h greater
power or wisdom, for not having increased and multiplied the sources
of enjoyment, or for not having made those pleasures which we have more
exquisitely grateful. No one can be so foolish as to argue that the
Deity is either limited in power, or deficient in goodness, because he
has chosen to create some beings of a less perfect order than others.
The mere negation in the creating of some, indeed of many, nay, of
any conceivable number of desirable attributes, is therefore no proper
evidence of evil design or of limited power in the Creator--it is no
proof of the existence of evil properly so called. But does not this
also erase death from the catalogue of ills? It might well please the
Deity to create a mortal being which, consisting of soul and body, was
only to live upon this earth for a limited number of years. If, when
that time has expired, this being is removed to another and a superior
state of existence, no evil whatever accrues to it from the change;
and all views of the government of this world lead to the important and
consolitary conclusion, that such is the design of the Creator; that he
cannot have bestowed on us minds capable of such expansion and culture
only to be extinguished when they have reached their highest pitch
of improvement; or if this be considered as begging the question by
assuming benevolent design, we cannot easily conceive that while the
mind's force is so little affected by the body's decay, the destruction
or dissolution of the latter should be the extinction of the former. But
that death operates as an evil of the very highest kind in two ways is
obvious; the dread of it often embitters life, and the death of friends
brings to the mind by far its most painful infliction; certainly the
greatest suffering it can undergo without any criminal consciousness of
its own.

For this evil, then--this grievous and admitted evil--how shall we
account? But first let us consider whether it be not unavoidable; not
merely under the present dispensation, and in the existing state of
things; for that is wholly irrelevant to the question which is raised
upon the fitness of this very state of things; but whether it be not a
necessary evil. That man might have been created immortal is not denied;
but if it were the will of the Deity to form a limited being and to
place him upon the earth for only a certain period of time, his death
was the necessary consequence of this determination. Then as to