nconceivable. Can anything like a clear line be drawn
between good and evil?

Effort and resistance to temptation may seem necessary ingredients in
the formation of a virtuous character. So far we may think we have the
clue. But what is to be said of the myriads of cases in which virtuous
effort seems to be morally impossible; in the case, for instance, of
barbarous or corrupt and depraved tribes or nations in which general
example is evil? What is to be said of deaths in infancy, when there
has been no time for character to be formed? To suppose that the
Creator could not have helped it, that this was his only way to the
production of virtuous beings, is to deny his omnipotence. A Satan
with horns and hoofs, struggling against the power of good, used to be
the solution of the problem, but belongs to the simple religion of the
past.

A plan of which we are ignorant, but of which the end will be good, is
apparently our only explanation of the mystery. The earth is
beautiful; we have human society with all its interests; we have
friendship, love, and marriage; we have art and music. We must trust
that the power which will determine the future reveals itself in these.

The belief that man has an immortal soul inserted into a mortal body
from which, being, as Bishop Butler phrases it, "indiscerptible," it is
parted at death, has become untenable. We know that man is one; that
all grows and develops together. Imagination cannot picture a
disembodied soul. The spiritualist apparitions are always corporeal.

Free will surely we unquestionably have. Necessarianism seems to
assume that in action there is only one element, motive. But
reflection seems to show that there are two elements, motive and will;
and of this duality we seem to be sensible when we waver in action or
feel compunction for what we have done. Is it possible to explain
moral repentance or morality at all without assuming the freedom of the
will? Habit may enslave; but to be enslaved is once to have been free.

What is conscience? When we repent morally are we looking only to the
immediate consequences of the act, or are we also looking to the injury
done to our moral nature? If the latter, does it not appear that there
is something in us not material and pointing to a higher life? Much of
us, no doubt, is material. Memory and imagination often act unbidden
by the will; imagination often when we are asleep. We may find a
material element