minds have worn themselves out in such attempts with no result whatever.  The great Leibnitz attempted an enterprise of this nature.  His system consisted in extenuating evil as far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary.  He failed.  The strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft of Voltaire.

     Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,
     Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,
     Poor comforters! in your attempts I see
     Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee! 
     O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell! 
     Ye cry in doleful accents—­“All is well!”—­
     And all things at the great deceit rebel. 
     Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,
     Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare. 
     The gloomy truth admits of no disguise—­
     Evil is on the earth![172]

For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney.  Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of difficulties.  Let us listen to a modern poet: 

     Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,
       Came evil from thy forming hand,
       That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand
     Aghast before the sight abhorred?

     And how can deeds so hideous glare
       Beneath the beams of holy light,
       That on the lips of hapless wight
     Dies at their view the trembling prayer?

     Why do the many parts agree
       So scantly in thy work sublime? 
       And what is pestilence, or crime,
     Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?[173]

We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this argument, namely,—­The presence of evil in the world is not compatible with the idea of the goodness of God.  Here is the objection in all its force.  And what is the answer?  Simply this, that God did not create evil.  It was not He who brought crime into the world.  He created liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in rebellion against the law of its being.  I borrow from Jean-Jacques Rousseau the development of this thought.  “If man,” says he, “is a free agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely enters not into the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it.  The Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty which He gives him.  He has made him free in order that he may do not evil but good by choice.  To murmur because God does not hinder him from doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature, attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and gave him a right to virtue.  What! in order to prevent man from being wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct and made a mere brute?  No; God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.