[2] Biology, i. 454.
[Illustration]
X
_The Relativity of Evil_
As we survey the course of this wonderful evolution, it begins to become
manifest that moral evil is simply the characteristic of the lower state
of living as looked at from the higher state. Its existence is purely
relative, yet it is profoundly real, and in a process of perpetual
spiritual evolution its presence in some hideous form throughout a long
series of upward stages is indispensable. Its absence would mean
stagnation, quiescence, unprogressiveness. For the moment we exercise
conscious choice between one course of action and another, we recognize
the difference between better and worse, we foreshadow the whole grand
contrast between good and bad. In the process of spiritual evolution,
therefore, evil must needs be present. But the nature of evolution also
requires that it should be evanescent. In the higher stages that which
is worse than the best need no longer be positively bad. After the
nature of that which the upward-striving soul abhors has been forever
impressed upon it, amid the long vicissitudes of its pilgrimage through
the dark realms of sin and expiation, it is at length equipped for its
final sojourn
"In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love."
From the general analogies furnished in the process of evolution, we are
entitled to hope that, as it approaches its goal and man comes nearer to
God, the fact of evil will lapse into a mere memory, in which the
shadowed past shall serve as a background for the realized glory of the
present.
Thus we have arrived at the goal of my argument. We can at least begin
to realize distinctly that unless our eyes had been opened at some time,
so that we might come to know the good and the evil, we should never
have become fashioned in God's image. We should have been the denizens
of a world of puppets, where neither morality nor religion could have
found place or meaning. The mystery of evil remains a mystery still, but
it is no longer a harsh dissonance such as greeted the poet's ear when
the doors of hell were thrown open; for we see that this mystery belongs
among the profound harmonies in God's creation. This reflection may have
in it something that is consoling as we look forth upon the ills of the
world. Many are the pains of life, and the struggle with wickedness is
hard; its course is marked with sorrow and tears. But assuredly its deep
impress upon the human soul is the indispensable background against
which shall be set hereafter the eternal joys of heaven!