EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS (_Continued_)
There is probably no more serious aspect of the popular philosophy
which declares so confidently, "There is no will that is not God's
will," than that, while professing to be a Gospel of sweetness and
light, it in reality plunges us into the very depths of pessimism by
making God Himself "ultimately responsible for all the evil and
suffering in the world." From such a position, from such premises as
these, there is only one step to such conclusions as have been actually
drawn:--
It is His world, remember; He made it, and He is omnipotent. . . If
creation does not please the Creator, why did He not make it better?
If it is wayward and intractable, it can be no more than He expected,
or ought to have expected. Wherein consists His right to punish us for
our transgressions? Suppose we challenge it; what will He say in
defence?
We may shrink with distaste from such wild and whirling words; but if
it be true that "there is no will that is not God's will"--if whatever
takes place in the universe expresses that almighty will--they are as
rational in their very vehemence as Omar's lines are rational in their
melancholy:--
{102}
O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
O Thou, who man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
It is only when we clearly recognise that man is other than a mere
phase or mode of the one Eternal Being; that he has been endowed with
individual existence and individual will, and therefore with individual
responsibility--and that for the express purpose of realising his
highest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the
facts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which
reaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High,
challenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those
"helpless pieces of the game He plays," impotent items in that unending
spectacle--
Which for the pastime of Eternity
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.
But if it is true that God bestowed freedom upon us because only as
free agents could we learn to love and do the right for its own sake;
if it is true that the struggle which we have to wage against our lower
impulses has the wholly benevolent object of enabling us to achieve the
glory of a perfected character, it has also to be borne in mind that
under no {103} circumstances can character be conceived otherwise than
as the "result" of growth. That is to say, God Himself could not call
moral perfection into being ready-made, by a mere _fiat_, and that for
the same reason which precludes omnipotence itself from making two
straight lines to enclose a space, _i.e._, because the idea involves a
self-contradiction. So true is this that we read even of our Saviour
that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which
He suffered," and in this manner was "made perfect." Character in its
very definition is the result of many deliberate exercises of a free
will; and if the evolution of character was an object dearer to God
than the highest mechanical or animal perfection, that object could
have been secured in no other way than by this particular endowment.
And here we shall also find the reply to the very natural inquiry why
God does not, as He might, intervene or frustrate the evil designs of
wrong-doers. Why does a good God allow His intentions to be set at
defiance by those whom the prophet described as drawing iniquity with
cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope? It would not
matter so much, we sometimes bitterly reflect, if the sinner injured
only himself by his wickedness; but how often are the innocent made to
suffer by the devices of the unscrupulous and selfish! Why, we repeat,
this strange non-intervention of the Most High on behalf of His own
cause? {104} On this it must be remarked in the first place that those
who accept God's transcendence will be careful not to rule out _a
priori_ the possibility of such Divine action as, regarded from our
point of view, would have to be described as intervention; the question
whether such action has ever taken place, is a question of fact, and
the view that at particular junctures God has thus actively
"intervened" is at any rate capable of being strongly argued. But
admitting, as we think we must, that ordinary life does not show any
instances of such supernatural interposition--that a reckless financier
is allowed to enrich himself by cornering the wheat supply and sending
up the price of the people's bread; that a band of reactionaries may
arrest the course of reform and plunge a country back into darkness;
that a beneficent act of the legislature may be defeated by greedy
cunning--must we despair of solving the general problem which such
cases suggest?
We think, on the contrary, that the explanation may be legitimately
sought in what we conceive to have been the Divine intention in making
man free; that intention, the making of character, would obviously
suffer defeat by God throwing His weight--if we may use such a
phrase--into this scale as against that, furthering here and checking
there, for character, as we just said, can only result from the free
exercise and interplay of will with will. We may well imagine God's
mode of action to {105} resemble that of a human parent who entrusts a
growing child with a growing measure of liberty and responsibility,
well knowing that in the use of it he will have many a slip and
stumble, and occasionally hurt himself; such a parent will carefully
refrain from interference, preferring that the child should learn his
own lessons from his own mistakes, well knowing that we profit only by
the experience for which we ourselves have paid. No one will, of
course, pretend that such a reconciliation of the facts of sin with the
axiom or intuition of Divine all-goodness is other than incomplete; we
merely urge that, having regard to the magnitude and the complexity of
the subject it could not be otherwise. A theory, without accounting
for all the facts, may be true so far as it goes, correctly indicating
the way which, if we could pursue it further, would lead us into more
and fuller truth. No doubt, when that which is perfect is come, that
which is in part will be done away; but pending the advent of a
complete explanation, a partial one is not without all value.
Indeed, the very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that
incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a
reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially
relevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge
necessarily and immeasurably transcends ours, if He knows _more_ than
we, does it not follow {106} with equal certainty that He knows
_better_? Granted that we do not understand how this or that
dispensation of Providence fits in with the general belief in His
perfect goodness, our failure to understand no more disproves that
goodness than the similar failure of a child to comprehend why such and
such irksome tasks are imposed upon him by his parent, disproves the
wisdom and goodness which prompt the parent's act. The child _cannot_
understand; but where the relations are at all normal he acquiesces,
being on general grounds convinced that the parental commands aim at
his welfare, and that his parents, after all, know better than he. Is
the application so far to seek?
In the second place--turning now from the subject of sin to that of
evil generally--it may be worth while to remind ourselves of a fact
which seems to be forgotten by some of the impetuous arraigners of the
Deity, _viz._, that, after all, the problem is not a new one, which
they have suddenly discovered by dint of superior sagacity. What we
mean is this: the problem of evil as such is of anything but an
abstruse or remote nature, nor one requiring unusual philosophical
penetration to bring to light; on the contrary, pain and sorrow,
privation, adversity, death--these are experiences that have come
within the cognisance of all. If, then, the facts are neither so
remote nor so inconsiderable that men could have simply {107} forgotten
to take them into account in framing their estimates of the Divine
character, how is it, we ask, that they have arrived at and clung to
the belief in the benevolence of God at all? If the proof to the
contrary was so overpowering, why, as a matter of fact, has it _not_
overpowered them? Why should an unknown Hebrew singer have given
expression to this extraordinary sentiment, "Though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him"--and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by
millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The
early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security,
sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of
primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of
early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine
benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many
eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a keen
sensitiveness to evil and suffering of every kind with an unshakeable
trust in the lovingkindness of God, we shall scarcely accuse all this
cloud of witnesses of having simply drugged themselves and refused to
accept the evidence of their own senses. If men and women suffering
from anything rather than moral blindness or moral anaesthesia could,
and can, nevertheless believe with all their hearts in the Divine
Fatherhood, is not such a recurring circumstance significant in itself?
{108} Evidently, granting all the facts, more than one reading of the
facts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from
the world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly
proclaimed that God is good; is it an altogether unreasonable
hypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of
a deeper insight?
And this, in turn, suggests another thought, simple enough in itself,
yet not always borne in mind in connection with this particular
theme--_viz._, that we are never dealing with facts _per se_, but with
facts _plus_ our interpretation of them, which may be right or wrong,
but which, right or wrong, helps to decide in a very large measure what
the facts themselves shall mean to us. Our attitude towards the events
which befall us makes all the difference. If men have been ruined by
success, it is as true that men have been made by failure. If men have
deteriorated through ease and plenty, men have been stimulated to
effort through hardship and poverty. In a word, if there is much in
the burden, there is as much in the shouldering. But for Dante's
consecration of sorrow, the world would have lost the _Commedia
Divina_. But for a painful and permanently disabling accident, the
English Labour Movement would not have had one of its principal leaders
in Mr. Philip Snowden. And as for the influence of outward events and
environment generally, Mr. Chesterton may exaggerate in {109}
suggesting that everything good has been snatched from some
catastrophe, but he is certainly right when he says that "the most
dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment." On the
other hand, of an environment the reverse of commodious, it has been
observed:--
Logic would seem to say, "If God brings great pain on a man, it must
make the man revolt against God." But observation of facts compels us
to say, "No, on the contrary, nothing exercises so extraordinary an
influence in making men love God as the suffering of great pain at His
hands." Scientific thinking deals with facts as they are, not with _a
priori_ notions of what we should expect. And in this matter, the fact
as it is, is that goodness is evolved from pain more richly than from
any other source.[1]
We may think such a statement too absolute, and point to cases where
the effect of physical suffering has been altogether different; but if
it is true that in certain well-authenticated and not merely
exceptional instances such visitations have resulted in strengthened
faith and heightened goodness, our main contention is proved, namely,
that the attitude of the individual himself towards the events of his
life has much to do with determining what those events are to mean to
him. Instead of "Was the gift good?" we should more often ask, "Was
the recipient wise?" Pain is pain, and disaster is disaster; but the
spirit in which we meet them matters immensely.
{110}
But now we are confronted with a more fundamental question: Could not
God have obviated the phenomenon of pain altogether? Could He not have
made us incapable of feeling any but pleasant sensations? Mill, who in
his essay on _Nature_ devotes some--for him--almost vehement pages to
this subject, reaches the conclusion that "the only admissible moral
theory of Creation is that the Principle of Good _cannot_ at once and
altogether subdue the powers of evil" [2]; and in dealing with the same
topic in the essay on _Theism_, while admitting that "appearances do
not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to
produce pain," he holds to the view that its very existence shows the
power of God to be limited _ab extra_, by the material conditions under
which He works:--
The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it
susceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of
its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on
the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one
in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable
laws and indestructible properties of matter.[3]
Such a view of the case, as we have already said in our previous
chapter, is purely deistic; but we must now proceed to point out, with
great respect for so great an intellect as Mill's, that the supposition
which, he says, "avails nothing {111} on the theory of an omnipotent
Creator"--_viz._, that susceptibility to pleasure involves
susceptibility to pain--seems to us to fit and cover the facts
precisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not
two different things which could conceivably exist apart from each
other, but are only different manifestations of one and the same
capacity, _viz._, for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever.
We could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while _in_capable of
feeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, while
_in_sensible to musical discords; besides which, monotony of sensation
annihilates sensation. On this point we may invoke against the
pre-evolutionist Mill a modern scientific authority like Professor
Fiske, who expresses himself to the effect that "without the element of
antagonism there could be no consciousness, and therefore no world."
"It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth," he observes, "that
if there were no colour but red, it would be exactly the same thing as
if there were no colour at all. . . If our ears were to be filled with
one monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect
upon consciousness would be absolute silence. If our palates had never
come in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no
more of sweetness than of bitterness. If we had never felt physical
pain, we could not recognise physical pleasure. For {112} want of the
contrasted background, its pleasurableness would cease to exist. . .
We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness
of which cannot be gainsaid. _In a happy world there must be sorrow
and pain._" [4] And this necessity, we would add, does not follow from
God's failure to overcome any "inexorable laws and indestructible
properties _of matter_," but is implied in the inexorable laws _of
thought_--in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for
Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd.
But if the necessity of pain be thus admitted--a most important
admission--we may now take a step further ahead. Even Mill, as we just
saw, expressly disclaimed the notion of attributing physical evil to
malign intention on the Creator's part; what separates us from Mill is
that in our view the laws of nature, in inflicting pain, do not act
independently of God, but are His laws. Do those, it may be asked, who
allege His "indifference" in not interfering with the operation of the
forces of nature when they injure us, frame a very clear notion of the
way in which they think that God should, or might, manifest His
"interest"? On reflection it will be found that what they ask for--the
only possible alternative to an unbroken natural order--is such
constant miraculous interposition as would make that order
non-existent. But assuming that there {113} were no regular sequence
or uniformity to speak of--if we never knew whether the course of
nature might not be interrupted at any moment on somebody's
behalf--should we really be so much better off? Would humanity be
happier if chaos was substituted for order? Without seeking to
mitigate the suffering entailed by the unhindered action of nature's
forces, it is still certain that the sheer confusion of a world in
which law had been abrogated would be infinitely worse. Indeed, this
is to understate the case; for the fact is that in such a world all the
activities of life would be completely paralysed, and hence life
itself, as we have already had occasion to point out, could not be
carried on. But if the reign of natural law thus represents the only
set of conditions under which life is even possible; and if at the same
time this law, which operates all the time and never relaxes its hold,
is the expression of the will of God, how can we charge Him with
indifference? The truth is, on the contrary, that He is exercising His
care, not intermittently, by performing a miracle whenever things go
wrong, but continually, and without any interruption whatsoever. Were
His law other than steadfast, were there occasional or frequent
departures from it, were it possible to defy nature with impunity just
now and again, the results of such irregular action would be disastrous
in the extreme; it is because His will is constant, and His decrees
without {114} variableness, that we are able to learn and obey them,
and by obeying to master nature.
"But, after all, He made the laws, and He could have made different
ones." Certainly; but a moment's reflection will show that He could
not have made laws of _any_ kind, disobedience to which would have had
the same consequences as obedience. He might--for all we can say to
the contrary--have made strychnine nutritious, and wheat deadly to us;
but even in that case an indulgence in wheat would have brought about
the unpleasant effects at present associated with an overdose of _nux
vomica_. He might have made a raw, damp atmosphere, with easterly
winds, the most conducive to health; but even then it would have been
rash to take up one's residence in a warm, dry climate. Pain is an
indication that the processes of life are suffering some more or less
serious disturbance; given, therefore, any set of natural laws, and the
necessity of obeying them as the condition of life itself, and we see
that disobedience to them would always and inevitably mean pain. We
repeat that God might have made different laws; but whatever they were,
their breach must have recoiled upon the breaker.
Yet even if reflections like these demonstrate to us the necessity for
pain, we are still left to face those greater calamities and disasters
which sweep away human lives by the hundred and thousand, catastrophes
like the Sicilian {115} earthquakes, that are marked by an appalling
wantonness of destruction; must not such events as these also be
attributed to God, and how are they to be reconciled with His alleged
benevolence? Certainly, no one would attempt to minimise the horrors
of the Sicilian tragedy; the human mind is overwhelmed by the
suddenness, no less than the magnitude, of an upheaval of nature
resulting in the blotting-out of whole flourishing communities. And
yet we venture to say, paradoxical though it sounds, that it is, partly
at least, owing to a certain lack of imagination that such an event
looms so immense in our thoughts. Most of us do not make the ordinance
of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not
specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population
of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by
the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in
the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those
who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most,
a few decades. So, then, the whole point in our arraignment is
this--It would not have been cruel had these deaths been spread over a
period of time, but it is cruel that they should have taken place
simultaneously; it would not have been cruel had the victims of the
earthquake died of illnesses--in many cases prolonged and painful--but
it is cruel {116} that death should have come upon them swiftly,
instantaneously, without menace or lingering pain; it would not have
been cruel had children survived to mourn their parents, husbands their
wives, brother the loss of brother, as in the ordinary course--but it
is cruel that by dying in the same hour they were spared the pang of
parting. We repeat that it is because we ordinarily use our
imaginations too little that we are so apt to lose our balance and
sense of proportion in the presence of these catastrophes; and it may
be permissible to point out that there is probably, quality for
quality, and quantity for quantity, more grey, hopeless suffering, more
wretchedness and tragedy, in London to-day than was caused by the
Sicilian catastrophe--suffering and wretchedness that are due not to
nature, but to sin, though not necessarily on the sufferer's part.
And there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of
these dire visitations. While every instinct of humanity inspires us
with sympathy for the victims buried under the ruins of Messina and
Reggio, it is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the soil on
those coasts is volcanic, and liable to such commotions; if men will
take the risk of living in such localities, we may pity them when the
disaster comes, but we cannot very fitly impeach Providence. There is
a village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by
avalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year
material is visibly accumulating for a third deadly fall, and when it
takes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispassionate
cruelty of nature. Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has
overwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human
heedlessness proves incurable. If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of
the soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, wooden
structures, at a reasonable distance from the shore, the effects of
earthquake and tidal wave would not have been one hundredth part as
terrible; yet Messina is being re-built on its former site, and
apparently in the old style of architecture--a proceeding which simply
invites a repetition of the same kind of disaster. It is literally
true that these greater calamities are in nearly every instance capable
of being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious
instance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines
and consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced
by a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved
cultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so
forth. But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than
to bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in
directing and subduing the forces of nature.
We are well aware that what has been written in the pages of this
chapter is no {118} more than a series of scattered hints; we do not
for a moment imagine that, in the aggregate, they amount to more than a
most fragmentary resolution of the difficulty presented by the reality
of evil--indeed, we have already expressed our belief that a full
solution must in the nature of things lie beyond our ken. But if it
should appear from the foregoing considerations that some aspects of
our problem--such as the existence of sin and of pain--are not as
irreconcilable with the goodness of God as may have seemed to be the
case, reflection should lead us to the reasonable hope that if we
understood more, we should receive fuller and fuller proof of the truth
that God is Love. And when we remember that that Love shines out most
brightly from the Cross, and that the world's greatest tragedy has been
the world's greatest blessing, the turning-point in the history of the
race, we may well hush our impatience, refrain over-confident
criticisms, and commit ourselves to the Father's hands even while we
can only see His purposes as in a glass, darkly. We may believe, with
the psalmist of old, that by and by we "shall behold His face in
_righteousness_; we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with His
likeness."
[1] R. A. Armstrong, _God and the Soul_, pp. 161-162.
[2] _Op. cit._, p. 21.
[3] _Ibid_, p. 82.
[4] _Through Nature to God_, pp. 36, 37.
{119}