Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EVIL. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I am the Lord that doeth all these thing3. ?Ixaiah xlv: 7. Most Christians have tried to relieve the Almighty of a responsibility, which, according to Scripture, he has clearly taken upon himself. Those who have pretended to know all about divine plans and purposes, have told us that it was not God who originated evil, but the devil. According to these philosophers the creator made a tree of the knowledge of good and evil before ever such a thing as evil existed. We have heard a great deal said about the “mystery of evil. As a matter of fact, evil is not one jot more mysterious than good is, or more so than is a drop of water or a grain of sand. Up to this present moment, everything which exists, human life particularly, is clothed with impenetrable mystery. Partially, however, and, indeed, sufficiently for all practical purposes, many things can be explained; and evil itself is one of these things. Just as the world is today, God, from the very beginning, knew it would be, and in that knowledge there was no tinge of wrath or disappointment. There has been no miscarriage of his designs. If he had his life to live over again, (if such an expression may be pardoned), he would not make the slightest change in the physical or moral government of his universe. Duke Alphonso of Castile had the presumptton to (suppose that if he had been present when creation was framed, he could have made some suggestions, which if followed, would have given us a much better world than we have. Wo are glad the duke was not there. He could not have made a single alteration that would not have been mischievous. Perhaps he would have put n0 temptation in the way of our iirst parents. Then he would have had the …
