We do say, however, that although God is infinitely willing to secure the existence of universal holiness, to the exclusion of all sin, yet such a thing is not an object of power, and therefore cannot be produced by omnipotence itself. The production of holiness by the application of power is, as we have seen, an absurd and impossible conceit, which may exist in the brain of man, but which can never be embodied in the fair and orderly creation of God. It can no more be realized by the Divine Omnipotence than a mathematical absurdity can be caused to be true.
Hence, we no longer ask why God permits sin. This were to seek a ground and reason of that which has no existence, except in the imagination of man. God does not permit sin. He chooses it not, and he permits it not, as an essential part of the best possible universe. Sin is that which his soul abhors, and which all the perfections of his nature, his infinite power and wisdom, no less than his holiness, are pledged to wipe out from the face of his creation. He does not cause, he does not tolerate sin, on account of its happy effects, or on account of the uses to which it may be turned. The only word he has for such a thing is woe; and the only attitude he bears toward it is one of eternal and inexorable vengeance. All the schemes of men make light of sin; but God is in earnest, infinitely and immutably in earnest, in the purpose to root out and destroy the odious thing, that it may have no place amid the glory of his dominions.
As sin did not originate by his permission, so it does not continue [pg 353] by his sufferance. He permits it, indeed, in that he permits the existence of beings capable of sinning; and he permits the existence of such beings in the very act of permitting the existence of those who are capable of knowing, and loving, and serving him. An infinitely good Being, says M. Bayle, would not have conferred on his creature the fatal power to do evil. But he did not reflect that a power to do good is, ex necessitate rei, a power to do evil. Surely, a good Being would bestow on his creature the power to do good—the power to become like himself, and to partake of the incommunicable blessedness of a holy will. But if he would bestow this, he would certainly confer power to do evil; for the one is identical with the other. And sin has arisen, not from any power conferred for that purpose, but from that which constitutes the brightest element in the sublime structure and glory of the moral world. It arises, not from any imperfection in the work of God, but from that without which it would have been infinitely less than perfect.
“All divines admit,” says Bayle, “that God can infallibly produce a good act of the will in a human soul without depriving it of the use of liberty.”[228] This is no longer admitted. We call it in question. We deny that such an act can be produced, either with or without depriving the soul of liberty. We deny that it can be produced at all: for whatever God may produce in the human soul, this is not, this cannot be, the moral goodness or virtue of the soul in which it is produced. In other words, it is not, and it cannot be, an object of praise or of moral approbation in him in whom it is thus caused to exist. His virtue or moral goodness can exist only by reason, and in case of an exercise of his own will. It can no more be the effect of an extraneous force than two and two can be made equal to five.
In conclusion, the plain truth is, that the actual universe is not in the best of all possible conditions; for we might conceive it to be better than it is. If there were no sin and no suffering, but everywhere a purity and bliss as great as it is possible to conceive, this would be a vast improvement in the actual state of the universe. Such is the magnificent dream of the sceptic; and, as we have seen, it is not without truth and justice that he thus dreams. But with this dream of his, magnificent [pg 354] as it is, there is connected another which is infinitely false: for he imagines that the sublime spectacle of a world without sin, that the beatific vision of a universe robed in stainless splendour might have been realized by the Divine Omnipotence; whereas, this could have been realized only by the universal and continued coöperation of the whole intelligent creation with the grand design of God. On the other hand, the theist, by conceding the error and contesting the truth of the sceptic, has inextricably entangled himself in the toils of the adversary.
The only remaining question which the sceptic has to ask is, that since God might have prevented moral evil by the creation of no beings who he foresaw would sin, why did he create such beings? Why did he not leave all such uncreated, and call into existence only such as he foreknew would obey his law, and become like himself in purity and bliss? This question has been fully answered both from reason and revelation. We have shown that the highest good of the universe required the creation of such beings. We have shown that it is by his dealings with the sinner that the foundation of his spiritual empire is secured, and its boundaries enlarged. In particular, we have shown, from revelation, that it is by the redemption of a fallen world that all unfallen worlds are preserved in their allegiance to his throne, and kept warm in the bosom of his blessedness.
If the sceptic should complain that this is to meet him, not with weapons drawn from the armory of reason, but from that of revelation, our reply is at hand: he has no longer anything left to be met. His argument, which assumes that a Being of infinite power could easily cause holiness to exist, has been shown to be false. This very assumption, this major premiss, which has been so long conceded to him, has been taken out of his hands, and demolished. Hence, we do not oppose the shield of faith to his argument; we hold it in triumph over his exploded sophism. We merely recall our faith, and exult in the divine glory which it so magnificently brings to view, and against which his once blind and blundering reason has now no more to say.