go down into hell thou art there also. If I take the wings
of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there
also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say
peradventure the darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned
into day: the darkness and light to thee are both alike. For my reins
are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. My bones are not
hid from thee: though I be made secretly and fashioned beneath in the
earth, thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect; and in thy
book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned when
as yet there was none of them. Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate
thee? and am I not grieved with them that rise up against thee? Yea, I
hate them right sore, as though they were mine enemies." (Psalm
CXXXIX.) There is not a word of this which we cannot endorse with more
significance, as well as with greater heartiness than those can who
look upon God as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort,
therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of receiving from
these and kindred passages, we intensify rather than not. We cannot,
alas! make pain cease to be pain, nor injustice easy to bear; but we
can show that no pain is bootless, and that there is a tendency in all
injustice to right itself; suffering is not inflicted wilfully, [sic] as
it were by a magician who could have averted it; nor is it vain in its
results, but unless we are cut off from God by having dwelt in some
place where none of our kind can know of what has happened to us, it
will move God's heart to redress our grievance, and will tend to the
happiness of those who come after us, even if not to our own.

The moral government of God over the world is exercised through us, who
are his ministers and persons, and a government of this description
is the only one which can be observed as practically influencing
men's conduct. God helps those who help themselves, because in helping
themselves they are helping Him. Again, Vox Populi vox Dei. The current
feeling of our peers is what we instinctively turn to when we would know
whether such and such a course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul
clenches his list of things that the Philippians were to hold fast with
the words, "whatsoever things are of good fame"-that is to say, he falls
back upon an appeal to the educated conscience of his age. Certainly
the wicked do sometimes