p. 78Well, my friend, are you any more at your ease?—Not much. All our talk must necessarily leave the subject just where it is. We cannot alter matters in any way.
No: but we may change our own relation to matters, which may be as great a change sometimes as if we changed matters themselves.—Well, yes, there is something in that.
Tidings makes all the difference in the world sometimes, as when a man hears of a great opportunity, or a great danger, in which all depends upon prompt action. Conviction as to God’s existence makes a great difference as to a man’s relation to God, though it cannot alter things as they actually are with God.
My point last month was the existence of evil. You said that all difficulty vanished when the end of the matter was taken into view.
What did you mean?—I meant that when God’s work with the earth was finished, there would be p. 79 none of the difficulties you mentioned. He proposes the end of all evil: “no more curse: no more death” is the oracular enunciation of His purpose.
I do not quite see that that disposes of the difficulty.—I think it does.
It will not alter the fact, that curse and death have been allowed—No.
Why does He allow them?—As part of the process by which greater well-being is prepared.
I might feel the force of that if all participated in the result.—So they will in the sense of the curse ceasing.
Yes, but all do not share in the deliverance, as I understand you. Only a few are to be saved.—Such is the revealed purpose of Eternal Wisdom.
It is there that I feel a difficulty.
Why should it be a difficulty?—I do not know that I can tell.
I think I know the root of the matter. You look exclusively to the creature God has made, and to what you may conceive as the rights of the creature so made. You do not consider the purpose that God may have had in the making of the creature, nor of the rights that He necessarily possesses over it.—I confess my feelings are naturally more with the creature than the Creator.
You must fight this tendency. You must bring reason to your aid. It cannot be that the creature should govern the Creator, or that our interpretation of the Creator’s way should be found in the creature’s feelings rather than in the Creator’s designs.—It is easier to realize the creature’s feelings.
Granted; but you will allow that darkness of all kinds is easier than light.—You would not call the creature’s feelings darkness, would you?
p. 80 It would depend. If one of the Manyema tribe wanted to eat you, it would be because he felt inclined. You would consider his feelings rather dark on that subject, should you not?—(Smiles) I would consider his feelings misplaced.
Misplaced feeling is darkness. This you will find to be true in every relation. Your feelings are misplaced on the subject of mortal man.—I am in darkness, you think?
It is not your choice, I am sure; but any opposition to Divine wisdom in the name of the creature must be darkness. Why should mortal man criticize the ways of God? Is it not his place simply to ascertain them and submit to them?—To that, of course, I could not demur: the question is, what are His ways? He is great and kind, and my difficulty is to reconcile this with the evil state of things to which vast numbers of His creatures are subject.
We may be quite sure that none of His works are inconsistent with His greatness, and His kindness. I submit that it is no assumption to maintain this.—Granting His existence and His character and what you call His “works,” I should, of course, feel called upon to assent to that.
Very well, are you prepared to deny His existence?—Far be it from me to say there is no God. Whatever difficulties I may feel, I cannot take the fool’s position. There is too great a display of intelligence in the constitution of things everywhere, for me to resist the conviction that however little I may know Him, there is a vast and incomprehensible Being at work somehow. At the same time, I should not be true to the highest principles of my own existence if I were to shut my eyes to what appear to me difficulties in the way of the commonly accepted views.
p. 81 I do not ask you to shut your eyes to anything, but rather to open them a little more widely so that you may perceive that the dimness you feel is a dimness as of steam on your own window glass, and not in the universe of God that you are looking out upon.—It is a pretty comparision. Perhaps it is correct.
I am sure it is. You flounder because you are holding on from below instead of from above. You look at a man who had no existence yesterday and who will have no existence to-morrow, and you are trying to interpret things as they bear upon or appear to him instead of looking to God, who has always been and always will be, and who has made all things for His own purpose. You will never be able to handle matters aright till you fully realize the truth that human life is but a vapour, and that in God and not in man is to be found the solution of the problems of the universe.—It is difficult for man to look at matters from God’s point of view.
Still, the point of view exists; and it existed before man existed, and therefore, true reason demands that we ascend to it. Consider how it is with those not yet born, and with those who never will be born. You have no difficulty in assigning to their point of view its proper insignificant place?—I don’t know that I quite understand you there. How can there be a point of view for those who never will be born?
They would have a point of view if they were born.—But how can you take them into account if they are not to be born?
Only that we may the more easily see how insignificant is the point of view of those who are born.—I fail to follow you, I confess. Persons that are not persons cannot be taken into account in any way.
They can be taken into account as persons that p. 82 might be but are not. Take the last emigrant ship that foundered at sea. There were on board many young couples from whom, had the ship got safely to land, there would certainly have sprung multitudes of persons who will now never have any existence. Does their potential point of view offer any difficulty in determining the problem of the earth’s condition? My suggestion is that our own point of view, though important to us for the time being, is just as uninfluential as theirs in the question of why things are as they are. It is God’s question purely, and His answer is necessarily the only answer.