"
'Freedom' in a world already perfect could only mean freedom to BE
WORSE, and who could be so insane as to wish that? To be necessarily
what it is, to be impossibly aught else, would put the last touch of
perfection upon optimism's universe. Surely the only POSSIBILITY
that one can rationally claim is the possibility that things may be
BETTER. That possibility, I need hardly say, is one that, as the
actual world goes, we have ample grounds for desiderating.
Free-will thus has no meaning unless it be a doctrine of RELIEF. As
such, it takes its place with other religious doctrines. Between
them, they build up the old wastes and repair the former
desolations. Our spirit, shut within this courtyard of sense-
experience, is always saying to the intellect upon the tower:
'Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of promise bear,' and
the intellect gives it then these terms of promise.
Other than this practical significance, the words God, free-will,
design, etc., have none. Yet dark tho they be in themselves, or
intellectualistically taken, when we bear them into life's thicket
with us the darkness THERE grows light about us. If you stop, in
dealing with such words, with their definition, thinking that to be
an intellectual finality, where are you? Stupidly staring at a
pretentious sham! "Deus est Ens, a se, extra et supra omne genus,
necessarium, unum, infinite perfectum, simplex, immutabile,
immensum, aeternum, intelligens," etc.
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