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Christ." The path is made ready for their feet. Well may the apostle exclaim, "Oh, the depth of riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God," who thus makes sin's effect help to work sin's remedy; who has ordered the world for pain as well as for pleasure, but so ordered it that pain shall be the heightener of pleasure, the preservative of life, the incentive to intellectual progress, the witness to His righteous government, the deterrent from sin, the discipline of the sufferer, and the means of waking the noblest qualities of the race.

XIII

THE MYSTERY OF MORAL EVIL

The Mystery of Iniquity."-2 THESS. ii. 7.

THESE apostolic words might serve as the motto or title of this discourse. They stand in no other relation to it.

Some time ago I ventured to speak on the Mystery of Pain in the world of a gracious and merciful God. I venture to speak now on the Mystery of Moral Evil in a world that has a righteous being as its Author and Ruler. It would be almost cowardly for a Christian teacher to face the lesser difficulty and ignore the greater, which the lastnamed undoubtedly is. Moral Evil-what is it? Whence is it? Why is it here? I know that some of the wisest minds have endeavoured to answer these questions and the closely-connected one, as to the Origin of Sin, which we might describe as moral evil, viewed as opposition to the will of God. But the problem still remains, a dark and painful one for many thoughtful minds and tender consciences. I would fain hope that I may throw just a little light on it and afford them some relief.

Moral Evil-what is it? What do we mean when we say that an action is wrong? Utilitarian philosophers would tell us that a wrong action is one that tends to injure the community. Very

clear and concise-good as far as it goes; but does it supply a complete answer to the question? May not a man wrong himself without doing any injury to others. Suppose him living by himself on an uninhabited island, should not we all condemn as wrong such actions as drunkenness, cruelty to animals, and suicide? I would rather, so to speak begin at the other end, and define moral evil as that which offends the conscience, that which conscience condemns. But, of course, this immediately raises the question, "What is conscience?" Our utilitarian philosophers would say it is a faculty developed by the prolonged experience of the community which has in the course of ages discovered what kinds of action are detrimental to it and accordingly resents them, attaching pains and penalties to them in self-defence. Hence there grows up in the individual a desire to avoid such actions. They become associated in the mind with unpleasant consequences. Even where there is no danger of judicial punishment, the inclination to such actions is accompanied by a vague foreboding of suffering to follow if that inclination be indulged. This tendency, this foreboding, this association of ideas transmitted by heredity from generation to generation and intensified, assumes at length the form which we call conscience.

This theory is extremely ingenious, but not altogether satisfactory. I appeal direct to your own consciousness. Where you have done evil or hover on the verge of evil, is not that inner voice which cries, "it is wrong-you is wrong-you ought not," something wholly different from the fear of punish

ment? Is it not a feeling of an absolutely different kind, so utterly unlike the fear of punishment that this emotion could never have given birth to it? Moreover, when conscience has been most sensitive, its declarations loudest and most imperative, it has frequently led men to go against the will of the community with the certainty that suffering will follow-suffering even unto death. How then can it have originated from the fear of suffering at the hands of the community through opposing its will?

I take a step further and say, whether conscience comes by way of evolution or is the direct utterance of the divine spirit in man, it has to do in the last analysis with motives rather than actions. It pronounces the same action good or evil, according to the motive that prompts it. For example, a father chastising his son does well if it be done with judgment, for the boy's good-ill if done merely as a vent to his own irritation. If a judge sentences a criminal to punishment more or less severe in the interests of the community, neither his own conscience nor that of the community will condemn him; but if a man violently assaults the transgressor, prompted simply by the desire for revenge, conscience, if he will listen to it, will tell him it is wrong, and the community will echo the verdict.

But further, conscience in a manner classifies our motives, determines their relative worth, and impels us to subordinate the lower to the higher; commends us when this is done, condemns us when the order is inverted. If this statement is true

(and I will presently proceed to justify it), then we reach this definition of moral evil. Moral evil is the triumph of a lower motive over a higher.

Now motives may, broadly speaking, be arranged under four classes in an ascending scale, briefly thus: bodily impulses, regard for the higher self, regard for our fellows, regard for God. The lowest class consists of those which spring from the needs and desires of the body. None of them are wrong in themselves. All the appetites and passions are right and good. They tend to the preservation of the individuals and the propagation of the race. Their gratification is right and good in certain degrees and under certain conditions, that is to say, when they do not conflict with and overmaster those higher motives which we have yet to consider, beginning with those which spring from the desires of the mind, or let us say from the higher self, such as the desire for knowledge, power, progress, a man's desire for something that he can call his own, desires for health, amusement, social intercourse, friendship, the love of the beautiful, the love of approbation, and so on. No one will say that they are in themselves wrong. On the contrary, they tend to the advancement of the individual and the community. They make for progress, serving at the same time to control that lower class of impulses just considered, and to regulate their indulgence. They lead to wrong action only when in their exercise they ignore or overpower those still higher motives which I have merely mentioned, but would now present more fully.

Take our third class, the altruistic motives, the

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