be no human beings at all. And this was the alternative: there was no other. Either it was necessary that there should be a created universe, consisting merely of inanimate objects, as planets and trees and stones, or of animate yet irrational beings, as the lower animals, who for want of reason could have no comprehension of their Maker or of His glorious creation, and which consequently could make Him no return of thought or love,—or, on the other hand, that, together with the creation of rational, thinking beings, having a quasi independence of their Maker, a possession of faculties seemingly their own, with the liberty of using them in any manner they might choose—(all which was needed to constitute them men,) there should be at the same time what was necessarily implied in these conditions, a possibility of perverting and deranging those faculties,—in other words, a possibility of evil.
These were the altonatives: and, of these, the All-wise Creator chose, it seems, the latter. Of the two alternatives. He saw it to be the better, that there should be some human beings who should disorder and pervert their natures, than that there should be no human beings at all. He saw it to be better,—infinitely better, taking into consideration, the whole of existence,—that there should be created men—beings formed after His own image and likeness, endowed with powers of thought and feeling, together with the full liberty of using those powers at will (without which they would have been possessed in vain)—and also with the appearance that those powers were their own, (without which they would have been not human rational powers, but mere brute impulses or mechanical forces,)—He saw that this was the better alternative—
