At the same time, it seems to imply certain things that are
beyond peradventure. God must have foreseen, for instance, that He would
make man. He must have foreseen, too, that man would fall. He foresaw,
also, and arranged, the great scheme of Redemption. But He must have
known with the utmost certainty that millions and millions of the human
race would pass out of this life without once hearing the joyful sound.
And because they did not know it, if annihilation or torment is true, He
knew that He would utterly extinguish them, or consign them to
everlasting fire!
Now, can you think of a Being of Infinite Wisdom doing either? Apart
altogether from the idea of Love, could you think of Infinite Wisdom
acting in this way? Would you not think it as a most horrid stigma on
human wisdom, and infinitely more so on Divine? To think that God made
the human race, at the same time knowing well that the vast majority of
the race would come to such an end--an end which they could not forsee
nor prevent! Is that the way Infinite Wisdom would act? The idea seems
almost blasphemy. Yet that is what you must believe if you accept the
idea either of annihilation or of endless torment.
More than that. Consider that the Creator endows every one of the race
with mental powers of almost infinite expansion; yea, better still,
with moral powers and affections akin to those of the angels.
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