“God ordained it in this way: He did not decree that Jones should kill Smith without any connection with other events. But He fore-saw that certain causes would operate so as to culminate in the murder; yet He permitted those causes to operate, for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. The difficulty is, we cannot see things as God does. We consider it as an awful calamity that Jones should kill Smith, when we have no idea what the divine purpose is. The murder was not an isolated circumstance, but it was the legitimate result of certain other causes which the two men themselves might have controlled, so far as their own free agency was concerned. But Jones had murder in his heart, and the Lord permitted him to follow his own inclinations. Now, God fore-saw, from all eternity, that this murder would grow out of other events, yet He determined to permit those events to occur, and in that sense He ordained it. But you, surely, cannot infer that God is the author of the murder. God is not the author of men’s actions. He did not force Jones to kill Smith. But let me ask you a question. Suppose lightning had killed Mr. Smith, instead of Jones’ knife, would you say that God had anything to do with it, or was it a pure accident?”
“It was not an accident,” said Ernest, “in the usual acceptation of the word.”
“You are correct, because with God there is no accident. Well, if the Lord chose to destroy Smith by a knife in the hands of a wicked man, instead of lightning, what right have we to cry out, ‘horrible! horrible!’ God sends diseases upon men, and innocent babes and women, and good men are swept off by thousands; shall we accuse the Lord of cruelty and injustice?”
“No; He has the right to do that.”
“And so He has the right to remove His creatures in whatever way He may please,” said the Doctor. “I firmly believe that God ordained the present war—not arbitrarily, though,—not as an isolated circumstance; but it has legitimately grown out of causes that have been working together for years. Men, goaded on to desperation by their own evil passions, meet upon the field and destroy each other. They are conscious that they are acting as free agents. We have no more right then, to impeach divine goodness for permitting this wholesale butchery, than we have for allowing Jones to kill Smith, or some disease to destroy the innocent babe. We make a great mistake by supposing that there ought not to be violent deaths; they are the necessary concomitants of sin, and must ever result from the inexorable law of cause and effect.”
“Well,” said Ernest, “if it was ordained that Jones should kill Smith, Jones ought not to be punished for the deed.”
“My dear Captain,” said the Doctor good humoredly, “a lawyer like you, ought not to quibble in that way. The mere fact that God permits crime does not destroy human responsibility. You might just as well say that Judas ought not to have been punished for betraying the Savior. Undoubtedly it was ordained that he should perform that deed of shame; because it was foretold centuries before our Lord’s advent.”
Ernest knew not what reply to make. The Doctor had answered his objections. So he turned the leaves of the book, and said:
“Here is another passage which seems to me to need explanation.”
“What is it?”