manner the Hindoos are said to believe that the earth rests on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise. It is easier for them to credit this than that the earth rests on nothing. In the same way also, "as the next best thing to denying absolutely all connection between God and Creation, the Indian cosmogonies separate the two by unending aeons, and remove him from direct contact with the world by the supposition of emanation upon emanation, in order to support the idea of Divinity as something infinitely removed from man and the world, and even from all action." 1

Of course, in reality, though a million intervening terms were introduced, the problem remains the same, and the conclusion. In the case under discussion they may be stated thus: God is omnipotent and beneficent, yet evil is present in the world; wherefore, apparently, God is either not omnipotent or not beneficent. But just as the Hindoo knows nothing of gravitation, so there may

1 The Old Testament and the New Scholarship, by John P. Peters, p. 41.

be some law, of which we know nothing, tending to change this conclusion. Thus the search for the knowledge of God inevitably includes the search for the origin and meaning of evil.

It is all very well for Carlyle, thundering from that secular Sinai on which he dwelt, to proclaim: "A vain interminable controversy, touching what is at present called the Origin of Evil or some such thing, arises in every soul since the beginning of the world; and in every soul that has passed from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring must first be put an end to. The most in our time have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few, some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms, and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and has become unserviceable. . . . Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness. It is because there is an Infinite in him which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury

under the Finite."1 In other words, the philosopher takes refuge in clouds just as much as "the most"; gorgeous clouds no doubt, but none the less vapour. The mystery of evil cannot be pushed aside so lightly; because its investigation is part of Man's investigation into God's char

acter.

James Hinton has given us, in the following passage, a beautiful interpretation of sin : "Sin is not a fact or reality, but a negation, a refusal to share in life. We misinterpret what the Bible tells us of heaven. It says, indeed, that God will wipe away all tears, that sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and even that there shall be no death; but it does not tell us that there shall be no

phenomenal evil. That is quite another thing. Still there shall be life, yea, more life, still therefore evil. Let me only see the evil as it is, O God! and my eyes shall weep no more nor my heart know another pang. The motion of the sun was a source of error to the men of former 1 Sartor Resartus, Bk. 11, ch. 1x.

error is gone; so shall evil remain, but the grief shall be gone.'

But there is plenty of grief on earth apparently unconnected with sin, and plenty of pain; and, though Hinton strove hard, he gave us no more explanation of these than does Christianity itself. Yet he was one of the pioneers in the land that may be called the region of Eternal discovery; places into which not even the deepest reverence armed. can forbid intrusion, since, as we shall shortly perceive, we are invited thither by Scripture

But to return: The elaborate metaphysical legend of the Fall of Man contained in the third chapter of Genesis, derived, no doubt, from a period long anterior to that of the People into whose Sacred Writings it found its has become an article of belief necessary to the Christian Religion. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive; however spiritually the words be understood,

way,

1 The Life and Letters of James Hinton, by Ellice Hopkins, pp. 127-128.

Redemption and Atonement imply that the penalty of sin was incurred by our "First Parents." Matthew Arnold declared that "plain simple people are the great majority of the human race."1 This may be true of their manner and mode of life; but it does not at all follow that it is true of their ideas. On the contrary, I suppose that only those who have painfully passed through the realm of fancy and come out on the far side can think plain and simple thoughts.

The plain question for simple Seekers after God is this: What impression of the divine character does this presentment of the origin of Evil, whether regarded as a fact or an allegory, leave on the mind?

God creates angels. A large part of these unfortunately rebel, and for punishment are relegated to the pit. He creates a man and a woman, but unfortunately one of the fallen angels escapes from hell, and successfully tempts them to sin. How un1 God and the Bible, p. 73.