we are inclined to cry out with St. Paul that the foolishness' of God's Word is wiser' than the maturest' wisdom of men.' I claim once more that it is'natural' in its deep accordance with our highest thought; yet supernatural in the clear simplicity of its revelation, as it comes down to us from the distant ages of the past.

IV. Such is the light thrown by this introduction to Scriptural history on the great inductions of Natural TheoThe record logy, the being of God, and the being of Man. of the Fall. But what has it to tell on the great mystery of evil? On this we must put away from our thoughts not only all speculations of man, but even what the Bible itself in its later portions has told us on this awful subject. When we have done this, what is it which here meets us in the first pages of Scripture?

Evil not original.

First, it is boldly laid down that evil is no part of God's creation, and no part of man's true nature. The creation in all its points was very good;' man's original condition one of simple happiness and childlike instinctive innocence. His true development would be an unbroken growth, under God's guidance, from the lewer to the higher happiness, from the innocence of instinct to the higher purity of thought, of conscience, and of love. All dreams of Dualism, all Gnostic conceptions of an ineradicable gravitation to evil in matter, all fancies that what we call evil is a lower form of good,' all despairing theories of an inherent and unconquerable law of sin, are swept away as if unworthy of notice. All was good in the beginning; all shall be good in the end. Whatever God may permit, in carrying out His law of freedom and responsibility in His creatures, His will is for their perfect righteousness and happiness. It is strange, to my mind, that the doctrine of original evil should be supposed to be peculiarly characteristic of Scripture as such. When we look at man as he is, surely it needs no revelation to tell of inborn sinfulness in the individual man, or ingrained evil in society. But what we do need is a Gospel of original righteousness; and certainly we have it in its germ in the first pages of our Bible. We thank God for it; for faith in it is the very principle of all nobleness of life.

Next, the Scripture describes evil as originating in the

tation.

race precisely as it originates in the individual, partly by the misdirection of natural impulses of body and spirit, Evil brought partly by the presentation of motives to evil from in by tempwithout. Again it should be observed that the temptation, appealing both to the physical and spiritual natureto the one through appetite, to the other through the desire of independence and of wisdom, by which to be as gods '— is simple, childishly simple, as suited the undeveloped childhood of man. Yet it is profoundly significant. The 'knowledge of good and evil,' as separate and co-ordinate rules of life, between which to choose by trial, instead of the knowledge of good alone in itself, and of evil as the mere negation of good, represents clearly the false theory of a merely wilful life, as opposed to the natural discipline of a child of God under the true laws of his nature. The inability of mere retribution to check disobedience, so soon as God's will is looked upon as arbitrary and selfish, and the ease with which, in that mental condition, the reality of retribution itself is disbelieved, are as absolutely true to human nature as is the sad irony of the sentence which follows: Their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.' All, absolutely simple, is yet full of a philosophic meaning, and in the whole process the temptation, thus appealing to the instincts of man's nature within, is yet described as presented from without. Man is not the first and only sinner. What is afterwards called a "law of evil,' a distinct and concrete exhibition of sin as rebellion against God, is represented as being brought to bear upon him, and by his own submission triumphing over him, by precisely that process of temptation' with which the experience of the sins of every day makes us too terribly familiar. Few perhaps actually sin without a tempter now; the chain of evil is carried in a horrible continuity from soul to soul, from race to race, from age to age. The Scriptural revelation carries it finally back out of humanity itself to a power of evil which is not itself human.

But again putting aside the little which subsequent revelation teaches us on this awful subject, and the much which human fancies have dared to invent, and to represent as revealed-w we observe that the character, even the per

The nature of the tempter veiled.

sonal being, of that power of evil, are here in no sense described to us. The medium of temptation is the Serpent,'more subtil than any beast of the field,' the chosen emblem in all mythologies and apologues of the lower type of wisdom, earthly and sensual--rather, in fact, a cunning, which adapts means to ends, than a wisdom which knows the true end of life. It is, indeed, true that the very nature of the temptation implies a personal source, a mind speaking to the mind of man. But that source is absolutely veiled from us, as in the temptation so also in the sentence on the tempter-in form describing still the undying enmity between man and the serpent race, while he must be dull indeed who sees no symbolic meaning underlying it. Strange would it be, were it otherwise. Man has proved himself in all ages only too ready to exaggerate and to worship the power of evil. It was well for him to know that evil originates not in himself, that there is an evil power the enemy of man and God, that against this power there is a ceaseless war and a promise of victory. Beyond this we know but little now; beyond this it was certainly not well that the knowledge of the early world should stretch towards the realm of mystery.

The penal

But further, recognising the existence of evil in its three great phases of sin, suffering, and death, the Scripture describes it as having a terrible unity, because proceedties of sin. ing from the one source of sin. It is again necessary to remind ourselves that the book of Genesis itself tells us very little of the nature of the blight on creation, under which we learn hereafter that the whole creation groans;' it determines absolutely nothing on the question whether, in the animal creation, decay and death did or did not happen from the beginning in the dread 'struggle for existence.' Nor does it even hint at the more awful penalties of sin on man-the bondage of evil, under which the soul cries out in agony, and the spiritual death, which is the obliteration of the image of God. But it connects with sin, as at once a breach of God's law and a degradation of human nature-first, the heavy labour of weariness and disappointment, laid especially on man; next, the suffering of pain and subjection, of which woman is, with unquestionable truth to fact, made to bear

the chief share; lastly, the decay and death of the body, traced to the withdrawal of the appointed sustenance in the tree of life,' but in themselves the culminating result of the unrelieved burden of weariness and pain. Now of the reality of the connexion of these burdens of life with sin in the individual and in society, daily observation tells us much, declaring that, if but two or three gross forms of sin were rooted out, nine-tenths of suffering and decay would vanish like a cloud. Modern science, working out the principle of the mutual action of body and soul, of the individual and the race, of the whole inner and outer life, and constantly ascending towards an idea of unity in all being, may be not unreasonably thought to suggest something more. But once more the Scripture vindicates its position, as supernatural not preternatural, by according with experience and reason, but going beyond either, and by declaring as simple fact what they pronounce upon by long and often doubtful inference.

over evil.

But, finally, the Scriptural narrative declares unhesitatingly that evil shall not triumph. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.' The words them- The promise selves (as has been already said) describe merely the of victory continual warfare carried on, not without pain and danger, between men and the poisonous race of serpents. But it would be a dull literalism indeed which would refuse to recognise the obvious symbolic meaning of promise, that in some way the seed of woman should conquer the evil to which man now gave way, and that the bruising the heel' implied in this conquest the need and certainty of suffering. It would be absurd to read into these words a full Christian meaning. What depths of God's mysterious love lie below them-with what singular appropriateness of meaning future events should endow them-we and we only know. We must divest ourselves as much as possible of all subsequent knowledge, and deal not with the full Gospel, but with the Protevangelium of the first pages of Scripture. Can we fail to see how remarkably, in its acknowledgment of the reality of evil, always subordinated to the certainty of the prior existence and final triumph of good, and then in its description of the first origin of evil and its most obvious fruits, it is again 'natural' and 'supernatural,' according with man's

deepest thought, yet passing out of the clouds that overshadow that thought into the first clear dawn of a full noonday to come?

The Prot

V. Without hesitation, in these early chapters of our Bible, which some would banish to the realm of legend, and which others pass by with uneasiness and perplexity, evangelium. I trace-what the old Fathers deemed that they had found-a Protevangelium. I find the first and simplest exemplification of the general character of the teaching of Holy Scripture, as at once brightening the light, and scattering the darkness, of the deeper thoughts of man. To go back to them from the full and varied life of the present is to trace back the stream of history to its source, not in some mountain of fabled grandeur, like the streams of Eastern legend, nor yet in some dismal morass of purely material or animal life, but (as with the stately river which flows through our great city) to a pure spring, bubbling out in the homely simplicity of a scene, which we can recognise as real, and love for its quiet beauty. True that it is yet but a little stream, showing but slight anticipation of the time when it shall flow on, swollen by tributaries from every side, and bearing on its bosom the emblems of infinite wealth and activity. Yet on its first outburst and its first direction depends the future; we believe that there is an eye which saw that future in the beginning, and guides it to its accomplishment. Therefore in the task of so tracing it back there is not only a vividness, but a certain sacredness, of interest. When we stand at the source of our human history, we feel that our feet tread on solid human ground, and our eyes look up to a presence of God in heaven, not different in essence, though it may be different in phase, from the presence which is about our path in the homely light of every day.