I now return to the consideration of the difficulties above referred to. It is important to take a careful survey of the entire question, because they are not only put with great force in the passage which I have quoted, but I believe that in different forms they weigh heavily on the minds of many thoughtful men. I will first offer a few observations on the general principle. Nothing is easier than to affirm that the introduction of moral evil into the universe is a marring of the Creator’s plan in its formation. The argument is founded on the supposition that an Almighty God exists, who is wise, holy, and benevolent, and who intended to manifest these attributes through the rational beings which he has created. It is affirmed that the existence of moral evil in man is a failure of this purpose on the part of God. But it is the most certain of facts that moral evil does exist in the world, and that it exists quite independently of Christianity. The objection therefore is not one directed solely against the Christianity of the New Testament, but bears with equal weight against every form of theism, which admits that the universe has been created, and is governed by a God who is almighty, wise, holy, and benevolent. If there be a God who is the Creator of the Universe, it is clear that He must have been the Creator of man, and that man could only have come into being in conformity with His pleasure. Now, if we decline to admit that man was created morally perfect, yet as he must have been created a moral agent, it is clear that the first man must have sprung into being either with the moral faculties of a savage, or in some intermediate condition between these and a state of moral perfection. It follows, therefore, that man must have been made capable of moral progress. This is affirmed by all those who assert that he was first produced in a savage state. But the possibility of moral progress involves also the possibility of retrogression. The truth of this is borne witness to by the most palpable facts of daily experience. Men of the highest mental powers are capable of abusing them to the worst purposes, and thus of sinking fearfully low in the moral scale. The case of a man like Fouché will illustrate my argument, a man gifted with high intellectual powers, but who sunk into the lowest condition of moral turpitude. Such a man is incomparably worse than the first original savage. I submit, therefore, that whatever view we may take of the condition in which man was originally created, even if he were created a savage, yet he was made a moral being capable of elevation or degradation; and that, to use a human metaphor, the purpose of a holy God must have been his elevation. Yet this involves the possibility of his moral degradation. This degradation has also become a fact. It is clear, therefore, that the difficulty is one which is inseparable from every possible form of theistic belief, and is no peculiarity of Christianity.