Thou wilt not with Predestin’d Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
But even more strongly he presents the case of God against man, and man against God, for all the crimes and miseries and sufferings of the world. It would doubtless be difficult in all the literature of the earth to find a juster, bolder statement of the old question of the responsibility for sin. To some minds, this strong expression may seem like blasphemy, but it is manly and courageous, logical and just.
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make
And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake;
For all the Sin wherewith the face of Man
Is blacken’d—Man’s forgiveness give—and take!
This is not the cringing prayer of the coward, who asks God’s forgiveness to appease his wrath, but the utterance of a noble soul, who asks forgiveness for the shortcomings of his life, and at the same time pardons his Maker for creating him as he did. The world has heard much of man’s duty to God, of the responsibility which the unconsulted, fragile children of a day owe to the power that is responsible for all. It is time we heard more of the duty of God to man; the responsibility of the Creator for making “conscious something” out of unthinking, unfeeling clay.
“Oh, many a cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!”