eral question, Must we, in view of
the facts of life, surrender the idea of the Divine benevolence? It is
quite true that the evidence of purpose discernible in the whole
structure of the universe proclaims the Deity to be personal; but, as
Mr. Mallock says, "the theistic doctrine of God is not a doctrine that
the supreme mind acts with purpose, but a doctrine that it acts with
purpose of a highly specialised kind"--_viz._, _benevolent_ purpose.

Let us once more state the problem in the partial but very pertinent
form in which it arises in connection with man's faculty of freedom.
To bestow upon His creatures a gift which He must have known they would
use in such a manner as to work infinite harm to themselves and to each
other, seems _prima facie_ no more compatible with kindly intentions
than it would be to leave children to play with sharp tools, loaded
firearms and deadly poisons; since disaster was bound to ensue from
such a course, does not responsibility for the disaster rest with the
one who deliberately provided the {97} elements for it? But such a
comparison, while superficially plausible, upon reflection is seen to
be beside the mark. We really cannot plead such inexperience of right
and wrong, such ignorance of moral safety and moral danger, as would
furnish a true parallel between playing with temptation and playing
with cyanide of potassium. In setting before us "life and good, and
death and evil," God has as distinctly placed within our hearts the
moral intuition which, says, "Therefore choose life." But why, the
questioner proceeds, have made sin even possible? Because, we answer,
not to have done so would have made morality impossible. It cannot be
too often, or too plainly, pointed out that just as the only
alternative to purpose is chance, so the only alternative to liberty is
necessity. That is to say, God could no doubt have made us automata
instead of free agents; but even He could not have made us free to
_choose_ the right, yet not free to choose its contrary. Choice that
is not willed is not choice at all; goodness by compulsion is not
goodness, but merely correctitude--the behaviour of a skilfully-devised
mechanism, but possessing no _moral_ quality whatever. We are not at
present concerned with the view of those who maintain that men are _de
facto_ no more than such "cunning casts in clay" a contention which
will occupy us at a later stage; we merely state the commonplace that
in ma