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

by Catharine Esther Beecher

This truth teaches us that "design is evidence of an intelligent cause, and that the nature of a design proves the intention and character of the author."

The works of Nature, both of mind and matter, are full of evidence of design, and from this we infer that the Creator is an intelligent cause.

The infinite variety and extent of creation are evidences of the wonderful power of their Author. The fact that all the contrivances of matter and mind are clearly designed to produce enjoyment, while pain is merely the result of a violation of laws which, if obeyed, would secure only happiness—this is evidence of the benevolence of the Creator.

The skill with which all things are formed and combined to secure the ends designed are proofs of the wisdom of the Creator.

Thus, by aid of the fourth intuitive truth, and the world of mind and matter around us, we obtain the result that the Author of Nature is powerful, benevolent, and wise.

But in regard to the use of the word power, as applied to the Creator, one distinction is important. There are things which are contradictory and impossible in the nature of things, so that no one can conceive of them as possible. Thus, to create and not to create at the same time, or to make a mind that is a free agent and at the same time not a free agent, but controlled in volitions by fixed causation as matter is—these and many other things are contradictions or impossibilities.

Now when we say that the Creator can not do these things, we do not limit his power, for almighty power signifies simply and only a power to do all things that are not contradictions and thus absurdities.

This being premised, we are obliged to infer from the history of our race that the Creator, in regard to the existence of evil, is limited either in power, or in benevolence, or in the nature of things.

We arrive at this conclusion thus: We see that evils and suffering, multitudinous and terrific, do exist, and have existed in all ages. In reference to this, only these suppositions are conceivable: the first is, that the Creator is perfectly benevolent, and that a better system, with all the existing good and none of the evil, is conceivable and possible in the nature of things, yet that he had not the power to produce and sustain it.

The second supposition is, that the Creator has the power to produce and sustain a wiser and better system, in which there shall be all the good and none of the evil in the existing one, and yet that he would not do it. This either involves the supposition of a purely malignant being, who enjoys witnessing needless and awful suffering, and prefers it to happiness, or of one who is, like human beings, of a mixed character, and allows evil to exist when self-denying efforts might prevent it.