perfect and infinite Order, the Divine Being Himself. There was the difference only of variety: there was not the difference of opposition and contrariety. There was as yet no disorder and no evil. What first introduced disorder, or a perversion of true order, and thus originated evil, we shall by and by inquire: that is not the point immediately before us now. That point is, to show satisfactorily that what is called Evil is simply disorder, (or, more accurately speaking, the effect of disorder); that the constituent particles of the good soul and of the bad, as of the diamond and the charcoal, are essentially the same,—and must be, because there is but one essential substance, namely, God, and what is derived from God. But the order of the two things is different and opposite, and this constitutes the difference between the good and the evil. This great principle, will, when clearly seen and followed out, be found to explain satisfactorily the origin of evil.
Let us proceed, now, to adduce another illustration drawn from nature, which will render still more clear the principle just laid down. There is a strict analogy, it is to be remembered, between the material and the spiritual worlds, since they are derived from the same Creator; and it is from the existance of that analogy, that the laws of the one can be adduced as just illustrations of the laws of the other. Here is the true foundation of figurative writing. The poet pictures to us a flower as an emblem of a pretty thought, and presents delicious fruits as types of good deeds; and we readily admit the illustration, because there is an inward perception of the existence of an analogy between the worlds of matter and of mind. Keeping
