even with the possibility, or, even, to His foreknowledge, the certainty, that some would abuse those powers to their own injury and unhappiness. For what was the picture presented, on the other side? We cannot see, as the Divine Mind sees, nor have any but a most remote conception of the glorious eternity that stands pictured before His view. But even we can see enough to pronounce with certainty on the wisdom of that decision; for He Himself, in His revealed Word, has given us glimpses of the magnificent future that yet awaits the race of man even on this earth—not to speak of the eternal blessedness of the good in heaven. After wandering, for the first few thousand years, through a dark valley into which they early descended. He saw that mankind would at length emerge, warned, instructed, and purified by that hard experience; and, ascending by a gradual activity, would come at length to a glorious mountain-top, as it were, of light, love, and happiness, on which they would dwell for ever; or rather, on which they would go forward, still and ever ascending, from point to point and from peak to peak, making a perpetual and ever nearer approach to the Most High Himself;—receiving more and more of His wisdom, more and more of His love, and with these, higher and higher joys,—coming continually into a more perfect image and likeness of God, their Creator. Thus would earth become, what it was meant to be, a lower heaven: and then would all the "former troubles be forgotten, and no more come into mind." The human race, reformed and regenerated, would then look back upon the dark periods of its early history, as a wise old man looks back upon the trials of his youth,—which were to him the means of experience, warning, and
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