sarily
exclude all evil from a moral system, it will be objected, that, on these
principles, "we have no certainty of the continued obedience of holy,
angelic, and redeemed spirits."(152) This is true, if the scheme of
necessity affords the only ground of certainty in the universe. But we
cannot see the justness of this assumption. It is agreed on all sides,
that a fixed habit of acting, formed by repeated and long-continued acts,
is a pretty sure foundation for the certainty of action. Hence, there may
be some little certainty, some little stability in the moral world,
without supposing all things therein to be necessitated. Perhaps there may
be, on this hypothesis, as great certainty therein, as is actually found
to exist. In the assertion so often made, that if all our volitions are
not controlled by the divine power, but left to ourselves, then the moral
world will not be so well governed as the natural, and disorders will be
found therein; the _fact_ seems to be overlooked, that there is actually
disorder and confusion in the moral world. If it were our object to find
an hypothesis to overturn and refute the _facts_ of the moral world, we
know of none better adapted to this purpose than the doctrine of
necessity; but if it be our aim, not to deny, but to explain the phenomena
of the moral world, then must we adopt some other scheme.

But it has been eloquently said, that "if God could not have prevented sin
in the universe, he cannot prevent believers from falling; he cannot
prevent Gabriel and Paul from sinking at once into devils, and heaven from
turning into a hell. And were he to create new races to fill the vacant
seats, they might turn to devils as fast as he created them, in spite of
anything that he could do short of destroying their moral agency. He is
liable to be defeated in all his designs, and to be as miserable as he is
benevolent. This is infinitely the gloomiest idea that was ever thrown
upon the world. It is gloomier than hell itself." True, there might be a
gloomier spectacle in the universe than hell itself; and for this very
reason it is, as we have seen, that God has ordained hell itself, that
such gloomier spectacle may never appear in the universe to darken its
transcendent and eternal glories. It is on this principle that we
reconcile the infinite goodness of God with the awful spectacle of a world
lying in ruins, and the still more awful spectacle of an eternal hell
beyond the grave.

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