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§ IV.—CHAPTER I.

STATEMENT OF DIFFICULTIES, ETC.

WE have already noticed certain “difficulties” that directly meet us in unfolding the theistic argument. In carrying up our varied trains of induction from the wide province of nature, we encounter facts, which not only, on the first view, do not contribute to our argument, but seem to stand in obvious contradiction to it.

These facts do not meet us in the outset, but only as we advance. So long as we confine our range of induction to material phenomena, to the combinations of inorganic matter, or even of the lower forms of organic existence, there is nothing that can be said to interrupt the harmonious flow of the theistic evidence. All is order, unbroken by check or flaw. There is no room for the conception of imperfection or evil.

We trace certainly, within the domain of matter, the signs of what we are apt to call disorder. The planetary system, in some of its features, seems to present indications of disturbance. The frame of the earth has apparently, in past 296times, been rent and broken up by mighty throes. And there are instances even now of such material convulsions; as when the lightning desolates, or the volcano pours its fiery doom over surrounding towns and villages, or the earthquake engulfs them with sudden terror. But it is only to us, or because we contemplate these things in the light of life, that such phenomena assume for a moment the appearance of disorder. In themselves—apprehended simply in regard either to their causes or their material results—such a term has no application to them; for they are merely appropriate issues in the great plan of physical development, whereby the constant growth of its order and beauty is maintained.

When, however, we pass beyond material arrangements to those of life in its higher forms, we find phenomena which in themselves appear dark and contradictory. Pain emerges as a parallel fact with pleasure in sensation; death as a parallel fact with life throughout all its range. The facts of pain and death are peculiar in this respect, that they appear to contradict and nullify the very order amid which they occur: they are evil amid the good. It is this conception of evil which, in the mere domain of matter, has obviously no place—which constitutes, in its manifold forms, the grand difficulty of the Natural Theologian.

In the sphere of animal life, evil is present in such apparent contradictions as we have now mentioned, and especially in the direct provision made for the event of these in the existence of animals of prey. The joy and life of certain animals are the agony and death of others. This arrangement of nature seems to present itself as a mal-arrangement.

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In the sphere of human life, evil is especially present—not only in the lower physical forms of pain and death, but, moreover, in all the forms of sorrow which disturb and vex the human heart, the multiplied social evils of our race, and, above all, in the fact of sin, which at once intensifies, and in a manner comprehends, every other phase of human evil.

These phenomena, therefore, claim our special examination, in reference to the theistic argument. They seem to bear with a show of opposing force against it, at least against its full conclusiveness. Their reality appears to affect particularly the truth of the Divine wisdom and goodness. With these attributes, and eminently with the latter, the fact of evil comes in conflict. It is, we formerly saw, in immediate opposition to the good in sensation that the evil first emerges; but evil, being also in its very conception disorder, is no less truly opposed to wisdom than to goodness.

It now remains for us, therefore, to obviate the difficulties thence arising to our argument. The attributes of Divine wisdom and goodness, while suffering under the partial shadow of such points of darkness, may yet be found, from a thorough review of the whole subject and field of evidence before us, to come forth into even a purer and more glorious lustre than if there had been no shadow to dissipate—no evil to alleviate.

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