“If he believes
  Might can exist with neither will nor love,
  In God’s case—­what he names now Nature’s Law—­
  While in himself he recognizes love
  No less than might and will,"[B]

[Footnote B:  Death in the Desert.]

man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being “First, last, and best of things.”

  “Since if man prove the sole existent thing
  Where these combine, whatever their degree,
  However weak the might or will or love,
  So they be found there, put in evidence—­
  He is as surely higher in the scale
  Than any might with neither love nor will,
  As life, apparent in the poorest midge,
  Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas’ self,
  Given to the nobler midge for resting-place! 
  Thus, man proves best and highest—­God, in fine."[A]

[Footnote A:  A Death in the Desert.]

To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be no difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with weakness, as infinitely above all natural power.  Divinity will be known to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous, but in moral or spiritual perfection.  If God were indifferent to the evil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripen into all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world, though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would be higher than God.  But we have still to account for the possibility of man’s assuming an attitude implied in the consciousness that, while he is without power, God is without pity, and in the despair which springs from his hate of evil.  How comes it that human nature rises above its origin, and is able—­nay, obliged—­to condemn the evil which God permits?  Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a dignity that God Himself cannot share?  Is the moral consciousness which, by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,

  “Man’s own work, his birth of heart and brain,
  His native grace, no alien gift at all?”

We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma.  Either the pity and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man’s own creation; or else God, who made man’s heart to love, has given to man something higher than He owns Himself.  But both of these alternatives are impossible.

“Here’s the touch that breaks the bubble.”

The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, and therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a loveless world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.