tliere be no feeling in God, there can be no love. That He pro- duces happiness is no proof of love. The earth does tliat uncon- sciously and without design. Men often render otliers happy from vanity, from fear, or from caprice. Unless the production of hap- piness can be referred, not only to a conscious intention, but to a purpose dictated by kind feeling, it is no proof of benevolence. And unless the children of God are the objects of his complacency and deliglit, they are not the objects of his love. He may be cold, insensible, indifferent, or even unconscious ; He ceases to be God in the sense of the Bible, and in the sense in which we need a God, unless He can love as well as know and act. The philo- sophical objection against ascribing feeling to God, bears, as we have seen, with equal force against the ascription to Him of knowledge or will. If that objection be valid, He becomes to us simply an unknown cause, what men of science call force ; that to which all phenomena are to be referred, but of which we know nothing. We must adhere to the truth in its Scriptural form, or we lose it altogether. We must believe that God is love in the sense in which that word comes home to every human heart. The Scriptures do not mock us when they say, " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." (Ps. ciii. 13.) He meant what He said when He proclaimed Himself as " The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth." (Ex. xxxiv. 6.) " Beloved," says the Apostle, ." let us love one another: for love is of God ; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God ; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." (1 John iv. 7—11.) The word love has the same sense throughout this passage. God is love ; and love in Him is, in all that is essential to its nature, what love is in us. Herein we do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
B. The Existence of Evil.
How can the existence of evil, physical and moral, be reconciled
with the benevolence and holiness of a God infinite in his -wisdom
and power? This is the question which has exercised the reason
and tried the faith of men in all ages of the world. Such is the
430 PAET L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine A rTKiBurES
distance between God and man, such the feebleness of our powers, and such the hmited range of our vision, it might seem reasonable to leave this question to be answered by God himself. If a child cannot rationally sit in judgment on the conduct of his parents, nor a peasant comprehend the affairs of an empire, we certainly are not competent to call God to account, or to ask of Him the reason of his ways. We might rest satisfied with the assurance that the Judge of all the earth must do right. These considerations, however, have not availed to prevent speculation on this subject. The existence of evil is constantly brought forward by sceptics as an argument against religion ; and it is constantly in the minds of believers as a difficulty and a doubt. While it is our duty to obey the injunction, " Be still and know that I am God," it is no less our duty to protest against those solutions of this great problem which either destroy the nature of sin or the nature of God.
Theories which involve the Denial of Sin.
Most of the theories proposed to account for the existence of evil, come under one or the other of the three following classes : First, those which really or virtually deny the existence of evil in the world. What we call evil is distinguished as physical and moral, pain and sin. There is some plausibility in the argument to prove that pain is not necessarily an evil. It is necessary to the safety of sentient creatures. But pain exists far beyond the bounds of this necessity. Such is the amount and variety of suffering in the world, of the just and of the unjust, of infants and of adults, that no philosophy can smother the conviction that the misery which weighs so heavily on the children of men, is an appalling evil. There is no such trial to our faith, as to see an infant suffer- ing excruciating pain. If, however, pain could be removed from the category of evil, sin is not so easily disposed of. The world lies in wickedness. The history of man is, to a large degree, the history of sin. If God be holy, wise, and omnipotent, how can we account for this widely extended and long-continued prevalence of sin?
One solution is sought in the denial that sin is an evil. In other words, it is denied that there is any such thing as sin. What we so regard is, as some maintain, nothing more than limitation of being. To be free from sin, we must be free from limitation, i. e., jnfinite. It is not an evil that one tree is smaller, less beautiful, or less valuable than others ; or that a plant has not the sensitive life of an animal ; or that all animals have not the rational powers of