would prefer the safety of automatism to
the glory of this Divine adventure?

In all this we are not shutting our eyes to what is involved in the
misuse of liberty--the dread nature of wilful sin and its ghastly
harvest of wrecked and ruined lives; we do not say that the price of
freedom is not a heavy {100} one, nor do we pretend that the subject is
free from painful mystery. It could not be otherwise; that we, with
our limited vision and circumscribed understanding, should be able to
solve that mystery with any completeness, is not even to be imagined.
Nevertheless, we may claim that we have at least obtained a glimpse of
the purpose of God in conferring upon the race this fateful power; for
this and no other was the appointed means by which man was to ascend to
his true place as a moral and spiritual being. If we can admit that
purpose to be in harmony with the Divine benevolence, we may the more
hopefully turn to other aspects of our problem.

[1] _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 22.

[2] _Ibid_, p. 79.

[3] _The Laws_, vii, 803: [Greek] "Theou ti paignion memechanmenon."
Compare also Browning's unhappy phrase, "God, whose puppets, best and
worst, are we."

{101}

CHAPTER VII

EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS (_Continued_)

There is probably no more serious aspect of the popular philosophy
which declares so confidently, "There is no will that is not God's
will," than that, while professing to be a Gospel of sweetness and
light, it in reality plunges us into the very depths of pessimism by
making God Himself "ultimately responsible for all the evil and
suffering in the world." From such a position, from such premises as
these, there is only one step to such conclusions as have been actually
drawn:--

It is His world, remember; He made it, and He is omnipotent. . . If
creation does not please the Creator, why did He not make it better?
If it is wayward and intractable, it can be no more than He expected,
or ought to have expected. Wherein consists His right to punish us for
our transgressions? Suppose we challenge it; what will He say in
defence?

We may shrink with distaste from such wild and whirling words; but if
it be true that "there is no will that is not God's will"--if whatever
takes place in the universe expresses that almighty will--they are as
rational in their very vehemence as Omar's lines are rational in their
melancholy:--

{102}

O Thou, who didst with pitfall and wit