universe, with all its farthest extended history, stood before Him from all eternity as one conception and as one purpose; and the conception and the purpose were one.  The too frequent mistake of human formulas is that they undertake to reason out infinite mysteries on our low anthropomorphic lines, one in one extreme and another in another.  We cannot fit the ways of God to the measure of our logic or our metaphysics.  What we have to do with many things is simply to believe and trust and wait.[204] On the other hand, there are many things of a practical nature which God has made very plain.  He has brought them down to us.  The whole scheme of grace is an adaptation of the mysteries of the Godhead to our knowledge, faith, obedience, and love.

And this leads directly to the chief differential which Christianity presents in contrast with the fatalisms of false systems, viz., that while sin and death abound, as all must see, the Gospel alone reveals a superabounding grace.  It is enough for us that the whole scheme is one of Redemption, that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world—­nay, that He made the world, and made it for an infinitely benevolent purpose.  If dark mysteries appear in the Word or in the world, we are to view them in the light of Calvary, and wait till we can see as we are seen; for this world is Christ’s, and will surely subserve His ends, which are those of infinite compassion.

Our position, therefore, as before the abettors of heathen or agnostic philosophy, is impregnable:  the fatalism is all theirs, the union of sovereign power with infinite love is ours.  We have reason as well as they.  We realize the facts and mysteries of life as fully as they, but are not embittered by them.  We see nothing to be gained by putting out the light we have.  We prefer faith to pessimism, incarnate love to the tyranny of “unconscious will.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 184:  Quoted in Fiske’s Destiny of Man, p. 117.]

[Footnote 185:  See Indian Wisdom, p. 82.]

[Footnote 186:  What Kanada meant by adrishta was a sort of habit of matter derived from its past combinations in a previous cosmos, one or more.  The rod which has been bent will bend again, and so matter which has once been combined will unite again.]

[Footnote 187:  Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 327.]

[Footnote 188:  On Natural Selection, p. 353.]

[Footnote 189:  The Destiny of Man, p. 80.]

[Footnote 190:  Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 88.]