sin and of pain. From the point of view of perfect knowledge, these
things might turn out to be just as unmeaning as for God to change the
past. The popular idea of Omnipotence is one which really does not
bear looking into. If we supposed the world {83} to contain no evil at
all, still there would be in it a definite amount of good. Twice such
a world would be twice as good. Why is there not twice that amount of
good? A being who deliberately created only a good world of limited
quantity--a definite number of spirits (for instance) enjoying so much
pleasure and so much virtue--when he could have created twice that
number of spirits, and consequently twice that amount of good, would
not be perfectly good or loving. And so on _ad infinitum_, no matter
how much good you suppose him to have created. The only sense which we
can intelligibly give to the idea of a divine Omnipotence is this--that
God possesses all the power there is, that He can do all things that
are in their own nature possible.[5]

But there is a more formidable objection which I have yet to meet. It
has been urged by certain Philosophers of great eminence that, if we
suppose God not to be unlimited in power, we have no guarantee that the
world is even good on the whole; we should not be authorized to infer
anything as to a future life or the ultimate destiny of Humanity from
the fact of God's goodness. A limited God might be a defeated God. I
admit the difficulty. This is the 'greatest wave' of all in the
theistic {84} argument. In reply, I would simply appeal to the reasons
which I have given for supposing that the world is really willed by
God. A rational being does not will evil except as a means to a
greater good. If God be rational, we have a right to suppose that the
world must contain more good than evil, or it would not be willed at
all. A being who was obliged to create a world which did not seem to
him good would be a blind force, as force is understood by the pure
Materialist, not a rational Will. That much we have a right to claim
as a matter of strict Logic; and that would to my own mind be a
sufficient reason for assuming that, at least for the higher order of
spirits, such a life as ours must be intended as the preface to a
better life than this. But I should go further. To me it appears that
such evils as sin and pain are so enormously worse than the mere
absence of good, that I could not regard as rational a Universe in