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the sub -sensible world. There we touch upon causes, first, 
mediate, and final. It does not matter that the relation of 
cause and effect is often obscure. Could we have looked 
upon our planet in the Carboniferous era, who could have seen 
reflected in that murky atmosphere the coal-grate glowing in 
our dwellings, the furnace in our factories ? We are living in 
an unfinished system, an era of the evolution of phenomena, 
and, as I have said, the development of the ideas that lie 
at the back of phenomena. 
Neither does it disparage Teleology to point to the evil 
that is in the world. Moral evil is the product of man's free 
agency. But free will is the highest endowment of a rational 
creature. The power of moral choice makes man akin to the 
Infinite and the Absolute; and moral evil is a perversion of 
this most illustrious attribute of being, and the possibility of 
perversion lies in the nature of free will, and gives to virtue 
its worth and its glory. Hence it may be that moral evil is 
incidental, in respect of divine prevention, to the best possible 
system. 
As to physical evil, this is but partial and relative. Our 
own experience testifies that this often serves to discipline 
the intellect of man, to put fibre into his will, and train him 
to noble and heroic action in subjugating Nature to the 
service of the human family. The very doctrine of Natural 
Selection shows of how much worth to man is the struggle for 
existence as a moral element in the development of character. 
Here, too, comes in the fact that the system is unfinished. 
Things that seem rrntoward because unknown may have a 
brighter end : “from seeming evil still educing good." 
Science is teaching this, especially in chemistry, by trans- 
forming what once was feared as hurtful and hostile to man 
into some higher ministry of the Beautiful and the Useful, 
ordered by wisdom and beneficence. What serviceable dyes, 
what exquisite tints, are evolved from the noisome refuse of 
coal-tar ! 
And just this service should science render if Teleology is 
true. For if there be a Creator, He must be spirit, and 
apprehensible only by spirit. Hence, the more we are 
developed in mind by science, and the more we penetrate 
through science to the silent, impalpable forces of Nature, the 
nearer shall we come to Him who is invisible ; till, with Dante, 
emerging into the light Etcrne, we can say : — 
“ And now was turning my desire and will, 
Even as a wheel that equally is moved, 
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.” 
