and development of the world and its inhabitants, we see so many
conflicting elements, such a power of natural forces and human passions
warring against the progress of good, and seeming to end only too often
in disaster, that it becomes a matter of _faith_ to perceive a Divine
providence underlying and overruling all to its own ends.

The fact is, that directly we make mention of the "aeons"--the world's
age histories--we are met with that Protean problem that always seems to
lurk at the bottom of every religious question: Why was _evil_
permitted? Mr. J.S. Mill, many readers will recollect, concluded that if
there was a God, that God was not perfectly good, or else was not
omnipotent. Now of course our limited faculties do not enable us to
apprehend a really absolute and unlimited omnipotence. We _can_ only
conceive of God as limited by the terms of His own Nature and Being. We
say it is "impossible for God to lie," or for the Almighty to do wrong
in any shape; in other words, we are, in this as in other matters where
the finite and the Infinite are brought into contact, led up to two
necessary conclusions which cannot be reconciled. We can reason out
logically and to a full conclusion, that given a God, that God must be
perfect, unlimited and unconditioned. We can also reason out, _provided
we take purely human and finite premises_, another line of thought which
forbids us to suppose that a Perfect God would have allowed evil,
suffering, or pain; and this leads us exactly or nearly to Mr. Mill's
conclusion.

Whenever we are thus brought up to a dead-lock, as it were, there is the
need of _faith_, which is the faculty whereby the finite is linked on to
the Infinite. For this faith has two great features: one is represented
by the capacity for assimilating fact which is spiritual or
transcendental, and therefore not within the reach of finite intellect;