p. 160You spoke last time of the footprints of God in the universe or the evidences of contrivance in Nature. I confess I expected something stronger in the way of shewing a Divine presence and participation in the works of creation.—You have a powerful appetite for truth.
A hungry man must have proper food.—I think I placed the right article before you, so far as we have got. I shewed you evidence of the participation of contriving intelligence in the original production of the visible objects of Nature. This is equivalent to demonstrating the existence of a Being possessing this intelligence.
What you said goes no further than what is called the Design argument which is generally given up now, I think.—As regards what is generally given up or generally held, we need attach no weight to that. Nothing is more unreliable than what is called the “consensus of public opinion.” It is a mere current p. 161 set up by the bold suggestions of one or two minds a little more original than the mass of mediocrities of which the population consists.
But the surrender of the Design argument is not a mere consensus of loose opinion. It is a concession to reason.—I do not admit that.
It proves too much, does it not?—In what way? It would prove a designer for God.—By no means. Since something must have been undesigned, that something must be self-existent, and possess power and wisdom equal to the creation of everything else.
But then the argument comes back: if God could exist without a designer, why not these other things so vastly inferior?—But the door is shut against the argument coming back in that way. As a matter of abstract thought, there might be such a rejoinder, but the facts exclude it. The things that constitute creation are manifestly not self-existent. They are caused. There was a time when they existed not. There must be a power behind them to produce them; for it is one of the established axioms of science that no effect is without an adequate cause. I claim that the million visible effects in creation, so vast and so harmonious as a whole, are actual demonstrations of the existence of the Invisible Creator; for otherwise their existence is unaccounted for. This, you may perceive, is the very argument of the apostle Paul in Romans that “The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.”
You do not agree to the surrender of the Design argument then?—By no means. The leaders of scientific thought themselves have not given it up, though not insisting upon it. The disciples have p. 162 outrun their masters altogether. Darwin said he did not know what to think finally on the subject; sometimes he thought there must be a Designer, and sometimes he thought not. Tyndal says he has often asked himself, in the presence of the multitudinous manifestations of wisdom in Nature, whether there was not a Being that knew far more about these things than limited man. Even Huxley says something to the effect that a man would be a fool to deny the possibility of miracle. If, therefore, the highest intellects of the unbelieving party are in a state of indecision, we need not trouble ourselves with the ipse dixit of the mass of shallow smartness that passes current for “the scientific world.”
You take strong ground.—Not a bit stronger than the facts justify. The Design argument, with the qualifications arising from the difference between human methods and the methods of eternal power in Nature, is the argument of common sense, which fits the necessities of the problem in all its wide ranges. That it should have been so readily surrendered only illustrates the tendency of the human mind, of which Paul speaks, to get away from God. It is not a needless warning he gives when he says: “Beware lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.”
That is one thing that I must say I cannot quite understand—why it should be represented as a natural disposition with man to depart from God?—It is represented so because the fact is so.
I have a difficulty in seeing that the fact is so. It seems to me that it is as natural for the intellect of man to receive one truth as another.—It is an amiable thought, but no more.
You are severe.—I hope not. It is the severity of p. 163 coercive truth—I mean truth coercing my own mind. I was once prone to the pleasing views that commend themselves more or less, to all thoughtful minds in youth; but a widening experience and enlarging enlightenment have compelled me to let them all go, and to recognize that the Bible representation is accurate on all points, and on none more than this, that the natural bias of the human mind is opposed to God.
Why should the bias be a natural bias? This is what I cannot understand: would not the Creator of the bias, in that case be responsible?—A smart suggestion, but look deeper. Whence does the bias arise? Is it an implanted instinct or is it the abnormal play of mental forces, which are good in their right application? The latter undoubtedly. Man is naturally ignorant of everything. When he comes into the world, his brain is like a clean sheet, on which nothing has been written. It is not only God that he knows nothing of, but he knows nothing of man or the earth or any natural object. Ignorance is his natural state. All knowledge is outside of him, and only gets in by being put in. Left to himself he would not put it in; as you see in children, who, if they had their own way, would run wild on the streets and grow up barbarians. He is naturally impatient of nothing so much as law. The restraints of school and discipline have to be enforced; and it is only in a few cases that these are successfully applied—that is, applied with the result of producing a true mental culture. The bias against God is part of the natural working of his mental machinery. He prefers that which is easy and that which he likes, and that which he can see. Knowledge of anything that is unseen is irksome to him, and the denial of his natural p. 164 likes, still more so. God as the unseen Power and as the Commander of obedience and the Enjoiner of holiness, is not congenial to his natural desire for independence and liberty to follow his likes without restraint. “Departure from the living God” is therefore a danger to which his natural feelings incline him.
But my difficulty is, why he should not have been created on a principle that would have excluded this danger.—My friend, any difficulty that sits in judgment on Divine methods must be founded on mistake. Is it possible that a thing made can have any right to say to its Maker, “Why hast thou made me thus?”
I must, of course, admit the impropriety of such a thing. Still, with the powers of reflection which we have, such thoughts will occur.—The point is, to keep the powers of reflection in subordination to the manifest requirements of reason. It cannot be that there is any mistake in the method of our creation. There may be some things we cannot readily understand, but we may be sure that they are capable of explanation from the point of view of the Divine plan in its entirety.
My desire is to see the explanation.—It is those who seek for wisdom, as a rule, that get it.
Can you suggest a reason for man’s liability to go wrong?—There are two facts or phases of the case that must be carefully kept in view in getting an answer. The first refers to the present state of man. The custom of human thought is to assume that the present state is man’s normal or natural state. If this were true, it would be as natural for man to go right as it is for a fish to be a fish, or an elephant an elephant, or any other thing after its kind. But the fact p. 165 disclosed by revelation is that man’s present state is an abnormal state; that, because of revolt, he is separated from God for whom he was made, and under the deranging effects of the Divine blessing reversed, which explains why man, the highest of earth creatures, should be the greatest failure among them all, and why, with such latent capacities for wisdom and goodness, he should in the mass of his race develop in the contrary direction. Apart from this, there is no explanation of an undoubted fact.
You seemed to refer to a second fact.—Well, yes; but it is rather more difficult to put into shape. It is the fact of man’s natural ignorance. We might assume that in producing a creature after His own image and likeness, God would make knowledge, rather than ignorance, the natural and inherent state of man. That He has not done so we may take as proof that the problem of how to produce a creature that should be a “free agent” and that should combine with capacity for knowledge the power to enjoy the process of its acquisition, required that the basis or raw material of his being should be such a mental organization as should possess the capability to receive knowledge without actual knowledge itself. If so, the bestowal of such an organization would involve the liability to its non-use or its wrong use, and would therefore leave the door open for the evil that has come.
Surely it was in God’s power to shut the door against evil?—In a sense that may be conceded: but what if evil was necessary for the educing of the highest good?
There you surprise me.—We cannot judge of the work of God till it is finished. The finish exhibited in the Apocalypse is this: “No more curse, no more p. 166 pain, no more death: all tears dried: the former things passed away.” We must keep this steadily in view in judging of the mission of the evil that is now so sorely upon the earth. It cannot be when the finish is reached that there can be any difficulty with regard to an evil that shall have passed as entirely away as a disturbed dream. No transient evil can be too great that is essential to the process of reaching such unmixed good.
But it is the use of evil at all that is my difficulty.—It need not be a difficulty. Even if we could not see the part it contributes, the fact of its employment would be sufficient for docile intelligence to allow its place in the works of Omnipotence. Evil whets the appreciation of good. Sorrow paves the way for gladness. Sin and death reveal the greatness and holiness of God, and afford scope for the illustration of His kindness. The very darkness is the necessary background for light, and gives the blue sky where there would be blinding glare. Everything is right in its own place.