t
guides us through the pathless wilderness, and the only plan upon which
this world could possibly have been formed, or upon which its history
can be explained."

This world was not formed upon a plan of unconditioned happiness,
because it is overspread with miseries. Neither was it formed upon a
plan of unconditioned misery, for there are many joys interspersed
throughout the whole. It was not formed for the unconditional existence
of both vice and virtue, for that is no plan at all, the two elements
being, as we know, destructive of each other. By the way, in this very
fact we find the grand necessity for the remedial scheme.

The mixture of vice and virtue, of happiness and misery, is a necessary
result of a state of probation, trials and sufferings consequent upon
offending or violating the will of heaven.

The doctrine of the religion of Christ, with its ultimate object and its
ideas of God and man, of the present and the future life, and of the
relations which these all bear to each other, was and is wholly unheard
of until you come to the teachings of Christ. No other religion ever
drew such pictures of the worthlessness of earthly-mindedness and of
living merely for this present world. And no other ever set out such
beautiful, lively and glorious pictures of heavenly-mindedness, along
with the joys of a future world, nor such pictures of victory over death
and the grave, nor of the last judgment, nor of the triumphs of the
redeemed in that tremendous day. The personal character of the great
author, Christ, is as new and peculiar to this religion as anything else
that we can possibly name--"He spake as never man spake."

He is the only founder of a religion which is "unconnected with all
human policy and government," and, as such, should not be prostituted to
any mere worldly purposes whatever. Numa, Mohammed, and even Moses,
blended their religious institutions with their civil, and by such means
controlled their adherents. Christ neither exercised nor accepted such
power. He rejected every motive which controlled other leaders, and
chose those which others avoided. Power, honor, riches and pleasure were
alike disregarded. He seemed to court poverty, sufferings and death.

Many impostors and enthusiasts have tried to impose upon the world with
pretended communications from the world of spirits--some of them have
died rather than recant; but no history is found to show one who made
his own sufferings and de