ts, who made man the measure of
all things--are likely to lead men. And yet, if the monistic
presuppositions are valid--if the universe in all its phases expresses
only one will--we do not see how these conclusions can be repelled.

But it is, perhaps, our last illustration, drawn from yet another
writer of the same school, which will exhibit both the teaching under
discussion and its practical dangers in the clearest light. We are
told that--

_There is no will that is not God's will_. I do not mean that yours is
not real, or that any man's is not real, but I do mean that nothing can
happen to any of God's children--no matter how evil the intention of
the person who does it, or how seemingly meaningless the calamity that
causes it--which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to us,
and His call upon our highest energies. In a true and real sense,
therefore, it is God's own doing and meant for our greater glory; . . .
I believe in the infinitude of wisdom and love; _there is nothing else_.

{61}

Those who will take the moderate trouble of translating these words
from the abstract into the concrete will need no further demonstration
of the moral implications of this type of Monism. "There is no
will"--not even the most brutalised or the most debauched--"that is not
God's will." "Nothing can happen to any of God's children"--say, to
the natives of the Congo or to a Jewish community during a Russian
_pogrom_--but is God's call upon their highest energies: wherefore they
ought, assuredly, to be thankful to King Leopold's emissaries and the
Tsar's faithful Black Hundreds! But let us apply this thesis to yet
another case, which will bring out its full character: if an English
girl--one of God's children--is snared away by a ruffian, under pretext
of honest employment, to some Continental hell, then we are to
understand that the physical and moral ruin which awaits the victim is
"in some way the sacrament of God's love" to her--"in a true and real
sense it is God's own doing," and meant for her greater glory! We have
no hesitation in saying that such teaching strikes us as fraught with
infinite possibilities of moral harm, the more so because of the rather
mawkish sentimentality with which it is decked out; for if any
scoundrel is really the instrument of God's will, why should he be
blamed for his scoundrelism? And we observe how yet once more, by a
glib and vapid phrase--"I believe in the {62} infi