THE GENESIS OF NATUEE. 



47 



Spripturc in its assertion of the fact of a Power of evil. In 

 Scripture we are introduced to it, not as originating, but as 

 already existing. We learn, indeed, how it first affected man in 

 his moral capacity ; we learn, too, how that moral fall affected 

 his physical condition. We have in set terms the description 

 of how it wrecked the noblest work of God. But doubtless the 

 fall of man was not the first triumph that his tempter had 

 achieved. It may have been that the traces of his trail might 

 be found marring the works of God for many vast ages before. 

 It may have been that it effected pain and suhering and 

 death in the prior stages of creation long before it won its 

 final triumph in the fall of man. God, when He saw His 

 creations, said not that they were perfect, but that they were 

 good. The former of them may have been liable to the assaults 

 of evil, just as was the last. How evil came; why it came; 

 when it came ; we know not. There may have been a divine 

 necessity for it among the incomprehensible things of God. 

 But this much we learn — that evil must be an episode in 

 eternity ; thus much we know, — that God brings out of evil 

 greater good ; and thus, from what is taught us in the Bible, it 

 is to be expected that, in a nature that is a creation of the 

 Bible's God, the evil, where it exists, shall always become 

 subservient to the good. Yet that its origin is unmentioned 

 when first it came in contact with mankind, is almost proof 

 that it existed from of old ; and thus, from that, dark lines 

 would be expected in the spectrum of the rising world. 



11. The conception tims formed agrees loith actual Nature. The 

 limits of its use in its elncidation. 

 If then, very feebly no doubt and faultily, we have formed at 

 all a true conception of what a creation, formed by such a God 

 as is revealed to us in the Bible, but yet infected by some 

 adverse influence, might be expected to be ; and if now, in turn 

 we examine the existing world as we see it to be in fact, both 

 in its more familiar aspects, and also in those deeper views 

 which have been displayed to us by modern science ; we find 

 that the pictures produced by each upon our minds are to all 

 purposes identical. These two views liave been obtained in 

 totally independent ways ; the one is wholly based upon 

 deduction from the Bible's revelation of God, together with its 

 indication of the existence of evil ; the other is entirely formed 

 from the examination of actual facts, except that any 

 considerations from the fact of God have been excluded ; and yet 

 by these two absolutely diverse processes we have found ourselves 



