lived according to the Divine commandments, the earth gave forth its increase, and, in like manner, the flocks and herds; and that when they lived contrary to the commandments, the earth was barren, and, as it is declared, accursed; instead of crops, it produced thorns and briers,—the flocks and herds miscarried, and wild beasts broke in. Here we perceive physical evils directly and immediately flowing from moral evils as effects from their causes: a striking proof of the truth we are seeking to establish—that fierce animals and noxious plants actually had their origin in the bad passions and disordered moral condition of man. How far this may be the case, also, at the present day, it is not; easy to say; but, perhaps, both the famines and pestilences that occasionally prevail among nations, have a closer connection with the moral state of the people, than is commonly imagined.
Tares, or useless and noxious weeds, are directly compared in Scripture to the wicked, as in the parable of the "tares of the field."[1] The Lord, in His explanation of that parable, says "the tares are the children of the wicked one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil;" by this comparison plainly intimating that useless and noxious things in the vegetable kingdom are from an evil origin, and thus are not from the good Creator, and consequently could not have existed in the beginning, but are effects flowing from evil in the moral world. So, when a promise or prophecy is made of a future restoration of the world to a state of innocence and peace, it is said, "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree."[2] Now, if the
