"I know not whether he would deny them or not," said Harrington; "but they are found in great abundance in the world notwithstanding, and this is my difficulty. If Mr. Newman were the creator of the universe, no question, none of these contradictions between 'intuitions' within, and stubborn 'facts' without, would be found. He has created a God after his own mind; if he could but have created a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been relieved from all our perplexities. But, unhappily, we find in it, as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings. Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that God should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet does not God do still more startling things every day of our lives, and which appear less startling only because we are familiar with them,—at least, if we believe that the elements, pestilence, famine, in a word, destruction in all its forms, really fulfil his bidding? Is there any difference in the world between the cases, except that the terrible phenomena which we find it impossible to account for are on an infinitely larger scale, and in duration as ancient as the world? that they have, in fact, been going on for thousands of weary years, and for aught you or I can tell, and as Mr. Newman seems to think probable, for millions of years? Does not a pestilence or a famine send thousands of the guilty and the innocent alike—nay, thousands of those who know not their right hand from their left—to one common destruction? Does not God (if you suppose it his doing) swallow up whole cities by earthquake, or overwhelm them with volcanic fires? I say, is there any difference between the cases, except that the victims are very rarely so wicked as the Canaanites are said to have been, and that God in the one case himself does the very things which he commissions men to do in the other? Now, if the thing be wrong, I, for one, shall never think it less wrong to do it one's self than to do it by proxy."
"But," said Fellowes, rather warmly, for he felt rather restive at this part of Harrington's discourse, "it is absurd to compare such sovereign acts of inexplicable will on the part of God with his command to a being so constituted as man to perform them."
"Absurd be it," said Harrington, "only be so kind as to show it to be so, instead of saying so. I maintain that the one class of facts are just as 'inexplicable,' as you call it, as the other, and only appear otherwise because, in the one case, we daily see them, have become accustomed to them and, what is more than all, cannot deny them,—which last we can so promptly do in the other case; for Moses is not here to contradict us. But I rather think, that a being constituted morally and intellectually like us, who had never known any but a world of happiness, would just as promptly deny that God could ever perform such feats as are daily performed in this world! I repeat, that, if for some reasons ('inexplicable,' I grant you) God does not mind doing such things, he is not likely to hesitate to enjoin them; for reasons perhaps equally inexplicable. I say perhaps; for, as I compare such an event as the earthquake in Lisbon, or the plague in London, with the extermination of the Canaanites, I solemnly assure you that I find a greater difficulty, as far as my 'intuitions' go, in supposing the former event to have been effected by a divine agency than the latter. If we take the Scripture history, we must at least allow that the race thus doomed had long tried the patience of Heaven by their flagrant impiety and unnatural vices; that they had become a centre and a source (as we sometimes see collections of men to be) of moral pestilence, in the vicinage of which it was unsafe for men to dwell; that, as the Scriptures say (whether truly or falsely, I do not inquire), they had, filled up the measure of their iniquities.' Let this be supposed as fictitious as you please, still the whole proceeding is represented as a solemn judicial one; and supposing the events to have occurred just as they are narrated, it positively seems to me much less difficult to suppose them to harmonize with the character of a just and even beneficent being, than those wholesale butcheries which have desolated the world, in every hour of its long history, without any discrimination whatever of innocence or guilty; which, if they have inflicted unspeakable miseries on the immediate victims, have produced probably as much or more in the agony of the myriad myriads of hearts which have bled or broken in unavailing sorrow over the sufferings they could not relieve. Such things (I speak now only of what man has not in any sense inflicted) are, in your view, as undeniably the work of God as is the extermination of the Canaanites according to the Bible. Why, if God does not mind doing such things, are we to suppose that he minds on some occasions ordering them to be done; unless we suppose that man—delicate creature!—has more refined intuitions of right and wrong, and knows better what they are, than God himself? Now, Mr. Newman and you affirm, that to suppose God should have enjoined the destruction of the Canaanites is a contradiction of our moral intuitions; and that for this and similar reasons you cannot believe the Bible to be the word of God. I answer, that the things I have mentioned are in still more glaring contradiction to such 'intuitions'; than which none appears to me more clear than this,—that the morally innocent ought not to suffer; and I therefore doubt whether the above phenomena are the work of God. I must refuse, on the very same principle on which Mr. Newman disallows the Bible to be a true revelation of such a Being, to allow this universe to be so. In equally glaring inconsistency is the entire administration of this lower world with what appears to me a first principle of moral rectitude,—namely, that he who suffers a wrong to be inflicted on another, when he can prevent it, is responsible for the wrong itself. The whole world is full of such instances."
"Ay," said Fellowes, eagerly, "we ought to prevent a wrong, provided we have the right as well as the power to interfere."
"I am supposing that we have the right as well as the power; as, for example, to prevent a man from murdering his neighbor, or a thief from entering his dwelling. There are, no doubt, many acts which, from our very limited right, we should have no business to prevent; as, for example, to prevent a man from getting tipsy at his own table with his own wine. But no such limitation can apply to Him who is supposed to be the Absolute Monarch of the universe; and yet He (according to your view) notoriously does not interpose to prevent the daily commission of the most heinous wrongs and cruelties under which the earth has groaned, and hearts have been breaking, for thousands of years. You will say, perhaps, that in all such instances we must believe that there are some reasons for His conduct, though we cannot guess what they are. Ah! my friend, if you come to believing, you may believe also that the difficulties involved in the Scriptural representations of the Divine character and proceedings are susceptible of a similar solution. If you come to believing, I think the Christian can believe as well as you, and rather more consistently. But let me proceed." He then read on.
It is plain, that, in accordance with our primitive "moral intuitions" (if we have any), we should hold him who had the power to prevent a wrong, and did not use it, as a participator and accomplice in the crime he did not prevent. Applying, therefore, the principles of Mr. Newman, I must refuse to acknowledge such conduct on the part of the Divine Being, and to say, that such things are not done by him. If I may trust my whisper of him, derived from analogous moral qualities in myself, I must believe that an administration which so ruthlessly permits these things is not his work; but that his power, wisdom, and goodness have been thwarted, baffled, and overmastered by some "omnipotent devil," to use Mr. Newman's expression; if it be, then that whisper of him cannot be trusted: the heathen was right, "Sunt superis sua jura." In other words, I feel that I must become an Atheist, a Pantheist, a Manichaean, or—what I am—a sceptic.
All these perplexities are increased when I trace them up to that profound mystery in which they all originate,—I mean the permission of physical and moral evil. Either evil could have been prevented or not; if it could, its immense and horrible prevalence is at war with the intuition already referred to; if it could not, who shall prove it? I am no more able to contradict the intuitions of the intellect than those of the conscience; and if any thing can be called a contradiction of the former, it is to be told that a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and beneficence could not construct a world without an immensity of evil in it; no reason being assignable or even imaginable for such a proposition, except the fact that such a world has not been created! I am therefore compelled to doubt, whether such a universe be really the fabrication of such a Being. It is impossible to express my astonishment at the ease with which Mr. Newman disposes of the difficulties connected with the origin and perpetuation of physical and moral evil. His arguments are just two of the most hackneyed commonplaces with which metaphysicians have attempted to evade these stupendous difficulties; and it is not too much to say, that there never was a man who was not resolved that his theory must stand, who pretended to attach any importance to them. They are most gratuitously assumed, and even then are most trivial alleviations; a mere plaster of brown paper for a deep-seated cancer.
I certainly know of no other man who has stood so unabashed in front of these awful forms. One almost envies him the truly childlike faith with which he waves his hand to these Alps, and says, "Be ye removed, and east into the sea"; but the feeling is exchanged for another, when he seems to rub his eyes, and exclaim, "Presto, they are gone sure enough!" while you still feel that you stand far within the circumference of their awful shadows.
As to physical evil, Mr. Newman tells us, "Here may be sufficient to remark, that the difficulty on the Epicurean assumption, that physical case and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that is not true even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers, to which the existing order manifestly tends …… As for susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process for the perfecting of the soul." (Soul, pp. 43, 44.)
This, then, is the fine balm for all the anguish under which the world has been groaning for these thousands of years! But, first, how does suffering tend to the perfection of the whole lower creation? It enfeebles, and at last destroys them, I know; but I am yet to Learn that it is essential to the perfection of animal life. Again, how does it minister to that of man, except he be more than the insect of the day, of which Mr. Newman's theology leaves him in utter doubt? And if he be immortal, how does it operate beneficially except as an instrument of moral improvement? And how rarely (comparatively) do we see that it has that effect! How often is it most prolonged and torturing in those who seem least to need it, and in those who are absolutely as yet incapable of learning from it; or, alas! are too evidently past learning from it! How often do we see, slowly sinking under the protracted agonies of consumption, cancer, or stone, all these various classes of mortals, without our being able to assign, or even conjecture, the slightest reason for such experiments! I acknowledge freely, all, at we can give no reasons for them; but it is to mock miserable humanity to give such reasons as these; doubly to mock it, if men be the ephemeral creatures which Mr. Newman's theology leaves in such doubt: since in that case we see not only (what we see at any rate) that physical evil does not always, nor even in many instances, produce a salutary moral effect, but that it hardly matters whether it does or not; for just as the poor patient may be beginning to be benefited by his discipline, and generally in consequence of it, he is unluckily annihilated; he dies of his medicine! Surely, if physical evil be this grand elixir, never was such a precious balm so improvidently expended. We may well say, only with much more reason, what the Jews said of Mary's box of ointment,—"Why was all this waste?" To be sure it is "given" in abundance "to the poor."