Evil is Temporary. 117 difficulties, evil, are not something arbitrary, altogether hurtful, but the natural accompaniments of a limited conditionspurs exciting to defence and enlargement of the sphere of activity. Existence, notwithstanding this conflict, is better than non-existence; a plant excels a stone, an animal is superior to a plant, and of all animals man is supreme. Physical evils are undoubtedly among the elements of progress urging toward relative perfection of life; the struggle to escape from the evil giving more energy and leading to amelioration, to the casting off those peculiarities, or infirmities, or uncleannesses, which tend to nourish evil parasitic life. The moral lesson is not less evident-If a course of action is pursued which tends to throw anything out of balance, detract from physical or moral completeness of life, such departure from completeness, goodness, truth, is evil, and brings more or less of misery. Whether or not spiritual evil can poison the root of things, and cause degeneration and misery in lower forms of life, physical science cannot tell; but we may regard the moral sense of man as an analogue to the sense of pain shared, in some degree, by all conscious beings; even as our capability of spiritual improvement and physical betterment is to be regarded as token of a perfection yet to be attained. Thus viewed, evil is a temporary incident attendant on a state of discipline for the growth, supremacy, and multiplication of the best. The beneficence of pain is seen as an incentive to action, to consciousness, use and development of powers, enforcing obedience to law as the requirement and condition of a happy life. When men assert the existence of evil to be inconsistent with the personality or with the goodness of God, they really demand a universe absolutely perfect from the beginning. Would such a universe certainly mirror forth Divine power, wisdom, goodness? Free responsible beings are the highest created existences: amongst these, if they are to be thoroughly tested, evil, some time or other, is sure to arise; and extend, by their agency, to physical things. Would God's universe be better, happier, grander, without freedom? Are free spirits never to spring into life, lest evil drag them away? Must life be denied to infinite numbers of happy, progressive beings, delighting themselves in Divine Goodness, because the mysterious gift of freedom may be abused? Would not this elevate evil into a power restraining even Godhead, and render the world a vast expanse of stagnation without life, growth, progress? Are not onward movements essential to the happiness of finite beings? and can we form any idea of life, growth, progress, without conflict, without evil? The march of the universe through evil to perfection—a perfection to be attained, is a higher conception of Divine working than the idea of a machine complete in all its parts, but incapable of development and progress. [Those who think most profoundly, believe in a vast design of wisdom and mercy, the full understanding of which must necessarily be deferred to a future further advance towards perfection. Scientific men admit that millions of years are as nothing in the life of the universe; and if, in the brief period of human history, we can trace a gradual though slow abatement of moral and physical evils, analogy leads us to extend that fact to the universe; and confirms the Revelation that all things are in the hand of a mighty, wise, loving Ruler-are moving through evil and by evil to more perfect good. "Life is not as idle ore; Tennyson. STUDY VI. THE CREATIVE WORDS. Gen. i., ii. 3. "Speaking is the revelation of thought; Creation is the realisation of Divine thought."-KEIl and DelitzschH, Pentateuch. "According to Fichte, there is a 'Divine Idea' pervading the visible Universe; which visible Universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence independent of it. To the mass of men this Divine Idea of the world lies hidden: yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age."-THOMAS CARLYLE, State of German Literature. WE pass now from purely scientific arguments to the Record of Creation in Holy Scripture. This portion of our subject demands expository treatment, and will lead to some of those transcendental, yet most practical truths which the Gospel Revelation proclaims. Our main object is, in all fairness, to harmonise the Scriptural Record with the true conclusions of science. Science confesses that the world is inexplicable without "the omnipresent existence (ignored by positivism), whereof the phenomenal world is the multiform manifestation."1 Our previous studies show that there have been breaks of continuity in the visible universe which must have been bridged from an external source-"all portions of our science, and especially that beautiful one, the Dissipation of Energy, point unanimously to a beginning, to a state of things incapable of being derived by present laws (of tangible matter and its energy) from any conceivable previous arrangement." 2 This fact science, whose province is the discoverable, has revealed; what saith Scripture? 1 "Cosmic Philosophy," pref., p. x. : John Fiske. * "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 26: P. G. Tait, M.A. "In the beginning," ", "of old;” ¿v åpxy, LXX.; am Anfang, Luther; is to be taken as the head of all time, preceding every kind of existence-that commencement of Divine history when the ideal, fundamental, eternal plan of God began to be realised in creation. All worlds are gathered into one view, one act: for with God past, present, future, are an eternal now. The Bible in its first Hebrew word states a fact which it is now the glory of physical science to affirm. The earth and all things therein, the heavens and all their host," are phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had a beginning, and that they must have an end." There is no parallax by which to calculate the precise time, there is no older event, for in the generation of the Son of God (John i. 1-3) the same word is used to show that Christ is co-eternal with the Father. In the beginning, being God and with God, He acted as the Creative Power. As Creation was in the beginning, and originated time, there never was a time without Creation. 1 In carrying up the mind to a conception of the age of our own earth and planetary system, it must be remembered that physical statements, like those in the Study on "Rudiments of the World," pp. 87-92, are made, and rightly, on the ground of our belief as to the progressive order and continuance of things. It is not necessary as theologians, physicists, geologists, so far as faith in God and Holy Scripture is concerned, to accept those calculations which assign great antiquity to our own world. Reckoned backwards-on scientific principles of progression from the past, and forwards--according to the doctrine of continuance, they are affirmed by science not as absolute but highly probable facts. It was possible for God to have acted in any other way and by quicker process; and He may, as to the future, change all things in a moment; knowing this, chastened in mind by Scripture, we apply science as a light to the meaning of sacred physical statements that intellect and pious emotion may be alike content. "God knows, can, and wills all together; wills at once the end and the means—the end by an antecedent, the means by a consequent volition." 2 1 "Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge :" Prof. Huxley. To Create is to Produce Divinely. 121 , create, is the proper word to denote Divine production. Our faith pierces the phenomenal externality of the world to its supernatural and essential source, and has power to understand that the worlds were framed (Heb. xi. 3). Fuerst states, in his Concordance, that "create" has not essentially the meaning of making things out of nothing: “N77, non habet producendi ex nihilo vim." The LXX. version is “¿πómσev ó PEÓÇ TÒν Ovρavòv Kaì τñv yýv.” 7, create, make, form, interchange in use; for example, "create" and "make" (Gen. i. I, ii. 2) are "make" and "create" (Gen. i. 26, 27); "form" seems equivalent (in ch. ii. 7) to "make" and "create" (in ch. i. 26, 27); nevertheless, in Scripture the highest possible meaning is always the dominant, and passes by gradations into lower forms. Again, is work which none but God can do; means making, indefinitely, as a table; is to form, fashion, make in shape, say a round or a square table. We may safely say "The Hebrew word is limited, in its primary meaning, to the working of God, and is never used in Scripture (where it is used in Kal thirty-five times) to describe the works of man, and presents an instance of the exactitude and precision with which the Holy Spirit writes."1 We are told by unbelievers-The Bible account of Creation "is discredited by its barbarous origin, and by the absurd or impossible assumptions which it would require us to make: "2 "we may with equal propriety speak of the creation of cholera, of a conflagration, of a railway accident, as of the creation of man." We are asked to believe that God did not create anything, or, at most, only little things; say-nothing larger than an infusorial point; and are assured that a few clever men can trace their pedigree from cosmic dust to sea-slime, from sea-slime to protoplasm, and from protoplasm, by successive evolutions, to the philosopher who weaves the hypothesis with scientific imagination and mends all breaks in the web with threads of fancy. For our own part, we prefer the grand old Faith; we cannot believe that the world, an unconscious thing, unconsciously developed itself-bringing things 1 Wordsworth's "Commentary." "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 464: John Fiske. "Natural History of Creation," vol. i. p. 66: Dr. Hæckel. |