PREFACE.
In the following work, the author has sought to solve some of the great problems of the "mystery of life," under the bright light of the New Dispensation, in which light alone they are solvable. He has endeavored to trace both moral and physical Evil to their true source: to show that the latter is but an effect of the former, and that the former is simply the result of a perversion of man's faculties,—the possibility of which perversion was necessarily implied in his existence as a free and rational being. The origin of the Diseases, which so widely afflict mankind, is also attempted to be shown: the origin, also, of fierce Animals, and of noxious and poisonous Plants and Minerals; the causes, too, of Poverty in social life, of Tyranny in political life, and of Wars between nations. And, everywhere, the great object has been to make it plain that with man himself, and not with the good Creator, lies the responsibility for all these evils.
On the other hand,—in all the uses and beauties of the natural world, in all that is good, true, and happy amongst men both in time and eternity, the presence, the operation, the creating and sustaining power of the same good and wise Being are sought to be
