lived in this; or to have seen the individuals of the species, instead of dying, pass to heaven by a sensible translation.  He could have presented a separate miracle to each man’s senses.  He could have established a standing miracle.  He could have caused miracles to be wrought in every different age and country.  These and many more methods, which we may imagine if we once give loose to our imaginations, are, so far as we can judge, all practicable.

The question therefore is, not whether Christianity possesses the highest possible degree of evidence, but whether the not having more evidence be a sufficient reason for rejecting that which we have.

Now there appears to be no fairer method of judging concerning any dispensation which is alleged to come from God, when question is made whether such a dispensation could come from God or not, than by comparing it with other things which are acknowledged to proceed from the same counsel, and to be produced by the same agency.  If the dispensation in question labour under no defects but what apparently belong to other dispensations, these seeming defects do not justify us in setting aside the proofs which are offered of its authenticity, if they be otherwise entitled to credit.

Throughout that order then of nature, of which God is the author, what we find is a system of beneficence:  we are seldom or never able to make out a system of optimism.  I mean, that there are few cases in which, if we permit ourselves to range in possibilities, we cannot suppose something more perfect, and, more unobjectionable, than what we see.  The rain which descends from heaven is confessedly amongst the contrivances of the Creator for the sustentation of the animals and vegetables which subsist upon the surface of the earth.  Yet how partially:  and irregularly is it supplied!  How much of it falls upon sea, where it can be of no use! how often is it wanted where it would be of the greatest!  What tracts of continent are rendered deserts by the scarcity of it!  Or, not to speak of extreme cases, how much sometimes do inhabited countries suffer by its deficiency or delay!—­We could imagine, if to imagine were our business, the matter to be otherwise regulated.  We could imagine showers to fall just where and when they would do good; always seasonable, everywhere sufficient; so distributed as not to leave a field upon the face of the globe scorched by drought or even a plant withering for the lack of moisture.  Yet, does the difference between the real case and the imagined case, or the seeming inferiority of the one to the other, authorise us to say, that the present disposition of the atmosphere is not amongst the productions or the designs of the Deity?  Does it check the inference which we draw from the confessed beneficence of the provision? or does it make us cease to admire the contrivance?  The observation which we have exemplified in the single instance of the rain of heaven may be repeated concerning most of the phenomena