In recent times Mr. John Stuart Mill has shown a marked preference for the Manichæan view, and has stated it with clearness and consistency, because he is not hampered by the feeling that he ought to reach one conclusion rather than another. Mr. Mill does not urge his view upon the reader, nor even defend it as his own view, but simply suggests it as perhaps the view which is for the theist most free from difficulties and contradictions. Mr. Mill does not, like the Manichæans, imagine a personified principle of evil; nor does he, like Plato, entertain a horror of what is sometimes, with amusing vehemence, stigmatized as "brute matter." He does not undertake to suggest how or why the divine power is limited; but he distinctly prefers the alternative which sacrifices the attribute of omnipotence in order to preserve in our conception of Deity the attribute of goodness. According to Mr. Mill, we may regard the all-wise and holy Deity as a creative energy that is perpetually at work in eliminating evil from the universe. His wisdom is perfect, his goodness is infinite, but his power is limited by some inexplicable viciousness in the original constitution of things which it must require a long succession of ages to overcome. In such a view Mr. Mill sees much that is ennobling. The humblest human being who resists an impulse to sin, or helps in the slightest degree to leave the world better than he found it, may actually be regarded as a participator in the creative work of God; and thus each act of human life acquires a solemn significance that is almost overwhelming to contemplate.