In answering this question we must again refer to the causes which experience has shown to be most effective, for we can conceive of no other. We have examined the evidence that the Creator has given to each of his children such a constitution of mind and body, and such circumstances of temptation and trial as is _best on the whole_, as a part of an infinite _system_ whose results are to develop through eternity. At the same time it has been shown that God is limited, by the eternal nature of things, to a course in which _some_ evil must exist, so that all that is requisite to his character as perfectly benevolent, is that this evil should be reduced by him to its least possible amount. To suppose that God can impart at creation of each mind all the knowledge of the millions of rules needed for all the myriads of new relations, of myriads of beings through all eternity, is to suppose an impossibility in the nature of things. If it be maintained that the Creator is not thus limited by the nature of things, but, as theologians teach, could make mind perfect in all needed knowledge as in all other respects, at the first, then we have the greater contradiction involved in the fact, that a perfectly benevolent being chose for his children ignorance and sin in preference to knowledge and virtue. To say that it may be _best_ to create minds destitute of all needed knowledge when the want insures infinite wrong and suffering, and when there is power to create the knowledge that would insure perfect happiness, is simply a direct contradiction. It is saying that _less_ happiness may be _greater_ than _greater_ happiness. For by “what is for the best” we understand “that which secures the _most_ happiness.” And saying that making misery where there is power to make happiness in its place, is _best_, means nothing else but the assertion above, that less happiness is greater than greater happiness; or that _less_ is _more_ than _most_, which is a contradiction, inconceivable and absurd, so that no mind can either comprehend or believe it. Now, every theologian of every school and of every sect maintains that “God does all things _for the best_.” Every one who believes in a benevolent Creator does the same. This is simply saying that God does the best possible; that is to say, there is no power that can make a better system than God has made, or administer it with more wisdom or benevolence. He has chosen the best possible and so he can not do any better. These things being granted, the teachings of experience would lead us to suppose, still farther, that the Creator must do all that is possible to maintain _invariable steadiness of government_. We can see that this, which is so important in family government, must be still more so in an infinite family. For this end, the natural penalties for wrong doing, must be as _invariable_ as the rewards for well doing.