Divine order, established for the greatest good of all. These He never violates. And the first of these, as already shown, is the preservation of man’s moral liberty, the power of moral choice, the liberty of turning to the right or to the left, of looking to God or from 'God, of taking the upward or the downward path. This first and greatest law of the Divine government He preserves ever inviolate above all others 3 because, take it away, and man ceases to be man — humanity perishes, and there is left nothing but a universe of inanimate stocks and stones, or only brute and irrational creatures, nothing worthy of God’s highest regard, nothing that can return to Him-thought for thought, 10% for love. As shown in the preceding Section, rationality and moral liberty are the distinguishing characteristics of man: if either of them be taken away humanity perishes. It was also shown that the existence of rationality and liberty implies the possibility of evil; for evil, as there defined, is in itself simply a perverted and disordered state of mind; — and moral liberty implies the power so to pervert the mind, if one will. This being so, the great purpose of the Divine Being, in His dealings with man, is — while leaving his moral freedom inviolable — still gently to bend him to good. This cannot be done violently and forcibly, for that would. be a contradiction: to leave man free and to force him are plainly contradictory. There is no such thing as forcing the will; for the will is the love, and love cannot be forced. This every one sees. It is indeed perfectly possible for the Divine Being to bring forth his thunderbolts — so to speak — and by violence and terror to sweep away
