Hell and lead men astray as we have seen that he did? This was for centuries the one unsolvable problem of the Christian theology. To answer it with some fulness, both by reasoning and by the exhibition in one comprehensive picture of the "ways of God to men" from the beginning of the World till its end, was a leading motive in Milton's mind for choosing the subject of Paradise Lost for his epic. His solution, in the briefest possible statement, is as follows: a. Character is worthless until it has been made robust by temptation strongly and voluntarily resisted. Man was placed on earth that he might develop a robust character. Therefore he must be free to sin, and must be exposed to temptation. b. Temptation could come to a sinless being only from without. Therefore Satan must be permitted to have access to man. c. God is both just and merciful: justice requires a penalty for sin, and mercy permits a loving friend to pay the penalty for the sinner, if the sinner is brought through his friend's unselfish sacrifice to the same hatred for sin, and strength to resist temptation, that he would attain by paying the penalty himself. Therefore, God permitted his Son, moved by divine love for the sinful race of men, to take upon himself their life and their temptations, and ultimately to die in their stead. d. God's Providence (= foresight) perceived all this train of events from the beginning. Nothing was the effect of chance, for he knew that man would fall into sin and Satan would seem to triumph, but he also knew that to man he should ultimately give the victory through his Son, and that the redeemed race, because of its experience on earth, would in the end be more worthy of Heaven than the angels whose place was now forfeited had ever been. 98. It was the desire to set all this forth in convincing form that led Milton to utter his noble prayer: — "What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; And justify the ways of God to men." |