man. As in a forest, we see trees of every shape and size, per- fectly and imperfectly developed, and this diversity is itself a good ; so among men there are some more, and some less conformed to the ideal standard of reason and right, but this is not an evil. It is only diversity of development ; the manifold forms of an endless life.
Others say that what we call sin is the necessaiy condition of virtue. There can he no action without reaction ; no strength without obstacles to be overcome ; no pleasure without pain ; and no virtue without vice. Moral goodness is mastery over moral evil. There cannot be one without the other. All would be dead and motionless, a stagnant sea, were it not for this antag- onism.
Others again say that sin has only a subjective reality. It is analogous to pain. Some things affect us agreeably, others dis- agreeably ; some excite self-approbation, some disapprobation. But that is simply our own concern. God no more participates in our judgments than He does in our sensations.
Others do not so expressly deny the existence of sin. They admit that it is not only evil to us, but that it involves guilt in the sight of God, and therefore should be punished. Nevertheless, they rep- resent it as arising necessarily out of the constitution of our nature. All creatures are subject to the law of development — to a " Wer- den." Perfection is a goal to be reached by a gradual process. This law controls every sphere of life, vegetable, animal, intellect- ual, and moral. Every plant is developed from a seed. Our bodies begin in a germ ; infancy is feeble and suffering. Our minds are subject to the same law. They are, of necessity, open to error. Our moral life is not an exception to this rule. Moral beings, at least those constituted as we are, cannot avoid sin. It is incident to tiieir nature and condition. It is to be outlived and overcome. If the world be so constituted and so directed that there is a con- tinued progress toward perfection ; if all evil, and especially all sin, be eliminated by this progress, the wisdom, goodness, and holiness of God will be thereby vindicated. Bruch ^ asks, " Why has God (der heilige Urgeist) brought men into the world with only the potentiality of freedom (which with him includes perfec- tion), and not with the actuality, but left that perfection to be at- tained by a long process of developmeiit ? The only answer to that question," he says, is, " that development lies in the very na- ture of the finite. It must strive toward perfection by an endless
1 Eigenschq/len, p. 266.
432 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine Attributes.
process, without evei* reaching it in its fulness. We might as well ask why God has ordained that the tree should be developed fronti a germ ? or why the earth itself has passed through so many periods of change, ever from a lower to a higher state ? or why the universe is made up of things finite, and is itself finite ? " He adds the further consideration, " that God, with the })ossIbility of sin, has provided redemption by which it is to be overcome, ban- ished, and swallowed up." " The annihilation of sin is the design of the whole work of redemption. ' The Son of Man is come that He might destroy the works of the devil.' (1 John iii. 8.) Sin, however, will disappear only when not the individual alone, bilt when the whole race of man has reached the goal of its destina- tion, — and when," he asks, " will this happen ? " ^ That question he leaves unanswered. On a following page, however, he quotes Klaiber ^ as saying : " Divine revelation gives the only possible and satisfactory answer to the question, how the existence of sin can be reconciled with the holiness of God, an answer which satis- fies not only our pious feelings, but our anthi-opological and theo- logical speculations, in that.it makes known the truth that God determined on the creation of beings, who, as free agents, were subject to the possibility of sin, and who were through their own fault sunk in evil, in connection with redemption ; so that sin is only a transient, vanishing phenomenon in the development of finite beings. This is the great idea which pervades the whole of revelation ; yea, which is its essence and its goal."
It is obvious that all theories which make sin a necessary evil, destroy its nature as revealed in Scripture, and in our own con- sciousness.
jSi7i considered as the Necessary/ Means of the Crreatest Grood.
A much more plausible theory, belonging to the class of those which virtually, although not professedly, destroy the nature of sin, is that which regards it as the necessary means of the greatest good. Sin, in itself, is an evil ; relatively, it is a good. The uni- verse is better with it than without it. In itself, it is an evil that the smaller animals should be devoured by the larger ; but as this is necessary to prevent the undue development of animal life, and as it ministers to the higher forms thereof, it becomes a benevolent arrangement. The amputation of a limb is an evil ; but if neces- sary to save life, it is a good. Wars are dreadful evils, yet the
hajlen, pp. 269, 270.
2 Von der Siinde und Erlosuny, p. 21, Stud, der Ev. Geistl. Wiirlembergs, vol. ii. part 8, Stuttgart, 1835.