ed, all appearance of injustice in Nature will
probably vanish.

If men were indeed as wretched as Mr. Mill describes them to be, and
had no fear of judgment and immortality--which Mr. Mill informs us are
probably but figments of the brain--why should they continue to endure
"the calamity of so long life"?

'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws--
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease.

So men would begin to reason if this dark gospel of despair were ever
to gain currency; but, fortunately, it is only the morbid dream of a
closet philosopher, who fancied the world was upside down because he
could not unriddle it with his logical Rule of Three.

This representation of Nature is not only at variance with facts, but
inconsistent with Mr. Mill's own conclusions, as he reasons from
natural phenomena that the Creator is both wise and beneficent, but
that He is in some way hindered from fully accomplishing His kind
purposes. But if "_there is no evidence whatever for Divine justice_,
and _no shadow of justice_ in the general arrangements of Nature," the
reasonable inference is that its author is a being of infinite
malignity who is in some mysterious manner, for the present, prevented
from wreaking the full measure of his wrath upon mankind. From this
horrible thought Mr. Mill recoils, and, giving logic to the winds, he
trusts that

God is love indeed,
And love Creation's final law,
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravin, shrieks against his creed.

In the second essay Mr. Mill undertakes to prove the uselessness and
harmfulness of supernatural religion both to society and individuals,
and the sufficiency of human authority, of education and public
opinion to accomplish all the beneficial results usually accredited to
faith in a Divine Being. "Religion," he says, "by its intrinsic force,
... without the sanction superadded by public opinion, ... has never,
save in exceptional characters or in peculiar moods of mind, exercised
a very potent influence after the time had gone by in which Divine
agency was supposed habitually to employ temporal rewards and
punishments." Whatever application this statement may have to other
religions claiming a divine origin, it is entirely false of
Christianity. In its origin, _it_ certainly held out no temporal
bribes of any character. Its Founder expressly said to His discip