dread result of the primal curse
and disobedience to be regarded as the Adversary's triumph? Had this
Accuser--the Saxon word is Devil--had this Slanderer of God's attribute
then really beaten Good? or was not rather all this swarming sin an
awful vindication to the universe of the great need-be that God
unceasingly must hold his creature up lest he fall, and that out of Him
is neither strength nor wisdom? Was Deity, either in Adam's case or
this, baffled--nor rather justified? Was it an experiment which had
really failed; nor rather one which, by its very seeming failure, proved
the point in question, the misery of creatures when separate from God?
Yea, the evil one was being beaten down beneath his very trophies in sad
Tarpeian triumph: through conquest and his children's sins heightening
his own misery.

Let us now advert to a few of the anterior probabilities affecting this
evil earth's catastrophe. It is not competent to us to trench upon such
ulterior views as are contained in the idea of types relatively to
anti-types. Neither will we take the fanciful or poetical aspect of
coming calamity, that earth, befouled with guilt, was likely to be
washed clean by water. It is better to ask, as more relevant, in what
other way more benevolent than drowning could, short of miracle, the
race be made extinct? They were all to die in their sins, and swell in
another sphere the miserable hosts of Satan. There was no hope for them,
for there was no repentance. It was infinitely probable that God's
long-suffering had worn out every reasonable effort for their
restoration. They were then to die; but how?--in the least painful
manner possible. Intestine wars, fevers, famines, a general burning-up
of earth and all its millions, were any of these preferable sorts of
death to that caused by the gradual rise of water, with hope of life
accorded still even to the last gurgle? Assuredly, if "the tender
mercies of the wicked are cruel," the judgments of the Good one are
tempered well with mercy.

Moreover, in the midst of this universal slaughter there was one good
seed to be preserved: and, as Heaven never works a miracle where common
cause will suit the present purpose, it would have been inconsistent to
have extirpated the wicked by any such means as must demonstrate the
good to have been saved only by super-human agency.

The considerations of humanity, and of the divine less-intervention, add
that of the natural and easy agency o