Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

A mind organized like our own, with faculties infinitely enlarged, who always has and always will sustain a controlling purpose to act right, is the only idea we can have of an all-perfect Creator.

But on the subject of the perfect action of finite minds it is perceived that reference must always be had to voluntary power and its limitations. We have shown that the implanted susceptibility, called the sense of justice, demands that the rewards and penalties for good and evil have reference to the knowledge and power of a voluntary agent; that is to say, it is contrary to our moral nature voluntarily to inflict penalties for wrong action on a being who either has no power to know what right is, or no power to do it. We revolt from such inflictions with instinctive abhorrence, as unfit and contrary to the design of all things.

So, in forming our judgment of the Creator, when we regard him as perfectly just, the idea implies that he will never voluntarily inflict evil for wrong action on beings who have not the knowledge or power to act right.

Here we are again forced to the assumption of some eternal nature of things independent of the Creator's will, by which ignorant and helpless creatures are exposed to suffering from wrong action when they have no power of any kind to act right.

For we see such suffering actually does exist, and there are but two suppositions possible. The one is, that it results from the Creator's voluntary acts, and the other, that it is inherent in that eternal nature of things which the Creator can no more alter than he can destroy his own necessary and eternal existence.

In judging of the perfect action of finite minds, we are obliged to regard the question in two relations. In the primary relation we have reference to actions which, in all the infinite relations of a vast and eternal system of free agents, are fitted to secure the most possible good with the least possible evil. In this relation, so far as we can judge by experience and reason, no finite being ever did or ever can act perfectly from the first to the last of its volitions. In this relation, every human being is certainly, necessarily, and inevitably imperfect in action.

But when the question of perfection in action simply has reference to the knowledge and power of the voluntary agent, we come to another result. In this relation, any mind acts perfectly when it forms a ruling purpose to feel and act right in all things, when it takes all possible means of learning what is right, and when it actually carries out this purpose, so far as it has knowledge and power.

If a human mind is, as has been shown, perfect in that organization of its powers for which the Creator is responsible, and then forms and carries out such a ruling purpose, it is, so far as we can learn without revelation, as perfect in action as is possible in the nature of things; that is to say, it voluntarily acts to promote the greatest possible good with the least possible evil as entirely as is possible, and as really as does the Creator, who himself is limited by the nature of things.

It is as impossible for a finite mind to act right, when it does not know what right is, as it is for the Eternal Mind to make and sustain a system in which there has been and never will be any wrong action to cause pain to himself and to other minds.

What, then, so far as we can learn without a revelation, is a perfect mind in such a system of things as we find in this world? It is a mind constituted like our own, which has formed a ruling purpose to feel and act right in all things, which takes all possible means in its reach to learn what is right, and which actually carries out this purpose to the extent of its power.