It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a
liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know
that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof
evidence which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully shutting
our eyes and our ears to facts which militate against this or that
comfortable hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the
same character.
* * * * *
I have not the presumption to imagine that, in spite of all my
efforts, errors may not have crept into these propositions. But I am
tolerably confident that time will prove them to be substantially
correct. And if they are so, I confess I do not see how any extant
supernaturalistic system can also claim exactness. That they are
irreconcilable with the biblical cosmogony, anthropology, and
theodicy is obvious; but they are no less inconsistent with the
sentimental Deism of the "Vicaire Savoyard" and his numerous modern
progeny. It is as impossible, to my mind, to suppose that the
evolutionary process was set going with full foreknowledge of the
result and yet with what we should understand by a purely benevolent
intention, as it is to imagine that the intention was purely
malevolent. And the prevalence of dualistic theories from the earliest
times to the present day--whether in the shape of the doctrine of the
inherently evil nature of matter; of an Ahriman; of a hard and cruel
Demiurge; of a diabolical "prince of this world," show how widely this
difficulty has been felt.
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