"Very well, then," said Mr. Wilton; "I will suggest the answer. Does the world seem as if fitted up to be the dwelling-place of holy beings?"

"I have never thought of the question before," said Ansel; "but it seems to me that many things in this world would give pain even to angels if they lived here with bodies like ours."

"I agree with you, Ansel. If men were sinless and holy as the angels of heaven, many things in this world would bring them distress. But does it seem reasonable that the world was designed merely as a place of punishment for men by reason of their wickedness?"

"Some men are not wicked," replied Samuel. "There have always been men willing to die rather than disobey G.o.d. Surely, G.o.d does not punish such men. And many beautiful and pleasant things are found in the world--arrangements plainly designed for the welfare and happiness of men."

"I think you are right, Samuel. But, without asking further questions, I will give you the conclusions to which my study upon this subject has brought me, and some of the reasons for those conclusions.

"This world was made chiefly as the dwelling-place of man. The world was not planned merely as the abode of brute animals. Men are n.o.bler than the brutes. Men have permanent interests and advantages. Aside from the glory of G.o.d, men are an end unto themselves. To become and be _men_ is the n.o.blest object of human life, but the animal tribes exist for the use and benefit of others. To be an end to itself, a creature must be immortal; but the brutes exist for the use and advantage of man, live out their transient life, and exist no more. This is the view presented in the sacred Scriptures. G.o.d gave to man lordship over the earth--not only over the soil to subdue it, and over the great forces of Nature to bring them into subjection for human advantage, but also over the brute creation, 'over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' I conclude also that G.o.d did not prepare this world as a prison-house and place of punishment for rebels against his government. Too many pleasant things abound for me to believe that. The pleasant breezy air, the glorious sunlight, the refreshing showers, the treasures of mineral wealth stored up in the earth, the fertile land and golden wheat, the beauty spread over all nature, the sweet consciousness of existence, so that just to live and act is joy, and the comfort and hope of immortal pleasure enjoyed by truly Christian men,--all these things, and many more, a.s.sure me that not the subtle shrewdness of a tormentor nor the unmingled justice of an inexorable judge, but the heart of a kind and loving Father, planned our earthly dwelling-place. You said, Samuel, with truth, that there are many pious men in the world who are dear to G.o.d, and Paul says, 'We know that all things work together for good to them that love G.o.d.' For those dear ones Christ has such love that he counts everything--whether good or bad--that is done to them as if done to himself. 'Inasmuch,' he says, 'as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Moreover, Jesus said: 'For G.o.d so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'

From these words of Jesus we see that there is love manifested in the dealings of G.o.d with the inhabitants of our world. Were it not so, there would nothing remain but a 'fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.'

"On the other hand, I conclude that G.o.d made the world as the dwelling-place, not of obedient, holy children, but of those who are disobedient, fallen, and alienated. These disobedient and alienated ones he holds under discipline and chastis.e.m.e.nt, in order to keep their wickedness in check, to recover them from their sins, and train them up in virtue and holiness, or to remove from the obstinate and incorrigible all excuse for their sins and all plea against their final condemnation. In doing this he glorifies himself by manifesting his wisdom, goodness, mercy, and holiness.

"This opinion seems probable from the fact that this is the purpose for which G.o.d has actually used and is now using the world. Here he keeps and governs the human race. This race is made up neither of holy beings nor of hopeless reprobates. They are the creatures of G.o.d; fallen indeed, yet loved; sinful, but objects of divine compa.s.sion; deserving of righteous wrath, but the recipients of the offers of salvation through Christ. Even penitent believers in Christ and devoted servants of G.o.d are not free from evil propensities, but need to be kept under constant training and discipline. This is the use to which the Creator has actually put the world. Is it not reasonable to believe that he designed it for their use?

Ought we to believe that G.o.d planned the world for an object for which it never has been and never will be employed?

"If sin were removed from the world, the chief part of human suffering would be removed. This no man can deny. Wars would cease; the want, disease, and woe resulting from selfishness, idleness, and vice would disappear, and nothing would stand between man and his Maker. What new life and joy would fill the world if free communication were restored between man and G.o.d, and the divine smile were again to enlighten the world! It would seem that heaven had enlarged her borders to embrace this earthly ball. But the fact would still remain that this physical world is unfitted to be the dwelling-place of sinless beings. The const.i.tution of the world would bring upon them pains and evils which would seem a most unworthy heritage for loving and obedient children of our heavenly Father.

Let sin be taken away, and wearisome toil in subduing the earth would remain. The soil of the earth is hard and clogged with stones, and clammy with stagnant waters, and sown well with the seeds of noxious weeds, and overgrown with thorns and thistles. Endless watchfulness and toil is the price of a livelihood. With the sweat of his face man must eat his bread.

An army of enemies have pre-empted the soil which man must till. This state of things the word of G.o.d refers to sin: 'Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.' The necessity of toiling as we do now for our daily bread, G.o.d denounced upon man as a curse on account of sin. We cannot, therefore, regard this as a suitable condition for sinless beings.

"This burden of toil is lightened by the progress of modern sciences and inventions much less than some men think. Every step of progress has been made by the sacrifice of hecatombs of human lives. From our laboratories and workshops products of human skill, rich and rare, are sent forth; but what are they but smelted and hammered and graven and woven human bones and sinews, the health and life of men? No means have been discovered by which the most necessary processes of the arts can be made otherwise than dangerous to health. Only when thousands of miserable workmen had perished was Sir Humphrey Davy's safety-lamp invented; and now the danger, to say nothing of the hard toil, of the collier's life is only lessened, but not removed. Still, our furnaces roar and the whole tide of civilization goes on by the health-destroying servitude of men, buried alive as it were in the dark bosom of the earth. Would that seem to be a fitting employment for the sinless children of the all-loving Father? Employes in many kinds of manufacture slowly sink under the acc.u.mulated evils of daily toil, and no means of making their employments healthful have been discovered. The friction-match, which has become so nearly a necessity, is made by a process so destructive to health that only a certain cla.s.s of laborers can be prevailed upon to do the work. I might go on to speak of other painful circ.u.mstances in which men find themselves by the almost antagonistic att.i.tude of Nature. But if we reject these dangerous processes of manufacture and art, we go back at once to the wooden plough, the distaff and tinder-box of primitive times, and also to primitive poverty and primitive toil, and, I may also add, to primitive exposure to the hostile and pitiless forces and inclemencies of Nature. Purge the earth of sin, and wearisome toil would still remain. Nature must be nursed and cultivated or she yields no bread. Her hostile att.i.tude must be overcome; the thorns and thistles must be rooted out; and every step of progress, won by suffering, must be held by painful work and watchfulness; otherwise Nature returns to the wild and savage state. Relax the culture of the choicest fruit, and it begins to deteriorate; leave the best-blooded breed of cattle to itself, and it returns again to the level of native, uncultured stock.

"The inhabitants of this world are also liable at all times to diseases and destructive accidents. This condition of things could not be changed without changing the entire structure and plan of the world. Is that a fit dwelling-place for a sinless being where chilling winds one day shrivel his skin and fill his bones with rheumatic pains, and the next, sweltering heats pervade all his system with languid la.s.situde--where miasma lies in wait unseen to poison his blood, kindle the malignant fever, and bring him to the shades of death, and every form of accident crouches in ambush, ready to spring upon his victim unawares and tear him limb from limb? We cannot see that the absence of sin would dissipate this liability to disease and the danger of accidents. Nay, this liability and danger are written upon the very const.i.tution of the human body. The finger of G.o.d has engraved it upon every muscle and bone and life-cell. The Creator gave the body that wonderful power called the _vis medicatrix_--the power of recovering from injuries and repairing damage done to itself. Pull a leg from a gra.s.shopper and another grows in its place. By this we know that the Creator understood the liability of this little insect to lose a limb, and prepared him for it. In like manner the power in man's body to heal a wound or join a broken bone gives us to understand that the Creator expected man to live in the midst of danger. The precaution proves the risk.

"These accidents are such as no possible carefulness could guard against.

To say nothing of the fact that all our knowledge of these perils comes from a painful experience of danger and death, what care, even after ages of sad experience, could ward off the thunderbolt? What carefulness could guard against the tornado on the land, or the hurricane and the cyclone upon the sea? Who should stand sentinel against the unseen poison borne upon the wings of the wind? What power should save him from the bursting of the volcano and the jaws of the earthquake? What care could give him knowledge of the qualities of all natural substances, that he might avoid their dangerous properties? We can suppose a divine care over man that should do all this and save men from harm, but it would be a providence superseding all human knowledge and exertion--it must be a providence to which the human race is now a stranger; miracles would then be the rule, and the undisturbed course of Nature the exception.

"If, however, we suppose that G.o.d designed the world as a training-school, so to speak, of fallen beings, such as the word of G.o.d declares the human race to be, all is plain, everything is suitable and harmonious. We can see the fitness of at least the chief outlines of man's earthly condition, and can perceive G.o.d's wisdom and goodness in the const.i.tution of the world.

"The pain and woe-producing agencies of Nature are seen to be not at all contradictory to goodness, but on the other hand eminently wise and righteous. The whole sum of human misery expresses G.o.d's displeasure at sin. By their sufferings men learn how abhorrent is sin in G.o.d's sight. By the consequences of evil-doing they learn not to transgress. As none are free from the taint of depravity, none are free from pains. The necessity of labor--one of the elements of the primal curse--is a check to sin on the part of the vicious, and a discipline and trial to virtue on the part of the penitent. The multiform trials of life--which can indeed be borne well only by the grace of G.o.d--while they teach the evil of sin and keep the heart chastened and subdued, nourish heroic and dauntless virtue in the faithful. 'Daily cares' become 'a heavenly discipline.' Dangers and calamities startle the stupid conscience, and keep alive the sense of responsibility to G.o.d on the part of the wicked; they quicken the sense of weakness and dependence in the believing and educate their faith in G.o.d.

The more sudden and overwhelming these evils, and the more these dangers are placed beyond the possibility of being warded off by human care, the more do they awaken in men a sense of the divine presence and of responsibility to G.o.d.

"But would not all these natural agencies subserve essentially the same ends in the discipline of unfallen and sinless beings? By no means. If sufferings came upon a sinless being, he could not feel that they came as chastis.e.m.e.nts; he could not feel them to be deserved. They would be to him a 'curse causeless,' and hence would bring no advantage. He could only cry out in astonishment, 'Father, why am I, thine obedient son, thus smitten?'

Calamity falling upon the innocent would be an anomaly in the universe.

But now the sufferer, pierced through and through with a sense of ill desert, meekly bows his head, murmuring, 'Father, all thy judgments are just and right.'

"One very important feature of the world we live in is its moral symbolism. The world is full of most suggestive symbols and emblems of moral good and evil. There are all beautiful and glorious things, to stand as types of goodness, truth, and righteousness; there are all loathsome, malignant, and hideous things, to serve as the types of folly and wickedness. Was it merely an accident that the dove was fitted to become the emblem of purity and of the Holy Spirit? the lamb, to be the emblem of gentleness, of Christ the gentle Sufferer, and of his suffering people?

the ant, to be the type of prudent industry? the horse, of spirit and daring? and the lion, of strength and regal state? Was it only an accident that prepared cruel beasts and disgusting, poisonous reptiles as the types of evil pa.s.sions and sins--that made the venom of the viper, the cunning of the fox, the blood-thirstiness of the wolf, the folly of the ape, and the filth of the swine, symbols of foul, subtle, malignant sin and folly?

Nature is full of these emblems. The palm tree with its crown of glory, the cedar of Lebanon, the fading flower and withering gra.s.s, the early dew and the morning mist, the thorn hidden among the leaves of the fragrant rose, poisons sweet to the taste, and medicines bitter as gall,--how all these natural things preach to men sermons concerning spiritual verities!

There is no virtue or grace which is not commended to man by its image of beauty in the animal tribes; there is no vice against which men are not warned by its loathsome, disgusting form shadowed out in the instinctive baseness of irresponsible brutes.

"Thus we find earth, air, and sky to be full of silent voices proclaiming in the ears of man that which he most of all needs to remember. These types and symbols of virtue and vice are specially needed by fallen beings. They seem fitted for beings whose spiritual eyes are blinded and all their spiritual senses blunted--beings with whom there is no longer 'open vision' of spiritual realities. These pictures of evil are most impressive to men who see in them the reflection of their own base pa.s.sions. How the fetid goat and the swine wallowing in the mire speak to the lecherous man and the drunkard! In a world of sinless beings these mimic vices would seem rather to mar G.o.d's handiwork.

"Set the human race, fallen as it is, in a world where the patience of daily industrious toil would not be needed, and the race would rot with putrid, festering vice. Remove all danger, and men would forget and deny that the Creator holds them responsible. Let no evil consequences follow evil-doing, and men would cease to make a distinction between right and wrong. Take away death, and they would deny the existence of a spiritual world. But in this world G.o.d has hedged men around with checks and penalties and painful discipline, such as are of use only in dealing with sinners.

"I conclude, therefore, that G.o.d prepared this world as it now is as a place of discipline for a fallen race. This is the use to which he has devoted it in the past; and when there is no longer need of such a world for the discipline of men, we learn from the word of G.o.d that a 'new heaven and a new earth' shall be provided. This world is thus declared to be an unfit abode for the glorified saints. To judge, then, of the wisdom and goodness of G.o.d in the works of nature, we must keep in mind the object for which the Creator prepared the world. Ansel, tell us how this strikes you."

"I never thought of it in this way before," he answered; "indeed I have thought very little of this subject, but--" Tinkle, tinkle went the bell upon the superintendent's desk. This was the second time the superintendent had struck his bell, but Mr. Wilton had been so intent upon his subject that he did not hear the first ringing.

The school was dismissed, but Mr. Wilton remained with his cla.s.s to fix upon the particular department of nature which they would study. He found that all were studying natural philosophy, and had recently gone over the subject of heat. At his recommendation, therefore, they agreed to examine, as a specimen of G.o.d's works, his management of heat in the world. Mr.

Wilton requested them to review the subject during the week, and be prepared to state and apply the general principles touching the nature, phenomena, and laws of heat which they had already learned. This work they will enter upon next Lord's Day.

CHAPTER III.

A DIFFICULT QUESTION.

During the week, Ansel, Peter, and Samuel were busy reviewing and fixing in memory what they had already learned of the nature and laws of heat.

They were not only interested in the new line of study, and desirous of pleasing Mr. Wilton, but they also felt that their scholarship was to be tested, and each one was ambitious of standing equal to the best.

Ansel, of course, was busy and ambitious. The lesson was coming somewhat upon his own ground, and he felt in no wise unwilling to show how well he had mastered the subject. He entered upon it with feelings a little different, however, from his antic.i.p.ations. The explanation which Mr.

Wilton had given of the purpose of the Creator in making such a world seemed to him very reasonable. He could make no objection to it. But that explanation had taken away at one sweep a whole store of objections to G.o.d's goodness which he was waiting to bring out as soon as a good opportunity was presented. A world designed for the dwelling-place of sinners--sinners not already given over and doomed to final wrath, but to be recovered from sin and trained in virtue and holiness, or, if incorrigible, to be held in check and used as helps in the discipline of the righteous--he plainly saw must be as unlike a world fitted up for holy beings as a reform school is different from a home for kind and obedient children. Those arrangements which he had thought the most painful and objectionable might, after all, be the wisest and best. He did not see where to put in a reasonable objection to Mr. Wilton's unexpected argument, yet he did not feel quite satisfied to confess to himself that he was so soon and so easily defeated.

In this state of mind, on Sat.u.r.day morning he met Mr. Hume upon the street.

"Good-morning, Ansel," said Mr. Hume.

"Good-morning," returned Ansel.

"I hear," said Mr. Hume, "that you have given up studying the Bible in your Bible cla.s.s, and have begun the study of natural philosophy. Is that so?"

"Not quite true, Mr. Hume. We are to examine some department of the works of Nature, and see what indications appear of the Creator's wisdom and goodness."

"That is a little different from the report which came to me. But what did you learn last Sunday?"

"Mr. Wilton told us that in order to judge of the wisdom and goodness of G.o.d in any of the affairs of this world we must consider the object for which that arrangement was designed. He said that if a man examine a cotton-gin, supposing it to be a threshing-machine, he would be likely to p.r.o.nounce it a foolish and worthless contrivance; and that the fine edge of a razor would be worse than useless upon the cutter of a breaking-up plough. He told us that the earth was not prepared as the dwelling-place of sinless beings, but as a place of discipline for the fallen human race, and that we ought not to look upon it as the choicest specimen of workmanship which the Creator could construct."

"I have heard that Mr. Wilton believes something of that kind. Ansel, have you studied geology?"

"I have read a little upon that subject and have heard some lectures."

"Can you tell me, then, whether or not the natural laws which prevailed on the earth ages and ages ago, before the earth was fit for men to live upon it, are the same as those which have been in operation in these later ages, since men have inhabited it?"

"I suppose that the same laws have prevailed from the beginning of the geologic periods. I think that geology makes that very evident."

"If that were not so," said Mr. Hume, "the past history of the globe would be a riddle to us; it would be confusion worse confounded. In regard to those early ages we could not reason from cause to effect, for we should know nothing of the forces and principles then in existence. In geologic studies we judge the past from the present, and if that be not a trustworthy method of reasoning, all the conclusions of geologists are as worthless as dreams. Have you any reason to suppose, from what you have read on this subject, that a curse changed the character of the earth as a dwelling-place for man some six thousand years ago? Is it true, as Milton says, that then

'The sun Had _first_ his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north call Decrepit winter--from the south to bring Solst.i.tial summer's heat'?

Did the Creator then

'Bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more From the sun's axle'?

Or was death then first introduced among the brute creation, as Milton fancies?--