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СКАЧАТЬ is even so: we are really free, and are really required by God to give him our love. But now a finite and created being can only be free so far as God leaves him free; and this is only conceivable in the light I have already set it in by the simile of a fond mother teaching her babe to walk, and in order to tempt it to make the first essay with its little limbs, stepping back from it a few steps, and leaving it a moment to itself. No creature could be free did not God, in a similar way, leave it to itself, and, after the first impulse of creation, withhold from it His controlling energy. But if He did not do so—were He, on the contrary, to act upon His creatures without reserve, and with the whole infinite extent of his might—then the liberty of the latter, overwhelmed in His omnipotence, must be destroyed, as being only possible through the spontaneous limitation of the divine power, which results from the superabundance of creative love.

      Now we can, it is true, distinguish in the essence or energy of God, between His intelligence and His will—His omniscience and His omnipotence; but they can not be absolutely separated from and opposed to each other, for in Him and in His operations, they, as indeed all else in Him, are one. It would, therefore, be nothing but a foolish and unmeaning subtlety to demand, “Why, then, has the Omniscient created rational beings, of whom He must assuredly have known beforehand that they would fall and perish?” For it is but a logical illusion, when we transfer from the human to the divine mind a form of thought fluctuating between the conceivably possible and the apparently necessary. Man’s freedom undoubtedly consists in the choice between one possibility and another, or in that indefinite possibility which subsists half way between one necessity and another. But God’s freedom is not as man’s: in Him there is neither contingent possibility nor unconditional necessity. All in Him is truly actual, living, and positive. His freedom lies even in the superabundance of His essence—the fact, viz., that He is not bound by any law of necessity to remain contented with this His own internal fullness. For otherwise He were a Fate rather than a free God, and to that conclusion the doctrine of the Stoics consistently enough arrived at last. Extremely difficult must it ever be, in such a system and with such a conception of an intrinsically necessary God, and one bound by this necessity, consistently to account for the creation of the world, which, in appearance, is so irreconcilable with the idea of the self-sufficiency of the divine Being. On this account some of the similarly rationalizing systems of ancient times had recourse to the ingenious device of ascribing the work of creation to a spiritual being of an inferior order, and degrading this secondary deity far below the infinite perfections of the supreme and all-sufficient God. But by this expedient men did but fall, as is, alas! but too commonly the case, from one error into another still greater and even more monstrous. It is, in short, nothing but a mere logical delusion and an illegitimate transference from our limited faculty of thought to the divine intelligence, which gives rise to these pernicious doctrines of an absolute and unconditional predestination, which fundamentally amount and bring us back to a blind and heathenish fatalism.

      Thus much, as connected with our subject, will be sufficient on the difficult subject both of the freedom of the pure created spirits and also of man’s will, as regarded solely from its philosophical aspect, and without any reference to the moral theory, and solely in relation to the system of the universe. Difficult, however, is this subject, merely on one account. The logical illusion, from which springs all error, strife, and confusion, and which we are too apt to transfer to the divine mind, is so far innate in the very form of man’s finite intellect, than even when we have recognized it for what it really is; yet, so long as we confine ourselves to mere logical reasoning, and are seduced by its seeming rigor of consequence, we are ever ready to fall anew into this dangerous error without even remarking it.

      In the same way, now, that the existence of free beings follows naturally from the love of God, as the final cause of creation, so, on the other hand, the permission of moral evil is a mere result of that freedom in and through which these created beings have to run their appointed time. For this freedom, as considered with a reference to God and futurity, or to the immortality of the soul, is nothing else than the time of trial and the state of probation itself. But, perhaps it will be asked, “Why, then, does not God, by one nod of retributive justice, by one breath of His omnipotence, annihilate forever, as He so easily might, the whole company of evil and rebellious spirits, together with their leader, the Prince of this world, and so purify the whole visible creation, and release external nature from their desolating influence?” To this the answer is simple and at hand. Man is placed in this world on his trial and for a struggle with evil, and this warfare is not yet ended. But by such an annihilation of evil, the living development of nature would be precipitated in that course which God originally designed it to advance through, and cut short before the appointed time of final purification, when, according to His promise, He will, as Holy Writ expresses it, create new heavens and a new earth, and make perfect the whole creation.[33]

      Man is free, but utterly unripe as yet; and thoroughly incomplete also is nature, or the sensible world, and material creation; consequently, the immortality of the soul is the corner-stone and key for understanding the whole. For the mere beginning of creation is perfectly unintelligible so long as we do not take into consideration the other extreme or end—its final completion and ultimate consummation. Just as the half of human life on this side the grave can not be understood unless we contemplate, at the same time with it, its second half on the other side of the tomb, as its complement, and as a necessary element toward the elucidation of the whole.

      As, then, the permission of evil finds a satisfactory explanation in man’s probationary state, and in God’s love, as the final cause of the creation, so also the physical evils and sufferings to which the free being is liable are fully accounted for on that principle. This is the key of the enigma of their existence. None of the sufferings of the free being, on either side of the grave, are unprofitable and without a motive. They all serve, either in this preparatory state of earthly existence, for probation, for discipline, or for confirmation, or else, after it, for the perfect healing of the soul, and its purification from all the remaining dross and taints of earth.[34] Scarcely ever can the diseased matter be got rid of and expelled from the organic body with out a struggle, and very seldom without pain. Gold is purified by the fire, and pain is the fiery purification of the body. This belief is one which ought least of all to have been called into question, inasmuch as it is only consonant to the simple feelings of human nature. For otherwise, how narrowly must the hopes of the future be confined, if nothing that is unclean shall enter into heaven—the Holy of Holies—the immediate presence of the pure and holy God!

      It is not, however, my intention to make this consolatory and blessed hope of a loving and longing heart the topic of dispute, especially since it lies altogether beyond my present limits. I will only allude to the words of the Savior, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” By the “Father’s house” we must, it is clear, understand the future world. On other side, therefore, of the grave, as well as on this, many divisions, many degrees, and many different states, and also manifold transitions, are not merely conceivable and possible, but must of necessity be assumed as actually existent, even though we can not be too cautious in avoiding all hasty decisions as to what is going on in this hidden world. Only we must ever remember that any absolute line of demarcation which on one side has nothing but white, while all that lies on the other is black, is very rarely the line of truth. And this principle holds good, it is plain, in every relation and every possible application. For such a trenchant line of sharp and unmitigated contrast between black and white is even one of those intellectual deceptions connatural to man, which disposes him too hastily to transfer to all without him the limited form of his own finite intellect. All the pains, therefore, and all the sufferings of the creature, whether on this or the other side of the grave, serve either to exercise and strengthen, or to heal and purify, the yet imperfect being, with the single exception of that bitterest of all agonies—the pain of being left eternally to ourselves. But even here, although there is no hope of a salutary effect, a species of converse propriety seems to hold.

      It is, we remarked, the problem of philosophy, leaving to physics the whole development of life that lies intermediate between СКАЧАТЬ