding in another. Look at the victims of trial, at the heirs of suffering, at the children of sorrow, on every side: how capricious, how unaccountable, how incomprehensible, so far as we can judge, the selection! The heaviest burdens laid oftentimes upon the weakest shoulders; the greatest sinners often the slightest sufferers; they who for God have been called to do the most, disabled frequently by their trials from doing aught — powers of usefulness, to our judgment, paralysed for lack of aids which "perish with the using" there; while, yonder, uselessness and incapacity are overwhelmed with means and opportunities. Are these things chances, caprices, accidents? Their seeming to be all these prohibits the supposition of their really being either. We speak of the providence of God as though it were synonymous with momentary interference; whereas, the etymology showeth that it is such a foresight on God's part as to render such interference unnecessary. Considering the case of God's servant Job, though God cleared up this case at the last, — "making Job's righteousness as clear as the light, and his just dealing as the noonday," — to what self-reproaches, to what mistakes of friends, to what hard speeches of foes, during its progress, must it have given rise! Seemed it right, we might ask, to hazard all these for the sake of some spiritual advantage which might accrue to the tried child of God? Hardly. Seemeth it wise for God to "punish those, in the sight of men, whose hope is full of immortality"? "We know not now, we shall know hereafter."

(Alfred Bowen Evans.).

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KJV: I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.

WEB: I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes."