EVIL IN THE WORLD. 165 



religion ; listening to which I have felt that the preacher 

 was unconsciously annulling the unity and supremacy 

 of God, and making the government of the world an 

 act of partition and struggle. If it be said that the 

 Devil is permitted for a time only, this is but saying 

 that God permits evil for a time, and evil effected by 

 other spiritual agency than his own. However difficult 

 the subject be under any aspect, all wholesome belief 

 is lost amid doctrines which thus, upon a few ambiguous 

 texts, deface and degrade the attributes of God. I do 

 not think it needful to speak in detail of those various 

 modes of Oriental belief which distinctly recognise a 

 good and evil spirit in the world a duality, in fact, of 

 Divine Being and Power. Such belief is the first grade 

 of polytheism, and belongs to the earliest conceptions 

 of man thus directed. 



2ndly. The Repugnance of Matter, or other Limi- 

 tation of the Creative Power. A familiar doctrine of 

 ancient philosophy, attributing to matter a certain 

 quality of passive resistance malignity, it has been 

 sometimes termed something that checks or contra- 

 venes the Creative Will. Quotations, Greek and Latin, 

 might be largely multiplied on this topic, and as co- 

 piously drawn from the Gnostic writers of the early 

 centuries. The questions they embrace cannot be 

 better stated than in a single passage of Seneca : 



c Quantum Deus possit ? Materiem ipse sibi format, 

 an data utatur ? Utrum idea rnateriae prius superve- 

 niat, an materia idese ? Deus quicquid vult efficiat. an 

 in multis rebus ilium tractanda destituant, et a magno 

 Artifice prave formantur jnulta, non quia cessat ars, 



