king us free God Himself could not also {98} make us impeccable,
insusceptible to temptation, immune against the possibility of sin.

The real question, then, shapes itself as follows: Can we discern the
nature of the purpose which expresses itself in the bestowal of this
gift of freedom? Stated in that form, we see that the question has
already been answered by implication; for if there could be no morality
without liberty, it is fair to make the inference that the very object
of God in allowing us to choose between alternatives of conduct was to
make morality so much as possible. Was that a good and beneficent
object? We submit that even those who impeach the Deity for opening
the door to sin would on second thoughts confess that morally free--and
therefore peccable--beings stand on a higher level than marionettes,
however faultlessly contrived to perform certain evolutions. The truth
of the matter is set forth with poetic insight in Andersen's story of
the Nightingale--the immeasurable difference between the artificial
bird and the real songster, whose melodious raptures somehow touched a
chord in the listener which all the nicely-calculated trills and
cadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion. In
like manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises
man to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an
automaton. The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes
the sinner, in its right {99} exercise furnishes forth the saint. All
that we mean by moral progress, by "the steady gain of man," his rise
to more exalted ideals, his conquest of baser appetites--all that makes
the history of the race a thrilling and uplifting drama--is bound up
with his possession of liberty; it is this supreme gift which makes him
"a little lower than the angels," and "crowns him with glory and
honour." Alone of all earthly beings, man is not only an effect but a
cause; his freedom--not unlimited but quite real within its not
inelastic confines--is the noblest of all his faculties, even though
for that very reason it is capable of being most ignobly perverted.
What its bestowal tells us is that God does not call us into servitude,
but to that service which is perfect freedom; He might have made us His
playthings, as Plato suggested,[3] but by endowing us with the power to
choose for ourselves He has made us His potential fellow-workers. May
we not ask--Who, after all,