every
kind, are in this sense visited on us all. And we derive advantages on
the other hand from the virtues of the good. And it would be a strange
world, if no one could help or hurt another. It is better things are as
they are. The advantages we receive from the good, tend to draw us to
imitate their virtues. The sufferings entailed on us by the bad, tend to
deter us from their vices.

And so it is with parents and children. Children are specially prone to
imitate their parents. If they never suffered from the evil ways of
their parents, they would be in danger of walking in those ways
themselves for ever. When they suffer keenly from their parents'
misdoings, there is ground to hope that they will themselves do better.
I have known persons who were made teetotalers through the sufferings
brought on them by the drunkenness of their fathers. And on the other
hand; the blessings entailed on children by the virtue of their parents,
tend to draw them to goodness. And I have known fathers, who would
venture on evil deeds when they thought only of the suffering they might
bring on themselves, who have been staggered, and have shrunk from their
contemplated crimes, when they have thought of the ruin they might bring
on their children. And where is the good parent who is not more
powerfully stimulated to virtue and piety by thoughts of the blessings
which he may secure thereby to his offspring? The whole arrangement, by
which our conduct is made to entail good or evil on others, and by which
the conduct of others is made to entail good or evil on us, tends to
engage us all more earnestly in the war with evil, and to make us labor
more zealously for the promotion of knowledge and righteousness among
all mankind.

6. Another of my objections to the Bible was based on those passages
which represent God as causing men to do bad deeds. Joseph tells his
brethren, that it was not they, but God, who sent him into Egypt. David
says, 'Let Shimei curse; for God hath bidden him.' Of course, the words
of men like Joseph and David are not always the words of God. But Jesus
Himself speaks of Judas as appointed or destined to his deed of
treachery. What can we make of such passages? Does God make men wicked,
or cause them to sin? We answer, No. How is it then? We answer, What God
does is this: when men have made themselves wicked, He turns their
wickedness to good account, by causing it to show itself in some
particular way rather than in