Christ’s Cross is the proof that God suffers more than man from human sin, and Christ’s judgment will show that the wicked cannot always prosper. In Christ alone we find the key to the dark problems of history and the guarantee of human progress. _Rom. 3:25_—“_whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God_”; _8:32_—“_He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?_” _Heb. 2:8, 9_—“_we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold ... Jesus ... crowned with glory and honor_”; _Acts 17:31_—“_he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the earth in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained._” See Hill, Psychology, 283; Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 240, 241; Bruce, Providential Order, 71-88; J. M. Whiton, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1901:318.
G. A. Gordon, New Epoch of Faith, 199—“The book of Job is called by Huxley the classic of pessimism.” Dean Swift, on the successive anniversaries of his own birth, was accustomed to read the third chapter of Job, which begins with the terrible “_Let the day perish wherein I was born_” (_3:3_). But predestination and election are not arbitrary. Wisdom has chosen the best possible plan, has ordained the salvation of all who could wisely have been saved, has permitted the least evil that it was wise to permit. _Rev. 4:11_—“_Thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 79—“All things were present to God’s mind because of his will, and then, when it pleased him, had being given to them.” Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 36, advocates a realistic idealism. Christianity, he says, is not abstract optimism, for it recognizes the evil of the actual and regards conflict with it as the task of the world’s history; it is not pessimism, for it regards the evil as not unconquerable, but regards the good as the end and the power of the world.
Jones, Robert Browning, 109, 311—“Pantheistic optimism asserts that all things _are_ good; Christian optimism asserts that all things are _working together_ for good. Reverie in Asolando: ‘From the first Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see.’ Balaustion’s Adventure: ‘Gladness be with thee, Helper of the world! I think this is the authentic sign and seal Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad, And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts Into a rage to suffer for mankind And recommence at sorrow.’ Browning endeavored to find God in man, and still to leave man free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. He abhorred the doctrine that the evils of the world are due to merely arbitrary sovereignty, and this doctrine he has satirized in the monologue of Caliban on Setebos: ‘Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.’ Pippa Passes: ‘God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world.’ But how is this consistent with the guilt of the sinner? Browning does not say. He leaves the antinomy unsolved, only striving to hold both truths in their fulness. Love demands distinction between God and man, yet love unites God and man. Saul: ‘All’s love, but all’s law.’ Carlyle forms a striking contrast to Browning. Carlyle was a pessimist. He would renounce happiness for duty, and as a means to this end would suppress, not idle speech alone, but thought itself. The battle is fought moreover in a foreign cause. God’s cause is not ours. Duty is a menace, like the duty of a slave. The moral law is not a beneficent revelation, reconciling God and man. All is fear, and there is no love.” Carlyle took Emerson through the London slums at midnight and asked him: “Do you believe in a devil now?” But Emerson replied: “I am more and more convinced of the greatness and goodness of the English people.” On Browning and Carlyle, see A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447.