The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-02-25

unity and harmony, In which the creation
runs, or would run, without this abnor-
NAL condition. What can this human
disorder be, but propsgating cause of
disorder ? What thia deformity within,
but soul and body of deformity with
out, in the surroundings OF the field he
occupies?
This is but another statement of the
fact that the final causes of things are
moral; the arrangement being that nat
ural csuses shall react upon all wrong
doing, in retributive diseases, discords,
and pains, to correct and chaetsn the
wrong, which, indeed, is the same thing
as to say that the world was made to
share the fortunes of man, and fall with
him in his fall, and to rise with him when
and as he rises.
This was no doubt the view of the Apos-
tie when he said +: "For the whole crea-
ton groaneth and travaileth in pain to-
gether." Under the same principle the
world Is linked to the destiny of man him.
self; and we are probably to account for
many and widespread tokens of deformity
round US in the visible objects of nature.
Whoever may set his thought to this
kind Of inquiry,l will be amazed by the
constant recurrence of detormities, or
things which lack the beautiessof form.
And after all the tine sentimentalities,
lavisbed by rote and without discrimina-
ton of thought on the works and process
es of nat1re, he will be surprised to find
that the world is not as truly realm of
beauty, as it is Of beauty fecked by in
jury, for in the kingdom of life, most
disgusting and loathsome objects appear,
and crowd the view, too numerous to be
recounted.
The word detormity, which is properly
word OF sight, may be used in its larget
sense, and most inclusive import, to
cover all the ground Of the senses, to.
gether with a whole family of words in
de or dis, that indicate relation of dis
junction-the dis gusts of the taste and
the smell; the dis-esssment or pain of the
sensibilities; the dis-cord and the unme
lodious notes that storm the offended
ear OF music-the manifold braying, cav
ing, screeching, yelling sounds, such as
would be low in a farce, but are issued
still from as many badly voiced pipes in
the great organ Of nature.
And then we have dis tempers, dis-pro-
portions, distortions, disorders, dis-ar-
engagements, answering, all of them, to the
dis-location of mans inward harmony, or
disorder Id some other department of the
natural system, and revealing in that man.
ner the desolating and destroying effects
Of excess, defect and perversion upon the
world. Anything entering into Gods
world, or falling out in it, that is
against the divine government, breaks, of
course, the crystalline order, and how far
the fracture will go, no one can tell.
When, however, we meet any token of
lapse Or disorder, it may not be clear to
US, even after much research and inspec-
ton how it came in. How the thistles
take on their spiny and savage armor;
and how far any ill-infuence from the
normal constitution of the universe
might penetrate the fabric, and poison
the substance,and SO, determine the form
order and growth in the world. no one
can tell; for in scheme of perfect reason,
any violation of wrong travels fast and
far, and no one can guess how far.
But il the geologist, opening the hid
den registers of the world, finds the por-
trait, or even the indisputable analogue
OF a thistle in the solid stone, that is the
end of the inquiry. The substance. then
of what I desire to say on this particular
point is that, without some conviction of
moral and physical evil or devil and
pain following after excese, defect and
perversion, as it's necessary effect, there
could be no such thing as practically
real moral government in the world. And
that such devil and pain do follow with
inevitable certainty, even as all effects
follow after their causes, we perceive and
almost universally admit; for they are
distinguishable in all the four great de-
partments of being-the soul, the body
in society and the world.
And since it is theoretically true that,
in any perfect system of being, the dis
turbance of particle throws the whole
into disorder, we must admit, without
difficulty, and as by intellectual require
ment, that evils most remote, deepest,
widest, and most comprehensive, may be
effects, or inevitable sequents Of physical
or moral disorder.
And on this point, therefore, our faith
should properly be shocked by nothing;
and we shall find that quite all the evils we
meet to be the dynamical effects of excess,
defect, and perversiou, till we penetrate
the pre- sdamite conditions of being, set
ting their types in the registers of the
geologic ages.
I have now traced out the evolution of
physical and moral evil in man and
the world; and it is the offspring of ex.
cess, defect and perversion, and it's name
is Intemperance, and at the present time,
as a personality, as have before proved,
II ia the ANNA aa tho Hahrom Satan tho