achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of
long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a
superintending design, the blind evolution (!) of what turn out
to be great powers or truths, the progress of things as if from
unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and
littleness of man, his far-reaching aims and short duration. the
curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the
defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental
anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading
idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that
condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in
the Apostle's words, 'having no hope and without God in the
world'--_all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts
upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely
without human solution_." Hence that admirable writer postulates
some "terrible original calamity"; and thus the hateful doctrine,
theologically called "original sin," becomes to him almost as
certain as that "the world exists, and as the existence of God."
Similarly the "Schedule of Doctrines" of the most liberal
Christian Church insists upon the human depravity, and the
"absolute need of the Holy Spirit's agency in man's regeneration
and sanctification."

But what have we here? The "original calamity" was either caused
by God or arose without leave of God, in either case degrading
God to man. It is the old dilemma whose horns are the
irreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the
supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be
predicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject.
Far better and wiser is the essayist's poetical explanation now