"Would it be wise and well to take no account of foreseen events? Jesus has gone to prepare mansions for those who will, as he foresees, believe in him: why not make provision for foreseen evils also? Our civil government, knowing the liability to crime among men--a liability which the experience of man has shown to be a practical certainty--makes provision for those crimes by maintaining a police, reform schools, prisons, and armies. The Governor of the universe, knowing the liability of man to sin and fall--a liability which by his foreknowledge was to him a certainty--made provision for that foreseen apostasy. He made provision, both by the creation of a world suited to a sinful race kept under a probation of mercy, and by appointing a Redeemer, the 'Lamb of God,' slain, in the eternal purpose, before the foundation of the world. If Mr. Hume's objection has force at all, it has force against every wise provision of God to meet the consequences of man's foreseen wickedness. It is wise, forsooth, on man's part, to foresee coming evil and prepare for it; but if God do this, men count it worse than folly: they declare it to be an endorsement of the evil! So foolishly do men reason about the high things of God! My answer to Mr. Hume, then, has four parts: "1. The existence of unexplainable difficulties does not disprove the truth and reality of any fact or principle. "2. The supposition that God made provision for the present apostasy of the human race is burdened with fewer and smaller difficulties than its denial. "3. The word of God declares that he did make provision for the fall of man by the pre-appointment of a Redeemer. "4. That style of reasoning which seeks to justify or palliate man's first sin because God prepared this world for a fallen race would palliate and justify all wickedness, because the sins of men are woven into every figure of the web of divine providence. Not the treason of Judas alone, but the whole sum of man's evil-doing, is embraced in the far-reaching plan of God. How this magnifies the wisdom of God! He binds together in one bundle his own righteousness and the sins of men, in a most intricate interlacing, yet without blending the two and without staining the glory of his holiness. "I hope I have made this plain. Do you think, Ansel, that you can repeat the substance of this answer to Mr. Hume?" "I will try, sir, if he asks." "You will all notice," added Mr. Wilton, "that I have not denied that there is a deep mystery in this preparation for the sins of men not yet created, and that I have not attempted to explain this mystery. I have only tried to show that the admission of the view I have given you is more satisfactory to reason than its denial, and that the mysteries of this view are not unreasonable and self-contradictory, for the greatest mysteries are often the most reasonable things in the world.