164 EEV. CANON E. B. GIEDLESTONE^ M.A.^ ON 



in a few days or weeks through stages corresponding with the 

 whole presumed course of ancestral evokition, and this is- 

 supposed to have needed millions of years. I sometimes 

 wonder whether all these millions were really necessary for 

 the production, say, of the first man. I also wonder whether 

 shorter stages of existence between an ovum and an infant could 

 be devised by a professor of embryology which should be 

 simpler and should have no reference to the supposed 

 line of ancestry from an amoeba. At any rate, the physical 

 universe has been built up in slow stages, and while pronounced 

 very good it may be regarded as incomplete at present, but it 

 is making its way towards completeness. 



We should all accept some such scheme as is thus indicated 

 if all went well with the human race ; but it does not. Evil 

 mars the divine handiwork and frustrates the divine purpose. 

 It is simply appalling in character and extent. We have not 

 only to face hardship — that might be good for character — but 

 we find ourselves a prey to godlessness, selfishness, lust, cruelty, 

 and a thousand other vices, all branches of one tree which the 

 Bible characterises as sin, i.e., failure or a missing of tlie mark. 

 We did not personally invent this evil thing. The tendency 

 or proneness to it is an inheritance, and we trace it back to an 

 early catastfophe described clearly in Gen. iii in language 

 which every child can understand. 



Let us not spend much time in wondering who the enemy 

 w^as who sowed tares in the divine field, but rather let us ask 

 whether the Being who brought all things into existence has 

 recognised the failure of His plan, and has taken any steps to 

 bring order out of disorder, to restore the lost, to liberate the 

 captive, and to renew man's adoring love for his Creator. 



With this end it would be vain to look to such ethical and 

 social teachers as Buddha and Confucius, to such an analyst 

 as Aristotle, or to such an idealist as Plato. We find ourselves 

 compelled to look to the smallest of all lands, Canaan, and to 

 the most stubborn of all peoples — Israel. We have to study 

 their sacred books which are so candid and yet so hopeful, and then 

 to concentrate our attention on one Being. His character, His 

 teaching, and His beneficent labours do more to give us an idea 

 of God than we can get in any other way. Bat His public and 

 unmerited death, when only thirty- three, is a shock to our 

 moral sense, until we learn that it was submitted to — tasted — 

 for a reason, and was immediately followed by a risen and 

 glorified life, w^hich has brought light, life, and hope to the 

 door of every human heart. 



