unto the man by whom they come!" His
omnipotence is pledged to wipe out the stain and efface the shadow of
evil, in as far as possible, from the glory of his creation. But yet, so
long as the light and glory of the moral universe is permitted to shine,
may the dark shadow of evil, which moral agents cast upon its brightness
and its beauty, continue to exist and partially obscure its divine
perfections. And would it not be unworthy of the divine wisdom and
goodness to remove this partial shadow, by an utter extinction of the
universal light?

Section VI.

The true and only foundation of optimism.

Though few have been satisfied with the details of the system of optimism,
yet has the great fundamental conception of that system been received by
the wise and good in all ages. "The atheist takes it for granted," says
Cudworth, "that whosoever asserts a God, or a perfect mind, to be the
original of all things, does therefore _ipso facto_ suppose all things to
be well made, and as they should be. And this, doubtless, was the sense of
all the ancient theologers," &c.(146) This distinguished philosopher
himself maintains, as well as Leibnitz, that the intellectual world could
not have been made better than it is, even by a being of infinite power
and goodness. "To believe a God," says he, "is to believe the existence of
all _possible_ good and perfection in the universe; it is to believe that
things are as they should be, and that the world is so well framed and
governed, as that the whole system thereof could not possibly have been
better."(147)

But while this fundamental principle has been held by philosophers, both
ancient and modern, it has been, as we have seen, connected with other
doctrines, by which it is contradicted, and its influence impaired. The
concession which is universally made to the sceptic, that if God is
omnipotent, he can easily cause virtue to exist without any mixture of
vice, is fatal to the great principle that lies at the foundation of
optimism. It resolves the whole scheme, which regards the world as the
best that could possibly be made, into a loose, vague, and untenable
hypothesis. It is true, the good man would infinitely prefer this
hypothesis to the intolerable gloom of atheism; but yet our rational
nature demands something more solid and clear on which to repose. Indeed,
the warmest supporters of optimism have supplied us with the lofty
sentiments of