sequences
will be exactly the same as though I had got wet going out to commit a
burglary or a murder. And when Dr. Martineau talks of the "natural
penalties for guilt," and adds that "sin being there, it would be simply
monstrous that there should be no suffering and would fully justify the
despair which now raises its sickly cry of complaint against the
retributory wretchedness of human transgression" (_Study_ II., p. 106),
the reply is that there are no such things as "_natural_ penalties for
guilt." There are only consequences of actions, and they are the same
whatever be the moral quality of the actions performed. In the same way
that nature may in the course of an earthquake destroy the homes of a
dozen worthy families and leave a gambling hell untouched, so it will in
other directions punish where a man, from good intentions, places
himself in the path of punishment, and refrain from afflicting one whose
selfishness or greed has guarded him against attack. There are natural
consequences of actions, there are no natural penalties for guilt, and
there are no natural rewards for innocence. Rewards and penalties are
the creation of man, and it is only in the form of a figure of speech
that we can apply them to nature.

It is equally idle to speak of pain as a form of discipline. Professor
Sorley says that if the pain in the world can be turned to the increase
of goodness, then its existence offers no insuperable objection to "the
ethical view of reality." So Dr. Martineau says that suffering is "the
moral discipline" through which our nature arrives at its "true
elevation." It is needless to multiply quotations; such statements are
the commonplaces of theistic controversy, and almost any book that one
cares to pick up will supply further illustrations, if they be required.
None can reject them, because no theist can afford to candidly admit
that the world we know offers no justification for his belief. The
belief in the goodness of God, as Canon Green says, is a belief that is
"absolutely fundamental to all religion," and if the facts as we see
them do not support the belief, some apology must be found that will
marry the theory to the fact.

Nevertheless, the belief in the disciplinary power of pain or suffering
is, if not quite illusory, so nearly so that it is useless for the
purpose for which it is brought forward. In the first place, it does not
require very profound study to see that whatever are the lessons t