"
"I shall be most happy," I returned, taking his card.--"Did it ever occur
to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago, how
little you can do without shadow in making a picture?"
"Little indeed," answered Percivale. "In fact, it would be no picture at
all."
"I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows."
"But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to
be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes."
"It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think of
his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but upon
the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a great
part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which oppresses you
will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is possible to him.
Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that in order that sin
should become impossible he should allow sin to come? that, in order that
his creatures should choose the good and refuse the evil, in order that
they might become such, with their whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to
turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the will, he should allow them
to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet childish children, they
should become noble, child-like men and women, he should let them try to
walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should
become impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst
of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
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