of the greatest geniuses the world has
ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft
of Voltaire.

Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,
Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,
Poor comforters! in your attempts I see
Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee!
O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell!
Ye cry in doleful accents--"All is well!"--
And all things at the great deceit rebel.
Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,
Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare.
The gloomy truth admits of no disguise--
Evil is on the earth![172]

For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney.
Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we
are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of
difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet:

Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,
Came evil from thy forming hand,
That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand
Aghast before the sight abhorred?

And how can deeds so hideous glare
Beneath the beams of holy light,
That on the lips of hapless wight
Dies at their view the trembling prayer?

Why do the many parts agree
So scantly in thy work sublime?
And what is pestilence, or crime,
Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?[173]

We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this
argument, namely,--The presence of evil in the world is not compatible
with the idea of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all its
force. And what is the answer? Simply this, that God did not create
evil. It was not He who brought crime into the world. He created
liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in
rebellion against the law of its being. I borrow from Jean-Jacques
Rousseau the development of this thought. "If man," says he, "is a free
agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely enters not into
the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it. The
Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty
which He gives him. He has made him free in order that he may do not
evil but good by choice. To murmur because God does not hinder him from
doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature,
attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and
gave him