“But we must not disguise from ourselves that God’s dealings with this world are still a very difficult problem. After reading the Old Testament we have no right to think that what perplexed the chosen people for so many centuries will all be plain to us even with the New Testament to guide us. There is a great deal of shallow optimism which ‘heals too slightly’ the wounds which experience inflicts upon Faith and Hope. It is useless to say, ‘God’s in His heaven; All’s right with the world,’ when many things are obviously wrong in the world. It is vain to argue, as Emerson does, that divine justice is an automatic self-adjusting machine, so that all get their deserts (not of course in a grossly material sense) in this life. Eminent literary men in the last century were too secure and comfortable to see what a rough place the world is for the majority of those who live in it. It was only after long travail of soul that the Jews learned their lesson; we shall not learn ours by turning epigrams. Remember that complacent optimism, no less than pessimism, is treason against Hope. The world, as it is, is not good enough to be true. We ought not to be satisfied with it. ‘God has prepared some better thing.’ . . .
“This world exists for the realization in time of God’s eternal purposes. Some of these are bound up with individual lives, for God intended each one of us to do and be something; others have a far wider scope, and require far more time for their fulfilment. The manifold evils in the world are allowed to exist because only through them can the greater good be brought into activity. This greater good is not any external achievement, but the love and heroism and self-sacrifice which the great conflict calls into play. We must try to return to the dauntless spirit of the early Christians . . . And let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle.”
“Day 19,” in John Baillie, A Diary of Readings (Oxford, 1955).
