Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/161

Letter 14] that the simple and unlearned cannot depend upon it without the aid of scholars and specialists?"

My reply is that, as long as men reason in this way, assuming that Revelation ought to have been conveyed by some perfect medium, and therefore that it must have been conveyed by some perfect medium, so long it will be as impossible to refute them as it was to refute the Aristotelian astronomers who argued that "The planets ought to move in perfect curves; and the circle is a perfect curve; and therefore the planets must move in circles." We are like children crying for the moon if we demand that this world, or that anything in this world, shall be arranged as if the world were the best of all possible worlds. It is not the best possible world, and we know it is not. Some things attest the glory of God more perfectly than others; but nothing attests it quite perfectly. You might as well hope to remove refraction from the atmosphere, as to remove from the human mind the prejudices which compel and always have compelled mankind to exaggerate and misrepresent divine truth by forcing us to think that God must have acted as we should have acted had we been in His place.

If you and I were omnipotent and had to re-make the Universe, I suppose there is no question but we should make man perfectly good (according to our notions of goodness) and that we should force him to remain good. And if you or I were omnipotent and had to reveal anything to men, we should write it large and clear in the sky, or in the heart, legible to all without effort, so that men should be forced to understand it. But God has neither done this nor anything like it. Therefore, since in other respects He has departed so very far from our notions of the best method, we cannot be surprised if He has not composed the Old Testament quite in the manner which would commend itself to us as the best. From our point