And then the fatal enmity of
the human heart--which is a plain fact, an undeniable tendency--delights
to get rid of the idea of God's Sovereignty, the humbling sense that
everything is at His absolute disposal, and nothing could be but as He
wills it. It seems so satisfactory to eliminate all external mysterious
power, to make the whole "_totus teres atque rotundus_"--having started
the great machine of being _somehow_ to see it all expand and unroll
of itself and advance to the end.
Imagination leaps the chasms, minimizes the difficulties, passes from
the possible to the certain, from the "may have been" to the "must have
been" and to "it was so," and, fascinated with the _completeness_ of its
scheme, commences to denounce and revile as ignorant and unscientific
all that would, calmly appeal to evidence, and confess ignorance, or at
least a suspended judgment, in any stage where the evidence is negative
or incomplete.
It has been well observed that "men are so constituted that completeness
gives a special kind of satisfaction of its own, and a habit of
specially regarding the general uniformity of nature begets a desire to
assume its absolute and universal uniformity."
There _is_ a great mystery underlying life and the plan in which the
animal form, the organs of sight, hearing, and the rest, run through the
whole creation: and, given a mystery, there is always ample room for
speculation.
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