s well as that of Spinoza, are embarrassed, such difficulties
none the less exist; the fact is the grand perplexity,
and for ourselves we acknowledge that of all theories
about it Spinoza's would appear to us the least irrational,
if our conscience did not forbid us to listen to it. The
objections, with the replies to them, are well drawn out
in the correspondence with William de Blyenburg; and
it will be seen from this with how little justice the denial
of evil as a positive thing can be called equivalent to
denying it relatively to man, or to confusing the moral
distinctions between virtue and vice.

"We speak," writes Spinoza, in answer to Blyenburg,
who had urged something of the kind, "we speak of this
or that man having done a wrong thing, when we compare
him with a general standard of humanity; but inasmuch
as God neither perceives things in such abstract manner,
nor forms to himself such kind of generic definitions, and
since there is no more reality in anything than God has
assigned to it, it follows, surely, that the absence of good
exists only in respect of man's understanding, not in respect
of God's."

"If this be so," then replies Blyenburg, "bad men fulfil
God's will as well as good."

"It is true," Spinoza answers, "they fulfil it, yet not as the
good nor as well as the good, nor are they to be compared
with them. The better a thing or a person be, the more
there is in him of God's spirit, and the more he expresses
God's will; while the bad, being without that divine love
which arises from the knowledge of God, and through which
alone we are called (in respect of our understandings) his
servants, are but as instruments in the hand of the artificer,
--they serve unconsciously, and are consumed in their
service."

Spinoza, after all, is but stating in philosophical
language the extreme doctrine of Grace: and St. Paul,
if we interpret his real belief by the one passage so
often quoted, in which he compares us to "clay in the
hands of the potter, who maketh one vessel to honour
and another to dishonour," may be accused with justice
of having held the same opinion. If Calvinism be
pressed to its logical consequences, it either becomes
an intolerable falsehood, or it resolves itself into the
philosophy of Spinoza. It is monstrous to call evil
a positive thing, and to assert that God has
predetermined it,--to tell us that he has ordained what
he hates, and hates what he has ordained. It is
incredib