The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches-2 [123]
There are difficulties in everything. Yet we are sure that something must be true. If revelation speaks on the subject of the origin of evil it speaks only to discourage dogmatism and temerity. In the most ancient, the most beautiful, and the most profound of all works on the subject, the Book of Job, both the sufferer who complains of the divine government, and the injudicious advisers who attempt to defend it on wrong principles, are silenced by the voice of supreme wisdom, and reminded that the question is beyond the reach of the human intellect. St Paul silences the supposed objector, who strives to force him into controversy, in the same manner. The church has been, ever since the apostolic times, agitated by this question, and by a question which is inseparable from it, the question of fate and free-will. The greatest theologians and philosophers have acknowledged that these things were too high for them, and have contended themselves with hinting at what seemed to be the most probable solution. What says Johnson? "All our effort ends in belief that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession that the reason cannot be found." What says Paley? "Of the origin of evil no universal solution has been discovered. I mean no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint.--The consideration of general laws, although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly, which I think it does, rests in views disproportionate to our faculties, and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account for the obscurity of the subject, than to supply us with distinct answers to our difficulties." What says presumptuous ignorance? "No doubt whatever exists as to the origin of evil." It is remarkable that Mr Sadler does not tell us what his solution is. The world, we suspect, will lose little by his silence. He falls on the reviewer again. "Though I have shown," says he, "and on authorities from which none can lightly differ, not only the cruelty and immorality which this system necessarily involves, but its most revolting feature, its gross partiality, he has wholly suppressed this, the most important part of my argument; as even the bare notice of it would have instantly exposed the sophistry to which he has had recourse. If, however, he would fairly meet the whole question, let him show me that 'hydrophobia,' which he gives as an example of the laws of God and nature, is a calamity to which the poor alone are liable; or that 'malaria,' which, with singular infelicity, he has chosen as an illustration of the fancied evils of population, is a respecter of persons." We said nothing about this argument, as Mr Sadler calls it, merely because we did not think it worth while: and we are half ashamed to say anything about it now. But, since Mr Sadler is so urgent for an answer, he shall have one. If there is evil, it must be either partial or universal. Which is the better of the two? Hydrophobia, says this great philosopher, is no argument against the divine goodness, because mad dogs bite rich and poor alike; but if the rich were exempted, and only nine people suffered for ten who suffer now, hydrophobia would forthwith, simply because it would produce less evil than at present, become an argument against the divine goodness! To state such a proposition, is to refute it. And is not the malaria a respecter of persons? It infests Rome. Does it infest London? There are complaints peculiar to the tropical countries. There are others which are found only in mountainous districts; others which are confined to marshy regions; others again which run in particular families. Is not this partiality? Why is it more inconsistent with the divine goodness that poor men should suffer an evil from which rich men are exempt, than that a particular portion of the community should inherit gout, scrofula, insanity, and other maladies? And are there no miseries under which, in fact, the poor alone are suffering? Mr Sadler himself acknowledges, in this very paragraph, that there