History, for example, shows that mankind blunders by degrees into an
improved condition and calls the process progress. Theology can give no
additional guaranty for progress, for a state of things once compatible
may, for any thing we can say, always remain compatible with infinite
wisdom and goodness. As a matter of historical fact, theology only
suggested the dogma of man's utter vileness, and all genuine theologians
are marked by their readiness to believe in deterioration instead of
progress. They look forward to a future world instead of this. But what
reason have they to believe in this future of blessedness? God's love
for His creatures? But the most prominent fact written on the whole
surface of the world is what we cannot help calling the reckless and
profuse waste of life. If every thing we see teaches us that millions of
individuals are crushed at every step by the progress of the race, and
if that process is, as it must be, compatible with infinite goodness,
why suppose that infinite goodness will act differently in future? It is
an ever-recurring but utterly fruitless sophistry which first infers God
from nature, and then pronounces God to be different from nature.
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