great facts to
exclude the other, but, by showing their logical coherency and agreement,
it removes the temptation that the speculative reason has ever felt to do
such violence to the cause of truth. It embraces the half views of both
schemes, and moulds them into one great and full-orbed truth. In the great
theandric work of regeneration, in particular, it neither causes the human
element to exclude the divine, nor the divine to swallow up the human; but
preserves each in its integrity, and both in their harmonious union and
cooeperation. The mutual inter-dependency, and the undisturbed
inter-working, of these all-important elements of the moral world, it aims
to place on a firm basis, and exhibit in a clear light. If this object has
been accomplished, though but in part, or by way of a first approximation
only, it will be conceded to be no small gain, or advantage, to the cause
of truth.

Section VI.

The existence of moral evil consistent with the infinite purity of God.

The relation of the foregoing treatise to the great problem of the
spiritual world, concerning the origin and existence of evil, may be
easily indicated, and the solution it proposes distinguished from that of
others. This may be best done, perhaps, with the aid of logical forms.

The world, created by an infinitely perfect Being, says the sceptic, must
needs be the best of all possible worlds: but the actual world is not the
best of all possible worlds: therefore it was not created by an infinitely
perfect Being. Now, in replying to this argument, no theist denies the
major premiss. All have conceded, that the idea of an infinitely perfect
Being necessarily implies the existence and preservation of the greatest
possible perfection in the created universe. In the two celebrated works
of M. Leibnitz and Archbishop King, both put forth in reply to Bayle, this
admission is repeatedly and distinctly made. This seems to have been
rightly done; for, in the language of Cudworth, "To believe a God, is to
believe the existence of all possible good and perfection in the
universe."(220)

In this, says Leibnitz, is embosomed all possible good. But how is this
point established? "We judge from the event itself," says he; "_since God
has made it, it was not possible to have made a better_."(221) But this is
the language of faith, and not of reason. As an argument addressed to the
sceptic, it is radically unsound; for as