not good in any proper sense of the term. The question then recurs, how came they into existence?
Before undertaking to answer this question on positive grounds, we will make a few farther remarks on the negative side of the subject,—adducing, at the same time, the testimony of Revelation. We have already sought to show, by a brief course of a priori reasoning, that the author and originator of things hurtful and destructive to man, could not be God; that they must have had some other origin. This view we will now seek to confirm, by adducing the plain declarations of Scripture. In the account of the work of creation, in the first Chapter of Genesis, we find, after the description of each portion of the work, the words, "and God saw that it was good;" and at the close of the whole, is the emphatic language, "and God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good." Now, keeping this fact in mind, can we suppose that among the existences of the completed and perfected world, so described, there were such things as abominable alligators, rapacious wolves, and fierce leopards and bears? Are these "good" and "very good?" Can any one suppose that such creatures stalked and crouched, growled and howled in the groves of Eden? Can any one suppose that man in his state of innocence was infested with rats and mice, tarantulas and scorpions? that venomous spiders wove their webs across Adam's window (if he had one), or that ugly, double-bodied wasps flew about his door? that Eve, when she stepped forth into the fresh morning air, to look at her favorite rose, found its leaves covered with vile insects feeding on its life, and caterpillars crawling on its stalk? and, while attentively examining the mishap,
