it good or kind for obeying me? No. Why? Because it cannot disobey; and for this reason, it cannot properly be said to obey. Or, again, take the case of the lower animals. At first sight it might seem as if some animals could lay more claim than many men can do to the possession of a conscience. But it is probable, after all, that their best actions are done merely from an instinctive and irresistible impulse of affection. They can also, of course, be kept from doing certain things by the knowledge that if they do them they will be punished. But as they have no language, properly so called, it is not likely they could ever have reached the conception of moral good; and without this there can be no such thing as right or wrong conduct. Animals may be taught not to steal, by being whipped if they do steal; but they cannot be taught to refrain from it on the ground of its being an infringement of another's rights. For these reasons they cannot do wrong; and for these reasons it is equally clear they cannot do right. Beings incapable of sin must be ignorant of the difference between right and wrong, or must be destitute of the power of choice, or must always be impelled by irresistible instincts. In none of these cases could their conduct be really moral or right. Had God, therefore, created only beings of this description, He would, it is true, have prevented evil; but He would, at the same time, also have prevented good. Nothing higher could have been called into existence than inanimate objects and brutes. 2d, Suppose that God, after giving us a moral nature, had shielded us from all temptation-what would have been the result? Why, this? We could never have attained to the possession of a good character, for that comes only through the conquest of temptation. We might have been innocent as animals but never upright as men. You mothers, as you look into the faces of your infants, sometimes wish that you could always shield them from the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is a natural, but an unwise, wish. Their present innocence is a quality they possess in common with stocks and stones. If they are ever to rise into the moral sphere, they must be tried and tempted. You should rather wish for them victory over temptation, temptation no matter how fierce and long protracted, no matter though it call for resistance "even unto blood," so long only as it is conquered at the last. There must come moral conflict, painful no doubt, but glorious to all who are to deserve the name of men, still more to all who are to be accounted worthy of being called sons of God. Let the trees of which Adam and Eve were allowed to eat represent lawful pleasures, the tree of which they were forbidden to eat represent unlawful pleasures, and the command of God represent the voice of conscience, then the account of Adam's fall will be for us a literal history of our own. Temptation has in our case led to a fall, to many falls. We have all fallen, and are all constantly falling, by eating forbidden fruit. But, thank God, the temptations which have led to our fall may lead to our rising again, ay, and rising to a height to which, apart from temptation, we could never have attained. would have been better for us, no doubt, to have been tempted without falling; but it is better to have fallen, and to be able to rise again, than never to have been tempted at all. All moral creatures in the universe must be tempted, or their moral nature would be thrown away upon them. Even Christ had to be made perfect through suffering; and much of this suffering, we may be sure, arose from temptations to evil. There is a glory possible for you and me, my brother— It a regal godlike glory which, but for temptation, could never have been ours, any more than it could be attained by zoophytes or machines. "To him that overcometh," says Christ," will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on His throne." But, 3d, it is said God might have forcibly prevented man from yielding to temptation, either by giving him a will strong enough inevitably to resist, or by compelling him on every occasion to use his will in the right way. To say this is, however, to talk nonsense; for it is the essential nature of a will that it can choose either of two alternative and opposite courses. No one can be compelled to use his will in a particular way. That would be to deprive him of his will altogether. So long as he has a will, there is in virtue thereof a choice of conduct open to him; for will is but another name for the power to choose. God could of course have refrained from making us free, but then we should not have been men, we should only have been animals or machines. God could at any moment deprive us of our will, and compel us to act in some definite manner. But we should then, for the time, cease to be men. A moral agent must be a free agent; and a free agent cannot have his will used for him or tied up for him by another. If God used a man's will for him, or prevented him from using it in the way he preferred, the man would be no longer responsible for his conduct; and so he would be no better than a piece of unreasoning matter. If you keep your boy's hands out of the cupboard by tying them behind his back, it is quite true that he will not steal the jam; but is there any worth in his honesty? Not a bit. While his hands are tied, and so far as the cupboard is concerned, he, as a moral agent, does not exist. He cannot do wrong, and therefore he cannot do right. So that we can agree with Spinoza, though on different grounds, that "to ask why God did not give Adam a more perfect will, is as absurd as to ask why the circle has not been endowed with the properties of the sphere." God could not have given Adam a more perfect will. Every will is a perfect will. The perfection of a will consists, not in being able to choose only one course, but in being able to choose either of two alternative and opposite courses. Right-doing is right and praiseworthy just because it implies that wrong might have been done but was not. John Stuart Mill ar |