PER NATURAM AD DEUM 



63 



a result, but that result will cmiie as sure- 

 ly as a ball now falls to the grouud when 

 unsupported. He cannot give individuals 

 or nations, which are t)nl}' a collection of 

 individuals, free will, and at the same 

 time stop them from doing' what they 

 want to do. With all His Omnipotence 

 He could not have stopped the Civil War, 

 and at the same time have decided the 

 human question that the war itself de- 

 cided. Neither the North nor the South 

 was wholh' right nor entirely wrong- 

 Both were right, and the clashing rights 

 had to work themselves out in a way that 

 is ultimately shown to be the best for 

 humanity. H He had interposed by di- 

 vine power at any time during the Civil 

 War, as He could have done, since He 

 had already created gravitation, He could 

 not have stopped that zvar mid at the 

 same tune have settled the question from 

 the hit man point of vieiv. Humanity had 

 to settle that question- He cannot create 

 righteous human beings and deprive 

 them of the ability to do evil. That 

 would be to create mere dummies. The 

 thoughtful person must see that in a 

 world in which there is no possibility of 

 €vil, there can be no possibility of right- 

 eousness- It is equally true that in a 

 world where there is no possibility of a 

 struggle, there can be no development of 

 strength. The stones of the field never 

 struggle with another ; the stones of the 

 field never develop an individual strength ; 

 they are merely acted on by the universal 

 power of gravitation. A struggle for 

 supremacy must give pain to the under 

 dog in the fight, and likewise more or 

 less to the upper dog. But dogs that 

 never struggle would not be dogs as we 

 know dogs. The tooth and the claw in 

 such conditions would be useless, and 

 would never have been developed. 



Health is meaningless without the pos- 

 sibility of sickness. Joy is meaningless 

 without the possibility of sorrow, as cold 

 is only a term for the absence of heat. If 

 everything in the world had the same 

 temperature, the terms heat and cold 

 would be meaningless. The most thought- 

 less man cannot but perceive the good- 

 ness, the righteousness, the marvelous 

 power of a Creator that could produce a 

 world in which there are extremes, the 

 possibilities of health and sickness, of joy 

 and sorrow, of goodness and of sin- Any- 

 thing that should come short of that pos- 

 sibility would be dead, inert space. One 



may well question whether or not the 

 Creator Himself in His Omnipotence 

 could have created a world in which 

 there should be none of these possibilities 

 of extremes. Are we not giving the 

 Almighty unkind treatment, when we ask 

 Him to abrogate His beneficent laws, 

 when we clamor for the undoing of all 

 that He has done for the good of human- 

 ity? His beneficent laws are working 

 successfully in the struggle for exist- 

 ence in the daisy field ; in the contest be- 

 tween the tiger and the man ; between 

 the Allies and the Teutons. In some 

 struggles the cause of the contest may 

 not at the time be known. Time and again 

 such examples are visible in the world 

 of nature and of humanity. When the 

 Diplodocus struggled with Triceratops 

 who that stood by and saw one a victor 

 could understand the matter at stake ? At 

 present no one doubts the beneficent 

 effect of those ancient struggles- We 

 human beings are now engaged in a 

 variety of similar contests, the chief of 

 which is the struggle between nations. 

 Even thousands of years may be needed 

 to prepare the right perspective, and to 

 clarify the puddle. 



Minister, scientist, agnostic, for a 

 moment put yourself in the place of the 

 Almighty, and imagine how you would 

 feel- Say that you are the benefactor of 

 the race, and have provided a perfect 

 home for a certain family under condi- 

 tions that you know are the best for that 

 family, and practically the only ones that 

 can by any possibility be for its welfare. 

 You having so decided, what would prob- 

 ably be your thoughts and feelings if 

 that entire family should begin to clamor 

 for a change and to say, "See, here, you 

 do not exist-" 



You have established affairs so wisely 

 that you are under no necessity for a con- 

 stant display of your nature in the ad- 

 justment of those affairs. Like a com- 

 petent factory superintendent, you do 

 your work so thoroughly that you seem 

 to make no effort to accomplish your 

 tasks. 



I wonder if the Almighty does not 

 sometimes, perhaps all the time, feel the 

 ingratitude of human beings who com- 

 plain because He has given pain as a 

 guidepost. Who has ordained that strug- 

 gling shall develop strength, Who has 

 allowed evil surroundings to exist so that 

 rig-hteousness may finally abound, and 

 then is constantly asked to make changes 



