Samuel.”

“I think you mean,” said Samuel, “that, in order to judge of the wisdom and goodness of God in creating and governing this world, we must know the object he had in view in making such a world.”

“That is my meaning, and I am glad that you understand me so perfectly. If this world were created with no other object than to be the grazing-field for herds of cattle, which see no difference between the beauty of the violet and the dull shapelessness of the cold earth upon which it grows, and never lift their eyes above the horizon, then all the beauty of earth and sky would be useless; there would be no wisdom or goodness in the creation of this beauty. There would be no wisdom or goodness in laying up in store beds of coal, buried deep beneath the surface of the earth, if God designed the world to be inhabited only by savages too rude and ignorant ever to mine it, and turn it to some practical use.

“But let me give you another illustration, which can better be applied to the condition of things in this world. Just in the outskirts of one of our inland cities I once saw a large and elegant building, whether a private dwelling or a public institution I could not at first tell. It stood high and airy, commanding the most pleasing prospect that all the region presented. We will follow a visitor as he goes to examine that noble establishment.

“As he comes nearer, he sees that the edifice is simple and classic in its style and chaste in its architectural adornment. It is a pleasure for the eye to rest upon its graceful symmetry. But in place of the light and graceful fence which he expects to find enclosing its grounds, he sees a stockade strong and high. The janitor turns the heavy key, the rusty bolt flies back, and the visitor enters the enclosure. Within the stockade he finds a portion of the ground laid out with taste and cultivated with choice and beautiful flowers; another part is devoted to the culture of garden vegetables. He finds workshops also for the manufacture of pails and tubs, brooms and mattresses. The visitor is ushered into the mansion itself. He finds everything more than comfortable; the rooms are heated from furnaces below; every part is perfectly ventilated; the windows command a view of the country around which must please the most cultivated eye; a school-room is provided with all needed apparatus for the most thorough instruction. ‘Surely,’ says the visitor, ‘the founder of this institution must have been both wise and good. He must have loved the young in order to study and supply all their needs so completely.’ But some things strike the visitor painfully. The windows are grated with iron, and some of the rooms are almost like prison cells. ‘Can it be possible,’ he thinks within himself, ‘that the young need to be confined by a stockade in so pleasant a place and shut in by grates of iron for the enjoyment of such advantages?’ The master as he teaches his pupils seems as kind and gentle as a mother, yet there is a firmness and authority in his tones and a rigidity in his training, as if his government were kept braced against a mutinous spirit. The means of punishment also are provided, and, when occasion requires, stern chastisement is employed. All this seems to the visitor like an enigma. The institution appears to him like a bundle of contradictions. A father could not have provided a pleasanter home or larger advantages for his children, but fathers do not commonly surround their homes with stockades, and cover their windows with bars of iron, and train their obedient children with a hand of such firm, unyielding force. ‘Pray, sir,’ he says to the master, ‘what is this strange contradictory institution?’ ‘It is the State Reform School,’ the master answers. ‘And who are these lads and young men for whom all this work and wisdom is expended?’ ‘They are those who have taken the first steps in crime, but have not as yet become hardened and fixed in wickedness, and are sent here with the hope of overcoming their vicious propensities and training them to virtue and an honorable manhood.’

“Everything is now made plain. The need of the stockade, and the grated windows, and the rigid government, as well as of the pure air, the garniture of beauty, and the kind loving care, is manifest. It is a place unsuited to a family of obedient children, and equally unsuitable as a place of confinement for confirmed criminals, shut up, not for reform, but for punishment. It is wisely adapted to the work designed to be accomplished, and to no other.

“In like manner, if we would judge of the wisdom and goodness of God in the creation and government of this world, we must understand the use for which the world was designed. Is this plain to you, Ansel, and does it seem reasonable?”

“Yes, sir; I think I understand it, and I can see no objection to the principle. I think even Mr. Hume could find no fault with that. But how shall we know the object for which God made and governs the world?”

“That is the next point to be considered. Perhaps you will tell us what seems to you to be that object? Young people sometimes have thoughts and opinions upon the greatest questions.”

“I have never formed an opinion of my own,” Ansel replied, “but I have always heard it said that God designed to show how perfect and good and beautiful a world he could make. But many things in the world seem to me neither perfect, nor good, nor beautiful.”

“Why, Ansel!” exclaimed Samuel; “the Bible says that ‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.’”

“And, Mr. Wilton,” asked Peter, “does not the Bible say that ‘God created all things for his own glory’?”

“Before answering any of these questions, let me ask Samuel a question. What do you understand to be the meaning of the words you quoted from the last verse of the first chapter of Genesis?—‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.’”

“I suppose it means,” answered Samuel, “that God made everything just as good and beautiful as it can be, so that any change must be a change for the worse. The lecturer last winter said that if men could entirely destroy any one of the most troublesome species of insects, their destruction would be a great loss to the world, and that if a single atom of matter belonging to the earth were annihilated, it might throw the solar system out of balance, so that it would finally be destroyed.”

“I remember,” said Mr. Wilton, “that some lecturer last winter made statements of that kind, and I have heard other people declare that the least possible change in the world would be injurious, if not destructive, to the interests of man, and that the most troublesome beasts and insects and the most loathsome reptiles are necessary to human happiness. Does that seem to you to be true, Samuel?”

“I have always tried to believe it, because I thought I ought to believe it. It has seemed to me to be dishonoring God to believe that he did not make the best possible world.”

“You are right in trying to believe what seems to be right and true, even though difficulties do lie in the way. Difficulties do not by any means show that an opinion is false. We must certainly believe that God made this world perfect for the object which he had in view in making it. But not a few skeptics deny the existence of a good, wise, righteous Creator and Governor, because they have a wrong idea of the end for which the world was created, and, consequently, a wrong idea of that in which its perfection must consist. Let me