surrection. Do children die so often
and so good in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that
they are snatched away from _possible vanities_ seems hardly sound; for
to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their
actual. But I am too unwell for theology.

Such as I am,

I am yours and A.K.'s truly,

C. LAMB.

[1] "Barton's volume of Poems."

LXXXIX.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_August_ 10, 1825.

We shall be soon again at Colebrooke.

Dear B.B.,--You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we
are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to
a letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you and
Anne Knight quietly at Colebrooke Lodge over the matter of your last.
You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series
of Scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly; what I meant to say was, that
one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed
effect than many. Scriptural, devotional topics, admit of infinite
variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and
I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our
Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes, without sense of
weariness.

I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic,
insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of
infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly
spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy, to the survivors, but
still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a
probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child what it would
hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is
secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, etc. If bad, I do not
see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched
away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or
arrest the finger of a pickpurse; but is not the guilt incurred as much
by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off,
and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think
was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence, The very
notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no
need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows
be