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4. On Sin and Evil That they should sit down satisfied with saying that "evil is a mystery,55 that "God's ways are inscrutable," appears no less extraordinary, when we consider that evil is only the essential ignorance of man's beginning, and that God has constituted us expressly to discover all His thoughts. WHAT was God's purpose in creating us? Some sayHe created us for His glory, to honour and to serve Him. Others say that this is ascribing a motive, viz.vanity,to God—which we should not dare to assign to a good man—in whom allregard for his own glory issupposed to be extinguished. Some think that God created man for happiness. Others saythat they seeso much suffering—that either happiness is not God's purpose, or if it is, He fails in it. The argument that suffering brings forth greater general happiness than there could be without suffering, is met by the objection, that God is, in that case, wanting either in omnipotence or in benevolence. If He is benevolent, He will desire to avoid all suffering; if He is omnipotent, He will be able to do it, i.e.^ to secure the highest good without the suffering. God's thought is truth, God's feeling is happiness. God's will is wisdom . How will he cause other beings to partake in these things is the question. Will His plan be to effect that they shall, by His decree, think His thought, feel His feeling, do His work? to oblige each thought, feeling,act, to be what it is. Will He make a creature which cannot go wrong; instinct, or the voice of God, always telling it what to do, and being alwaysobeyed? Such beings do exist (but we call them beasts), which never make a mistake and never improve, and are incapable, as far as we know, of happiness, that is, of God's happiness. The problem, then, to solve appears to be how shall our thought, feeling, act, be like His, yet not through the exerciseof His powers, but of I 78 Suggestionsfor Thought ours, not by His will obliging each to be what it is, but by our own springing from our own nature. How shall God, in other words, communicate His own happiness, the essential of which isactivity,without depriving our happiness of its essential, our activity? Would it not be a contradiction to suppose that Perfect Benevolence would will to other beings a nature less perfect than His own, less adapted to goodness and happiness? But it would also be acontradiction to suppose Him willing another perfection, (since, essentially, perfection is one), or willing an eternal imperfect, with such degree of value as could be imparted to it by its being a passive recipient from God. Avoiding these contradictions , maywe not, without contradiction or absurdity, pronounce that the Perfect would will limits to His own perfect nature, according to a law of right; these limits to be enlarged by the individual and collective exerciseof mankind? That this is actually the fact cannot with truth be denied. There are laws with respect to the material nature, which material nature is the limit to the Divine nature. According as that material nature is after a certain type, and is exercised in a certain mode, the divine nature becomes more and more apparent. This rests upon fact—and could, otherwise, the expectation be realized that the Perfectwould will His own nature to other than himself? Could the expectation be, other wise, realized that, through exercise, not as passive recipients, God's benefits should be attained by men? And let us observe how exercise, for each and for all, would thus be called forth. Man thus becomes, in some sort, the creator of man. One and another causeof suffering disappears from time to time by the exercise of man's capabilities. We can see glimpses of how others might disappear, if he used these capabilities differently from what he has done. Great increase of enjoyment has been opened in certain directions by exercise of man's capabilities, and here too we have glimpses into immeasurable enjoyment attainable by man. Do not such observations lead to the conjecture that the higher will intends man to work the way from suffering into happiness by exercise of capability? The capability of each individual when born, the development and improvement of this capability, are obviously left in large measure to mankind. In no other raceisthere this...

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