The reasoning here appears as unassailable as it is obvious.  If, as the writer goes on to say, we see a rabbit panting in the iron jaws of a spring trap, and in consequence abhor the devilish nature of the being who, with full powers of realizing what pain means, can deliberately employ his whole faculties of invention in contriving a thing so hideously cruel; what are we to think of a Being who, with yet higher faculties of thought and knowledge, and with an unlimited choice of means to secure His ends, has contrived untold thousands of mechanisms no less diabolical?  In short, so far as Nature can teach us, or ‘observation can extend,’ it does appear that the scheme, if it is a scheme, is the product of a Mind which differs from the more highly evolved type of human mind in that it is immensely more intellectual without being nearly so moral.  And the same thing is indicated by the rough and indiscriminate manner in which justice is allotted—­even if it can be said to be allotted at all.  When we contrast the certainty and rigour with which any offence against ‘physical law’ is punished by Nature (no matter though the sin be but one of ignorance), with the extreme uncertainty and laxity with which she meets any offence against ‘moral law,’ we are constrained to feel that the system of legislation (if we may so term it) is conspicuously different from that which would have been devised by any intelligence which in any sense could be called ‘anthropopsychic.’

The only answer to these difficulties open to the natural theologian is that which is drawn from the constitution of the human mind.  It is argued that the fact of this mind having so large an ingredient of morality in its constitution may be taken as proof that its originating source is likewise of a moral character.  This argument, however, appears to me of a questionable character, seeing that, for anything we can tell to the contrary, the moral sense may have been given to, or developed in, man simply on account of its utility to the species—­just in the same way as teeth in the shark or poison in the snake.  If so, the occurrence of the moral sense in man would merely furnish one other instance of the intellectual, as distinguished from the moral, nature of God; and there seems to be in itself no reason why we should take any other view.  The mere fact that to us the moral sense seems such a great and holy thing, is doubtless (under any view) owing to its importance to the well-being of our species.  In itself, or as it appears to other possible beings intellectual like ourselves, but existing under unlike conditions, the moral sense of man may be regarded as of no more significance than the social instincts of bees.  More particularly may this consideration apply to the case of a Mind existing, according to the theological theory of things, wholly beyond the pale of anything analogous to those social relations out of which, according to the scientific theory of evolution, the moral sense has been developed in ourselves[28].