word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed." In a sense, all is true. If we break Nature's laws we must pay Nature's penalties. We have heard such wisdom from men ere this. Wisdom must be far purer and more spiritual if it is to strengthen and comfort us. Why not say "Nature is by the will of God; he who breaks Nature's laws breaks God's law for the uses and wants of our earthly being?" Clever words, well said, have salt in their witare pleasant and preservative, we like to hear them; but jesting speeches do not take away from upright minds that distressing uneasiness which is their present greatest trial concerning the moral system of the universe. "Death borders on our birth, and our cradle stands in our grave;" but death is bringer of new life under guise of destruction. Our noble ancestors are elder-born in glory, our seniors in bliss. All reasonable beings would gladly believe that there is a God, all-wise, almighty, all-perfect; but the existence of evil causes doubt and perplexity. In vain we try to stifle the doubt: evil, misery, ruin in this world and the next; the trials of saints and the anguish of martyrs; great men, good men, gifted men in sorrow; render the world a waste, and our path through it, not a way of peace, but a dark road amidst mountains of despair. Are beings called into existence, and irrevocably destined to endless unmitigated torture? Are we to charge God with such acts of injustice and cruelty as render all the atrocity of men and excesses of the devil but exhibitions of comparative purity? The doctrines of Creation and Divine Rule make the fact more distressing; they teach that every organism forms part of a grand universal teleology. Having honestly exposed the difficulty, we candidly admit that, like many other mysteries of the universe, it is not explicable in every part by human intelligence; but it is possible to give reasons which, if they remove not the whole difficulty, show that those who thwart God's will contradict their own; hence arise unnatural quarrel with ourselves and nature. In our Study on the Pre-Adamite World the moral aspect is viewed; now take chiefly the physical. Evil, as a fact, does not belong solely to theology. Atheism, trying to put it on chance or fate, neither accounts for the preponderance of good nor alleviates the bad. That The Mingling of Good and Evil. 99 a mixed state of things is temporally necessitated by the physical constitution of the universe is certain. The earth was always a scene of warfare. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, present elaborate weapons of destruction. Throughout all time there has been a preying of the superior on the inferior-a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong; and animals were so framed as to render bloodshed necessary. In many cases the suffering seems to bring no compensating benefit; the low and repulsive destroy the attractive and noble; elaborate appliances secure the welfare of organisms, incapable of feeling, at the price of misery to organisms susceptible of high happiness. Of the animal kingdom, half are parasites. Every animal has its own species; and, generally, more than one. The Bothriocephalus latus and the Tania solium, two kinds of tapeworm which flourish in the human intestines, cause much distress, sometimes insanity. From the germs of the Tania, carried into other parts of the body, arise partially developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinocci, and Canuri, which excite pain and disease in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, and other parts, often producing death. Five parasites of a different class are found in the human viscera. Another class of Entozoa, of the subdivision Trematoda, exists of five kinds, attacking the liver, the gall-ducts, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. The Trichina spiralis in one phase of existence is embedded in the muscles, and thence passes into the intestines. As to the external parasites, or Epizoa, there are creatures that bury themselves in the skin, and there lay eggs; others infest the surface of the body. Man, animal, plant, are afflicted; and the two former endure suffering even unto death. Pain and sorrow are widespread, wrought into the very nature of things. Can we draw good out of this evil? Try. In the lowest grades of existence are creatures wholly inert; their life is diffused, without central being, and may be called external; yet, even in these, is a conflict of forces. Amongst them are living things with life and motion clearly manifest. Higher in the scale are organisms with members of great variety and complexity, every one fitted to function; but life and activity are not at their best until some obstacle has to be surmounted, some difficulty overcome. Then action and reaction, the taking this, refusing that, the operation of will, come in. Obstacles, difficulties, evil, are not altogether hurtful; but the natural accompaniments of a limited condition-spurs exciting to defence and enlargement 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 toward relative perfection of life. The struggle to escape from evil gives more energy, leads to amelioration, the casting off those infirmities and uncleannesses which nourish evil parasitic life and disease. The moral lesson is not less evident-If a course of action is pursued which tends to throw anything out of balance, to 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, cause degeneration and misery in lower forms of life, physical science cannot tell; but the moral sense of man is an analogue to the sense of pain shared, in some degree, by all conscious beings; even as our spiritual improvement and physical betterment in the past; are tokens of a perfection yet to be attained. Things through all time. have been growing ripe: otherwise where are the evolutionists ? Thus viewed, evil is a temporary incident attending a state of discipline for the growth, supremacy, and multiplication of the best. The beneficence of pain is an incentive to action, to use and development of powers, enforcing obedience to law as the requirement and condition of a happy life. A spirit walks in all good and smiles an angel; in all bad a fury frowns. 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 their errors' cause, and in it is their cure. 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 Beneficence of Pain.. ΙΟΙ 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 stagnation without life, growth, progress? Are not progressive movements essential to the happiness of finite beings? Can we form any idea of meritorious growth, advance, without conflict? The march of worlds to perfection, is a higher conception of Divine working than the idea of a machine incapable of voluntary development in physical and moral progress. Those who think profoundly, believe in a vast design of wisdom and mercy, the full understanding of which must necessarily be deferred in part till completion of the grand 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 trace an abatement of moral and physical evil, analogy leads to the extension of that fact to the universe. ""Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, ask what report they bear to Heaven, and how they might more welcome news have borne ?" "Life is not as idle ore; But iron dug from central gloom, Lord Tennyson. Science is making, or will make, large use of lower life as exhibited in Bacteria. Tropical diseases seem to be caused not by the heat, but by germ parasites which are abundant only in hot climates. Inquiries are being made which may render it possible for Europeans to live in hot countries; and Englishmen to abide in places where hitherto it has been impossible for them to continue. Great benefit will thus come to the empire. It is being further discovered that these minute organisms are essential in the scheme of nature; and that without them life, as we know it, would be impossible. It is the duty of one class of microbes to supply plants with nitrogen; and it is nitrogen in some plants which makes their products, say bean and pea meal, so nutritious. If we are about to obtain nitrogen from the air and soil, and utilize it in cultivation of plants, we shall produce a larger amount of nourishment from an acre of land than has hitherto been possible. Right use of knowledge ameliorates our condition, enables us better to serve one another, more reverently and usefully to honour God. "We thank Thee for the sunshine, We thank Thee for the rain, We thank Thee for the Bible, Felix Melancthon. |