r a finite will not in harmony with itself? Whilst the only
farther perplexity that the passage indicates, is the existence of those
evil conditions by which the finite will, already so weak and wavering,
is yet farther hampered.

Now these difficulties are doubtless quite as great as James Mill
thought they were; but we must observe this, that they are not of the
same kind. They are merely intellectual difficulties. They are not moral
difficulties at all. Mill truly says that they involve a contradiction
in terms. But why? Not, as Mill says, because a wicked God is set up as
the object of moral worship, but because, in spite of all the wickedness
existing, the Author of all existences is affirmed not to be wicked.

Nor, again, is Mill right in saying that this contradiction is due to
'_slovenliness of thought_.' Theology accepts it with its eyes wide
open, making no attempt to explain the inexplicable; and the human will
it treats in the same way. It makes no offer to us to clear up
everything, or to enable thought to put a girdle round the universe. On
the contrary, it proclaims with emphasis that its first axioms are
unthinkable; and its most renowned philosophic motto is, '_I believe
because it is impossible_.'

What shall it say, then, when assailed by the rational moralist? It will
not deny its own condition, but it will show its opponent that his is
really the same. It will show him that, let him give his morality what
base he will, he cannot conceive of things without the same
contradiction in terms. If good be a thing of any spiritual value--if it
be, in other words, what every moral system supposes it to be--that good
can co-exist with evil is just as unthinkable as that God can. The value
of moral good is supposed to lie in this--that by it we are put _en
rapport_ with something that is better than ourselves--some '_stream of
tendency_,' let us say, '_that makes for righteousness_,' But if this
stream of tendency be not a personal God, what is it? Is it Nature?
Nature, we have seen already, is open to just the same objections that
God is. It is equally guilty of all the evil that is contained in it. Is
it Truth, then--pure Truth for its own sake? Again, we have seen already
that as little can it be that. Is it Human Nature as opposed to
Nature?--Man as distinct from, and holier than, any individual men? Of
all the substitutes for God this at first sight seems the most
promising, or, at any rate, the most pr