“Everything is now made plain. The need of the stockade, and the grated windows, and the rigid government, as well as of the pure air, the garniture of beauty, and the kind loving care, is manifest. It is a place unsuited to a family of obedient children, and equally unsuitable as a place of confinement for confirmed criminals, shut up, not for reform, but for punishment. It is wisely adapted to the work designed to be accomplished, and to no other.
“In like manner, if we would judge of the wisdom and goodness of God in the creation and government of this world, we must understand the use for which the world was designed. Is this plain to you, Ansel, and does it seem reasonable?”
“Yes, sir; I think I understand it, and I can see no objection to the principle. I think even Mr. Hume could find no fault with that. But how shall we know the object for which God made and governs the world?”
“That is the next point to be considered. Perhaps you will tell us what seems to you to be that object? Young people sometimes have thoughts and opinions upon the greatest questions.”
“I have never formed an opinion of my own,” Ansel replied, “but I have always heard it said that God designed to show how perfect and good and beautiful a world he could make. But many things in the world seem to me neither perfect, nor good, nor beautiful.”
“Why, Ansel!” exclaimed Samuel; “the Bible says that ‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.’”
“And, Mr. Wilton,” asked Peter, “does not the Bible say that ‘God created all things for his own glory’?”
“Before answering any of these questions, let me ask Samuel a question. What do you understand to be the meaning of the words you quoted from the last verse of the first chapter of Genesis?—‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.’”
“I suppose it means,” answered Samuel, “that God made everything just as good and beautiful as it can be, so that any change must be a change for the worse. The lecturer last winter said that if men could entirely destroy any one of the most troublesome species of insects, their destruction would be a great loss to the world, and that if a single atom of matter belonging to the earth were annihilated, it might throw the solar system out of balance, so that it would finally be destroyed.”
“I remember,” said Mr. Wilton, “that some lecturer last winter made statements of that kind, and I have heard other people declare that the least possible change in the world would be injurious, if not destructive, to the interests of man, and that the most troublesome beasts and insects and the most loathsome reptiles are necessary to human happiness. Does that seem to you to be true, Samuel?”