It was a matter of extreme surprise to me, to consider, that man being indued with right reason and lovely sentiments, according to the foregoing conditions; and placed between the two opposite attractions of good and evil (if the latter could be called such to a pure sinless being), with an equilibrium, or freedom of choice; and having also the Deity himself as the ultimatum, the infinite fountain of the attractions of goodness, to draw him to virtue, honour, happiness, and heaven! how it should, or could possibly so happen in practice, (as I was forced to own that it did, from my own woeful experience) that mankind, in part at least, should so wonderfully, so unaccountably prefer evil to good; and instead of being, as one would expect, drawn by the powerful and pleasant attractions of the Deity into the divine scale, more and more towards himself, should, on the contrary, be more strongly attracted towards the negative scale of carnal error; and dive as it were to such profound depths in it; plunging down, further and further, until the hour of death! What then could be the wonderfully powerful source and principle of evil, which could thus overcome in man all the demonstrations of the truth of reason, the attractions of the beauty of just and lovely sentiment, and of the Deity himself, the basis and the source of both?

Had man, weak man, all this enormous power and love of evil exclusively and originally in himself? This appeared to me to be rationally and morally impossible; for man was evidently a point in the centre, between two opposite attractions, and did not (I supposed) stir, until he was first acted upon, from one side or the other. There were indeed at present, as I well knew, evil sentiments in man; and there was also, as I was equally convinced, a perverted mode of reasoning; but to imagine that these were implanted by the God of truth, and that he thus fought against himself, was equally absurd and blasphemous; still therefore the principle and origin of evil, whatever it was, which balanced, and sometimes outweighed, the influence of the Deity in our hearts, was wanting to complete the system; and this principle must necessarily be the exact opposite of the Deity in all respects, and by means of its powerful negative attractions * and operations, incessantly maintain the empire of darkness and error in man.

But though I could not find that evil was originally in man, and much less that it could be in the fountain of good, yet as the plain and

* The term negative is not here used in the common acceptation. I do not mean only that it does not attract in truth, but also that it does attract by error and falsehood. My negatives are strictly algebraic.

obvious matter of fact was, that man thus endued with right reason, and good sentiments, and attracted by God through them, did still break through this attraction, and rush wilfully, though gradually, into extreme wickedness, far below the baseness of mere brutal passion, it became evident that man was deserving of proportionately greater punishment. For if a brute was to be annihilated (as I supposed), what, in the course of divine justice, was to befal me and other wicked men ?

This thunder-clap, so close, startled me much, and following up the train of reflections thus introduced, I was forced to see, that annihilation, which I had before allotted to wicked men, as well as to mere brutes, was wholly insufficient and inadequate to balance their wilful corruptions in the scale of perfect justice. The brutes truly, not being endowed with that divine reason and sentiment* bestowed by the Deity on man, were not culpable with knowledge of good and evil, with knowledge of God, and therefore not in justice (I supposed) liable to any thing further than annihilation, after the ends for which they were made should be answered: which ends, I supposed to be chiefly, the instruction of man. But man, the son of

"That was the true light, which lighteth every man "that cometh into the world."-John, i.

God, could not act like a brute, without wilfully rebelling against the light of reason and sentiment, or conscience, and against God, whose witnesses and ambassadors they were; and it therefore became a mathematical or rational truth to my mind, that the punishment of wicked men after death might very possibly, or even probably, be almost eternal, considering the heinousness of their crime.

These speculations made me examine with more earnest attention, and an awakened suspicion, what the great evil principle of negative attraction, this perfect contrast and opposite to God, could be.

In the first place, it was not a mere brutal instinct, but, like the principle of good, was intelligent; for when man committed sin, it was known as sin. Conscience said, this is wicked, this will displease God; still, man persisted to sin, with the eyes of his mind open. Reason often said, the after pain will much exceed the present pleasure. This could not be denied, yet still man persisted to sin! But how could uncorrupt, innocent, sinless man act thus, without a stronger cause, an external evil cause? To do this, appeared quite contradictory, for it brought me back to evil originally in man.

Hence I became by degrees persuaded and convinced of the existence, the personal ex

istence, of the great adversary of God and man, called the devil, whom for many years I had considered as a creature of the imagination only. I was at the same time forced to yield to the conviction, that evil, or sin, was optional as such in the author of it, and therefore could never cease to exist in that author. For God alone could destroy it by force, as I supposed; but his service was optional, from my premises; therefore, eternal justice and truth must eternally punish an eternal, wilful, optional. sin.

From these considerations I was convinced to mathematical demonstration (of reason and faith) not only of the existence of the great adversary of God and man; but also, in the course of perfect justice and truth, of the eternity of his punishment; and lastly, by parity of reasoning, of the eternal punishment of those who resembled him in their wilful impenitence, and final perseverance in sin.

My reception of the above truths was not a little forwarded in my mind, by the study, as before mentioned, of geometrical figures, such as circles, squares, and triangles, with a reference to moral and spiritual truths. I perceived, that, as I had suspected, these figures had a secret and mysterious analogy with metaphysical subjects; and it was not without an emotion of horror and terror, that I seemed