most will think, that, wonderful as that would be, it would not be so noble as a world comprising intelligent and reasoning beings endued with freedom. Nor would a world containing such beings be as grand a conception as if we superadd to reason and freedom a moral sense and capacity, such as man has heretofore been supposed by most to possess. But that there could have been moral beings without freedom of choice and will seems to me to be a contradiction, the very essence of morality being in the choice of good in preference to ill. And that there could not have been real freedom without the risk of transgression, such as has actually taken place, seems equally clear. At least, as far as I can see, it could not have been hindered without such a restraint as would have impaired or destroyed the freedom of choice, and so the morality of actions, or such an hedging about of circumstances as would have largely detracted from the excellence of the goodness or righteousness of men, in accordance with the suggestion of the adversary, when questioned about the character of Job. I cannot but think that Job himself was raised to a far higher scale at the end of his trials than that he occupied at the first, even though he did not go through them without some lapse. For he could say at the last, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; therefore I abhor (my former state), and repent in dust and ashes."*

This question of evil was met in ancient times in various

66

* Job, xlii. 5, 6.-It is possible that in the words, now mine eye seeth thee," there may be a reference to the confident anticipation expressed in xix. 27, that in (from) his flesh Job should yet see God. The least which this latter passage can be justly understood to signify is, that in his bodily state he should see God, whether in the present or in a future life,

ways. Some stultified their reason by the assumption of a blind fate, or by the unintelligent operation of selfexisting atoms. Into the discussion of these theories I do not enter at the present moment, but shall now rather consider the remedies resorted to by those who could not surrender themselves to what seemed to them as to me so unreasonable an explanation of the difficulty-an explanation which really explains nothing, and amounts to no more than saying that things are as they are, because they are so. My purpose just now is to consider the views of those who tried to solve the difficulty without doing violence to the demands which reason makes for an adequate cause.

In early times one great resort was to that principle of

or in both. That the words may be referred to the present life is possible. But he anticipates some kind of bodily vision, as indicated by the parallel clause, "mine eyes shall behold and not another." That the anticipation extends to another life, if his death should be the result of his present sufferings before the expectation could be realized, which was not unlikely, would seem to be implied. At any rate, that the words should lend themselves so remarkably to the idea of a resurrection is not to be wondered at, if we adopt the now prevalent supposition that this book is to be ascribed to post-captivity times. The same idea is strongly brought out in Dan., xii. 2-" Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”—to say nothing of many earlier intimations of a less explicit nature. And the doctrine of a resurrection had come to be a prevalent belief with the larger part of the Jewish people, no doubt, finding Scriptural authority in these passages, before our Lord's time. It was not in any disparagement of these authorities that our Lord rested on the words spoken to Moses from the burning bush. His argument was with the Sadducees, whose denial of the resurrection was founded on their denial of a spiritual nature in man distinguished from the body. It served his purpose, therefore, to rely on a proof of the spiritual existence of man after death. This followed from the words, "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living." And the force of this clause is not in the mere wording of the first clause, which might mean that he was the God they worshipped when living, but in the consideration that if he had been their God, He would not let them perish if He had it in his power to preserve their existence. Hence, he prefaced his argument by saying:

duality which is exemplified in the Zoroastrian doctrine of Ormuzd and Arihman, the doctrine of a beneficent and a malignant, a good and an evil God. And in early Christian times this doctrine sprung into new life in various forms in the heresies which rose up in the Christian Church, or amongst those who, clinging to the pagan philosophy, desired to reconcile it with certain parts of the Christian faith. Tertullian tells us that the heretics in general languished about this question of evil; unde malum? whence came evil was the main subject of their inquiry.* In most of the so-called Gnostic systems the remedy was not radical. They pushed back the origin of evil to one of those subordinate deities that sprung in the descent of endless genealogies from the Supreme. The

"Ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." But if in the words of Job we translate, as some would, "without my flesh," we introduce the idea of a vision of God in a disembodied state, which was not less alien from early Hebrew conception than that of a resurrection, and which is less consistent with the subjoined parallel clause," whom mine eyes shall behold and not another." I have also no hesitation in saying that the sense without is here inadmissible, and would not have been supposed but because the proper sense of the preposition seems to favour the notion of a resurrection. Ewald's rule concerning the use of the preposition or, in the sense of without, is sustained in all other cases of this usage. Ein Nominalbegriff wird als sich entfernend, weichend, neben einen andern gesetzt.-Critische Grammatik, p. 599, 1827. In every such instance there is some other word joined which gives to the combined expression the sense of separation; as "desolate from a house," i.e. without a house, "peace from strife," that is, without strife. The absence of any exception elsewhere justifies us in saying that the present case is not one. The preposition does not mean without when used thus absolutely. If the words be rendered with the proper meaning of the preposition "from my flesh," no one would suppose it meant without, but would take the natural sense of looking from, as from a window, or in accordance with the ancient conception of vision as proceeding from the body of the person

who sees.

* Languens enim (quod et nunc multi, et maximè hæretici) circa mali quæstionem: Unde malum ?-Tertullian adv. Marcionem, i. 2.

defect which thus originated resulted in the creation of this material world, supposed to be therefore essentially evil. But while the evil in this world was thus accounted for, the difficulty of its previous origination was left untouched. But the doctrine of Marcion, like the ancient dualism, was thorough. He supposed that the Creator of this world, the God of the Old Testament, was a selfexisting malignant being, but that there exists also a good God, who, having long lain by, wrapped up in His own all-sufficient retirement, at last interposed, through the mission of our Saviour Christ, for the deliverance of mankind, and the correction of the ills produced by His rival. However irrational this theory otherwise was, it had at any rate the merit of accounting for evil. It survived or revived in the Manichæan heresy which continued long to subsist, and even lingered into the Middle Ages. Indeed I am not sure that we have not a survival of it still, in the exaggerated and exorbitant powers which some appear to ascribe to the devil.

66

But with all these the essential evil of matter was a fundamental principle-matter either in its existence or its qualities being the work of an evil Demiurge. And the Christian Church did not escape the baneful influence of this principle, leading, as it did, to an excessive practice of ascetic mortifications. With the heretics themselves it led the worser part into a wretchlessness of unclean living." Unable to escape from that matter which surrounded them on all sides, and which they carried about with themselves, they seem to have thought they might as well make the most of an unavoidable evil, and get all the pleasure out of it which they were able. The better sort resorted to the practice of mortifications, which the Chris

tians seem to have imitated, that they should not be outdone by opponents in what to the world might seem only a superabundant excellence; though no doubt they had themselves imbibed from their observation of, or former participation in, pagan impurities an extravagant feeling on their own part of the evil of material things. It is known to you all that S. Augustine passed into orthodox Christianity from the Manichæan heresy. I cannot help thinking that this had much to do with his predestinarian notions, though doubtless his controversy with the Pelagians tended also to lead him to an opposite extreme. It seems to me as if, in modifying his former belief of a good and an evil deity, he may naturally have imported into the good some of the characteristics of the evil deity, and so, in a manner, "to form a third, have joined the other two."*

But there were some who, retaining the belief of a sole Creator, endeavoured to free him from all complicity in the origin of evil, by resorting to the Aristotelic and Stoical notion of the eternal self-existence of matter. In this two courses were pursued, against both of which Origen (or the writer of a tract which is embodied in his works, whom Eusebius calls Maximus) reasons from his own philosophic standpoint with great acuteness. While all held that matter was the source of evil, some supposed that this self-existent matter was originally without qualities, the work of the Creator being the imparting of qualities and the formation of the world out of the materials thus provided. I need not say how contrary to all

To the last he bore within him that which once had made him a Manichæan."-Canon Westcott, in the Contemporary Review for June, 1879,

p. 502.