{102}
O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
O 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!
It is only when we clearly recognise that man is other than a mere phase or mode of the one Eternal Being; that he has been endowed with individual existence and individual will, and therefore with individual responsibility—and that for the express purpose of realising his highest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the facts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which reaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High, challenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those "helpless pieces of the game He plays," impotent items in that unending spectacle—
Which for the pastime of Eternity
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.
But if it is true that God bestowed freedom upon us because only as free agents could we learn to love and do the right for its own sake; if it is true that the struggle which we have to wage against our lower impulses has the wholly benevolent object of enabling us to achieve the glory of a perfected character, it has also to be borne in mind that under no {103} circumstances can character be conceived otherwise than as the "result" of growth. That is to say, God Himself could not call moral perfection into being ready-made, by a mere fiat, and that for the same reason which precludes omnipotence itself from making two straight lines to enclose a space, i.e., because the idea involves a self-contradiction. So true is this that we read even of our Saviour that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered," and in this manner was "made perfect." Character in its very definition is the result of many deliberate exercises of a free will; and if the evolution of character was an object dearer to God than the highest mechanical or animal perfection, that object could have been secured in no other way than by this particular endowment.
And here we shall also find the reply to the very natural inquiry why God does not, as He might, intervene or frustrate the evil designs of wrong-doers. Why does a good God allow His intentions to be set at defiance by those whom the prophet described as drawing iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope? It would not matter so much, we sometimes bitterly reflect, if the sinner injured only himself by his wickedness; but how often are the innocent made to suffer by the devices of the unscrupulous and selfish! Why, we repeat, this strange non-intervention of the Most High on behalf of His own cause? {104} On this it must be remarked in the first place that those who accept God's transcendence will be careful not to rule out a priori the possibility of such Divine action as, regarded from our point of view, would have to be described as intervention; the question whether such action has ever taken place, is a question of fact, and the view that at particular junctures God has thus actively "intervened" is at any rate capable of being strongly argued. But admitting, as we think we must, that ordinary life does not show any instances of such supernatural interposition—that a reckless financier is allowed to enrich himself by cornering the wheat supply and sending up the price of the people's bread; that a band of reactionaries may arrest the course of reform and plunge a country back into darkness; that a beneficent act of the legislature may be defeated by greedy cunning—must we despair of solving the general problem which such cases suggest?
We think, on the contrary, that the explanation may be legitimately sought in what we conceive to have been the Divine intention in making man free; that intention, the making of character, would obviously suffer defeat by God throwing His weight—if we may use such a phrase—into this scale as against that, furthering here and checking there, for character, as we just said, can only result from the free exercise and interplay of will with will. We may well imagine God's mode of action to {105} resemble that of a human parent who entrusts a growing child with a growing measure of liberty and responsibility, well knowing that in the use of it he will have many a slip and stumble, and occasionally hurt himself; such a parent will carefully refrain from interference, preferring that the child should learn his own lessons from his own mistakes, well knowing that we profit only by the experience for which we ourselves have paid. No one will, of course, pretend that such a reconciliation of the facts of sin with the axiom or intuition of Divine all-goodness is other than incomplete; we merely urge that, having regard to the magnitude and the complexity of the subject it could not be otherwise. A theory, without accounting for all the facts, may be true so far as it goes, correctly indicating the way which, if we could pursue it further, would lead us into more and fuller truth. No doubt, when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away; but pending the advent of a complete explanation, a partial one is not without all value.
Indeed, the very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially relevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge necessarily and immeasurably transcends ours, if He knows more than we, does it not follow {106} with equal certainty that He knows better? Granted that we do not understand how this or that dispensation of Providence fits in with the general belief in His perfect goodness, our failure to understand no more disproves that goodness than the similar failure of a child to comprehend why such and such irksome tasks are imposed upon him by his parent, disproves the wisdom and goodness which prompt the parent's act. The child cannot understand; but where the relations are at all normal he acquiesces, being on general grounds convinced that the parental commands aim at his welfare, and that his parents, after all, know better than he. Is the application so far to seek?
In the second place—turning now from the subject of sin to that of evil generally—it may be worth while to remind ourselves of a fact which seems to be forgotten by some of the impetuous arraigners of the Deity, viz., that, after all, the problem is not a new one, which they have suddenly discovered by dint of superior sagacity. What we mean is this: the problem of evil as such is of anything but an abstruse or remote nature, nor one requiring unusual philosophical penetration to bring to light; on the contrary, pain and sorrow, privation, adversity, death—these are experiences that have come within the cognisance of all. If, then, the facts are neither so remote nor so inconsiderable that men could have simply {107} forgotten to take them into account in framing their estimates of the Divine character, how is it, we ask, that they have arrived at and clung to the belief in the benevolence of God at all? If the proof to the contrary was so overpowering, why, as a matter of fact, has it not overpowered them? Why should an unknown Hebrew singer have given expression to this extraordinary sentiment, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"—and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a keen sensitiveness to evil and suffering of every kind with an unshakeable trust in the lovingkindness of God, we shall scarcely accuse all this cloud of witnesses of having simply drugged themselves and refused to accept the evidence of their own senses. If men and women suffering from anything rather than moral blindness or moral anaesthesia could, and can, nevertheless believe with all their hearts in the Divine Fatherhood, is not such a recurring circumstance significant in itself? {108} Evidently, granting all the facts, more than one reading of the facts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from the world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly proclaimed that God is good; is it an altogether unreasonable hypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of a deeper insight?