GIFT OF 
 
THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 REPLIES TO CRITICS 
 ALSO 
 
 A STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES WATSON MILLEN 
 
 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 
 WORDSWORTH 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH COMPANY 
 1913 
 
X "\ 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH &> COMPANY 
 
TO 
 
 THE TEARS THAT HAVE REFLECTED RAINBOWS, 
 THE LOSSES FOUND TO BE TREASURES, 
 THE MISFORTUNES REVEALED AS BLESSINGS, 
 THE CROSSES THAT HAVE HID THEIR CROWNS, 
 THE ENEMIES THAT BLINDLY COMPELLED TO A 
 
 BETTER PATH 
 TO 
 
 ALL THE UNLOVING AND UNLOVED 
 THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE 1 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 PRELUDE 11 
 
 EVIL IN THE WORLD AND ITS MINISTRY 
 
 THERE . . 13 
 
 INTERLUDE 26 
 
 EVIL IN HEAVEN AND ITS SUBJECTION 
 
 EVERYWHERE 30 
 
 A REFLECTION 41 
 
 REPLIES TO CRITICS 45 
 
 A STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 123 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Feeling that the more or less accepted theo- 
 ries of evil are as incompatible with truth as 
 they are inconsistent with each other, I have 
 endeavored to present a view, which, to say the 
 least, does not dishonor God's character nor 
 contradict the Bible. I believe that the true 
 theory of evil does not make God in any degree 
 responsible for its existence, that it does not 
 give Satan a free hand in the moral disturbance 
 of God's universe, and that it does not imply 
 the permanence of evil either in active or pas- 
 sive form. 
 
 In the creation of high orders of beings en- 
 dowed with free will, the possibility of evil be- 
 comes necessary. The power of free choice im- 
 plies both good and evil as possible. And this 
 is as true of God as it is of His moral creatures, 
 for He is free. He cannot confer a power 
 which He does not possess.* 1 
 
 The will, or power of free choice, in each free 
 agent is one faculty. Good and evil, there- 
 
 *The figures found in connection with "Preface" and 
 poem refer to criticisms and answers correspondingly 
 numbered under "Replies to Critics." 
 
2 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 fore, proceed from the same source. God ex- 
 presses that power for righteousness and thus 
 is the personification of goodness. The being 
 whom He made nearest to Him, the one most 
 like Him, probably the first of His moral crea- 
 tures and head of angelic hosts, endowed with 
 marvelous and irrevocable powers, expresses, 
 probably not from the beginning and possibly 
 not forever, his will in unrighteousness, and 
 therefore is the embodiment and father of evil. 
 According to some of our mental philoso- 
 phers, the will in man acts for good or evil in 
 conformity with the motives which affect it. 
 But does it not act, rather, according as it is 
 acted upon by the primary representatives of 
 good and evil, and often without the weighing 
 of motives in any conscious degree? Explain- 
 ing the cause of her fall, Eve said: "Satan 
 beguiled me and I did eat." When Ananias 
 deceived as to the price for which he sold a 
 piece of land, Jesus said: "Why hath Satan 
 filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" So, 
 also, it was Satan who tempted Jesus in the 
 wilderness. Hence the language of David's 
 confession of his great offense is suitable to 
 every acknowledgment of sin: "Against Thee, 
 Thee only, have I sinned and done evil in Thy 
 sight." We are good or evil as our will yields 
 to the will of God or of Satan. Trench, in his 
 "Study of Words," says : "To find guilt in a 
 
PREFACE 3 
 
 man is to find that he has been beguiled by the 
 devil, 'instigante diabolo,' as it is inserted in 
 all indictments for murder, the forms of which 
 come down to us from a time when men were not 
 ashamed of tracing evil to his inspiration." 
 
 While God's nature requires Him to do all in 
 His power, consistent with the perfect freedom 
 of the subject, to prevent evil choice, yet, in the 
 contingency of its occurrence, it is necessary 
 for God to permit evil to such extent as may 
 fully demonstrate the free agency of the sub- 
 ject, but not to the extent of destroying His 
 moral government. Perfect free agency is com- 
 patible with supreme moral sovereignty. 2 
 
 God's nature also requires Him mercifully to 
 interpose in the sinner's behalf and to make evil 
 contribute to His own glory and the sinner's 
 profit in the highest possible degree. This He 
 does by giving to evil, in the abstract and in its 
 concrete forms, an adequate ministry through 
 the gift of His Son. He is justified in making 
 possible, by the creation of free beings, the evil 
 which He can turn to infinite advantage both to 
 Himself and to them, especially if it be His pur- 
 pose to finally overcome it. 
 
 In presenting the benefits which come through 
 evil, therefore, we are not commending evil, but 
 glorifying God, who overrules and uses it for 
 good. To the creature belongs all the responsi- 
 bility for the introduction of evil into the uni- 
 
4 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 verse, while to the Creator belongs all the credit 
 for its having become a blessing therein. 
 
 We hold that God cannot create or choose 
 evil ; but when once introduced, He may use evil 
 against evil and in a sense make evils, so called, 
 as He did when by His curse He transformed 
 the agreeable and intelligent serpent who con- 
 versed with Eve into the vile reptile that now 
 lurks in hidden places and lures or stealthily 
 strikes his unsuspecting prey. It was the ser- 
 pent of His creation, not the reptile of His curse, 
 that God pronounced good. 
 
 Mosquitoes that annoy, caterpillars that 
 nest in the trees and destroy their foliage, army 
 worms that devour the growing crops, all the 
 tormenting and destructive vermin known as 
 pests, are evils, but in service, and God made 
 them only as He made "thorns and thistles"- 
 the representative evil products of the earth 
 while under His curse. They form no part of 
 His original creation. They minister to our 
 discipline in the contention and war which we 
 are compelled to wage against them. And so 
 we should, perhaps, thank God for them and 
 their very vexing proclivities. 
 
 Though the earth would not have been cursed 
 but for man's fall, yet the curse has relation 
 mainly to the future. It may show to man, 
 earth's chief inhabitant, the blighting charac- 
 ter of sin and remind him of that greatest pos- 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 sible cataclysm which involved him so deeply, 
 but as the earth could not participate in the 
 moral tragedy of Eden beyond being the passive 
 scene of it, it could not be cursed on its own 
 account. The curse of the earth was a part 
 of the curse pronounced upon man and was so 
 full of hope that in his changed moral relations 
 and conditions it became the occasion of his 
 greatest blessing. Man should sweat, but he 
 should eat; he should labor, but his labor 
 should find ample reward; he should meet 
 evil, but he should overcome it never again 
 should evil be his master, but evermore his 
 servant ; he should suffer, but not without profit, 
 and through it his seed should be multiplied, 
 from which should come his Divine Redeemer 
 the Savior of all men, especially of them that 
 believe. God did not curse the earth in anger 
 for man's sin, but in love for man's sake; it 
 was not for man's punishment, but for his de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Is evil needful in the universe? God has 
 created moral beings, angelic and human, and 
 both have fallen. Is evil needful in heaven as 
 in earth, for angels as for men? Does God 
 need it for the accomplishment of His highest 
 purposes? Surely God uses it and through it 
 opens in Himself and in every one of His in- 
 telligent creatures the fountains of sympathy 
 and healing that shall flow perpetually. 3 
 
6 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 "Replies to Critics," forming a considerable 
 part of this volume, will be regarded by many 
 as more valuable than the poem, an abstract of 
 which has received the consideration of the best 
 Biblical scholarship available. While some 
 have given it unqualified commendation, it has 
 presented to others difficulties and objections 
 which they have kindly and courteously stated, 
 meriting my highest appreciation and placing 
 me under a welcome debt of obligation. My 
 replies have been made in no spirit of contro- 
 versy, but of loyalty to seeming truth. The 
 Scripture passages, to which have been given a 
 new interpretation and application, are worthy 
 of most careful study. False views, whatever 
 their antiquity or endorsement, contribute no 
 advantage, and every error corrected here can do 
 no less than to save us from disappointment 
 hereafter. 
 
 "A Study of the Future Life" is unique in 
 its character and original in its conclusions. 
 It is not a speculation. It is not a revamp of 
 any ism or theory. It is a new conception 
 based upon reason, resemblance and Revelation. 
 It casts a modifying light upon many teachings 
 of the Church and gives a new and beautiful 
 meaning to many texts of Scripture. It will 
 interest even where it may not convince. Be- 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 lieving that it will yet be the generally accepted 
 doctrine of the future life, I am glad to be its 
 author. 
 
 The birth of this book has been in the valley 
 of Baca, secluded, shadowy, tearful ; yet sound- 
 ing no note of gloom, it reveals God as always 
 on the throne and always the God of love. Its 
 picture of the fair morning of creation invaded 
 by elements that threaten confusion and uni- 
 versal wreck, dissolves into another of all- 
 embracing peace and perfect harmony, the sun 
 shining in splendor and not a cloud in all the 
 sky. I send it forth with the earnest hope that 
 it will stimulate thought, improve faith, encour- 
 age contentment, help to a still clearer state- 
 ment of the problem of evil, and inspire the 
 most grateful view of the gracious character 
 and righteous government of God. 
 
 C. W. M. 
 
THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 When angels sing, they voice their joy, 
 
 No minor strains their harps employ; 
 
 Creation's glories wake their song 
 
 That worlds reecho and prolong, 
 
 Distilling into tuneful ears 
 
 The mystic music of the spheres; 
 
 The Savior's birth in glad refrain 
 
 They chant o'er Bethlehem's hallowed plain; 
 
 For each poor sinner's contrite tears 
 
 Their loud hosannas Heaven hears. 
 
 And poets angels are, who sing 
 Of whom and what they love; they bring 
 Bright flowers of speech and rarest gems 
 Of thought to form rich diadems 
 Wherewith to deck with deftest art 
 And crown fond objects of their heart. 
 
 They sing their joys. No flames of hate, 
 No sorrows inarticulate, 
 No shrouded grief, or pain, or crime, 
 Should poet's fancy weave in rhyme. 
 
 They sing of art ; of home and friends ; 
 
 And Nature's ample book extends 
 
 11 
 
12 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 The list of themes all poets love 
 In earth below and stars above. 
 
 They sing of beauty, virtue, grace, 
 And paint the joys of that dear place 
 Where holy ranks of seraphs sing 
 And pay pure worship to their King; 
 Where saints in radiant splendor shine, 
 Reflecting glory all divine; 
 Where poets, too, whose loves are pure, 
 Their rich reward will find secure. 
 
 Sing on, ye bards ; the world needs song ; 
 Enough of grief; enough of wrong. 
 Sweet comfort give; let all your lays 
 Bring hope of brighter, better days, 
 And every strain, like balsam, heal 
 The wounds our hearts would fain conceal. 
 
 God's messengers mankind to bless, 
 
 Increase the sum of happiness; 
 
 The truth make clear in spite of creed; 
 
 True love incarnate in the deed; 
 
 Give hope that shines when stars fade out; 
 
 Give faith that conquers death and doubt ; 
 
 Heaven's chalice, not fine fancies, pour 
 
 To save men now and evermore. 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD AND ITS 
 MINISTRY THERE 
 
 In this perplexing, changeful life 
 Evil and good are strangely blent; 
 In greatest ill some good is found, 
 With greatest good some ill is sent. 
 
 The tempest, fiendlike in its rage, 
 To fields and homes sad havoc brings, 
 Yet, like an angel, freights away 
 Contagion foul on lustral wings. 
 
 The summer sun that pours his beams 
 To light the world, give life and joys, 
 Augments the toiler's heavy task, 
 And often feeble life destroys. 
 
 The breath that fans the brow of care 
 May soon in wild tornado blow; 
 The shower that quenches nature's thirst 
 In hurtling flood may madly flow. 
 
 The hated thing we get may bless, 
 Our greatest loss may prove a gain; 
 Fond Friendship's tender hand may smite, 
 
 The fount of knowledge issue pain. 
 
 13 
 
14 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 The wholesome law by evil lives, 
 
 Ambition's crown is won by cost, 
 
 To trial Virtue owes a debt, 
 
 And heaven is gained through Eden lost. 
 
 Strange paradox the human heart! 
 High purpose lives with base desire, 
 And worship's flame is oft obscured 
 By noxious fumes of passion's fire. 
 
 Evil exists within, without 
 Ubiquitous as light or air; 
 Nor from its power is there escape, 
 Its challenge meets us everywhere. 
 
 Into this fair and virgin world 
 The subtle serpent had brought sin 
 If, made with sense of right and wrong, 
 A moral creature he had been. 
 
 Endowed with freedom, man brings sin, 
 And sin hath need of tearful woes ; 
 Thus evil through the world's long age 
 A current all diffusive flows. 
 
 It burdens beast and bird and bee, 
 Affects the land and billowy main, 
 Imbues the air, nor spares the light; 
 The whole creation groans in pain. 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 15 
 
 And yet not profitless this stream, 
 For God makes use of good and ill; 
 By His permission evil lives, 
 And what can countervail His will? * * 
 
 God loves not ill nor ill ordains; 
 He wills not ill nor ill creates ; 
 He still forbids and punishes, 
 Yet turns to use, the ill He hates. 
 
 'Tis true that God the law ordains, 
 Each seed its own shall e'er repeat; 
 Who sows to flesh must gather chaff, 
 Who sows to spirit garners wheat. 
 
 Yet e'en the whirlwind's chaff shall serve 
 To feed desire to conquer ill ; 
 Through struggle Virtue mounts her throne 
 According to God's perfect will. 
 
 We own God's right to grant free choice, 
 Though freedom evil may purvey; 
 True love implies the power to hate, 
 Obedience, power to disobey. 
 
 The power inheres, but not the right, 
 To choose the wrong where will is free, 
 For conscience lives, and sternest law 
 Forbids the choice with penalty. 
 
 * The figures found in connection with "Preface" and 
 poem, refer to criticisms and answers correspondingly 
 numbered under "Replies to Critics." 
 
16 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Perverted use of powers bestowed 
 Is not the generous Giver's blame, 
 But his who holds the sacred trust, 
 And he must bear the guilt and shame. 
 
 God wills that free man's will shall be, 
 But not the evil it projects ; 
 He must permit the free will's choice, 
 Though 'gainst His will that will elects. 
 
 Free agency has yet its zone, 
 
 Within a sovereign realm it lies ; 
 
 All evil bounded God compels 
 
 To swell His praise through earth and skies. 5 
 
 To human fall is closely joined 
 
 Love's intervention all divine; 
 
 While one o'er earth deep shadows casts, 
 
 The other like the sun doth shine. 
 
 Man's fall was into clearer light, 
 With opened eyes as God he stood; 
 By knowing ill he also knew 
 The beauty, power, and worth of good. 6 
 
 Man's fall was into greater strength, 
 From Eden's enervating bower 
 He went with virile brain and thews 
 To win a world with lordly power. 7 8 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 17 
 
 Man's fall was forward into hope 
 That springs eternal in the breast, 
 Adorns each cloud with golden fringe, 
 And pledges heaven's untroubled rest. 9 
 
 Fair Modesty therein finds birth, 
 Suave charm is seen in charms concealed, 
 And honored is Humility 
 In beauty's artless blush revealed. 10 
 
 Can wardrobe without cloth be made, 
 Or thread and needles to sustain? 
 Ay, leaves are deftly sewed and formed, 
 For genius kindles in the brain. 
 
 The procreative functions held 
 Erstwhile unconscious, now awake ; 
 Fond parentage desired, each home 
 Shall hence another Eden make. 
 
 In her farewell to Paradise, 
 Eve could lament to leave sweet flower, 
 Fair fount, loved walk, and grateful shade, 
 But not embellished nuptial bower. 11 
 
 The law man knew was that of works, 
 Do this and live; do that and die; 
 The higher law of love appears 
 When evil calls it from the sky. 
 
18 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Yet not to man is credit due 
 For opening love's sweet mystery; 
 The starry choirs and angels sing 
 Christ is the key of history. 
 
 Not one would claim that man foresaw 
 Results, e'en in the least degree, 
 When putting forth his hand, he took 
 The fruit of that forbidden tree. 
 
 One only law to him was given, 
 Of these trees eat, from that refrain; 
 No hint of tempter he received, 
 Nor knew he aught of death or pain. 
 
 He suffered not from noonday sun, 
 Nor felt the chill of dew or rain, 
 And when God's hand removed a rib 
 In sleep profound, he knew no pain. 
 
 Of evil capable he was, 
 But not to evil choice inclined; 
 All from without temptation came, 
 Not his the bent his offspring find. 
 
 Like simple child he disobeyed, 
 Nor good nor evil did he know ; 
 He knew not what temptation was; 
 Mindless was he of weal or woe. 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 19 
 
 While good and evil were unknown, 
 No promise happy hope could wake, 
 Nor threat; of pending wrath and doom 
 With fear the placid bosom shake. 12 
 
 Nor do we palliate his guilt 
 
 With studied show of mere pretense 
 
 When we recall the mercy shown 
 
 To those who plead "the first offense." 
 
 And when the law was thus transgressed, 
 The strict requital fed love's flame; 
 A higher type of man God wills, 
 And greater glory to His name. 13 
 
 Uprightness, more than innocence, 
 Obedience true of virtue born, 
 And loyal love with liberty, 
 Must now man's character adorn. 
 
 God has for him a higher thought 
 Than roseate morning's lavish dower ; 
 High noon's estate and heaven's pure bliss 
 Surpass the joys of Eden's bower. 
 
 Creation, vast and marvelous, 
 Must yield to glory far above, 
 Through sin's dark portals Jesus comes 
 And founds a kingdom ruled by love. 
 
20 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 In all God's works and words and ways, 
 One purpose high He executes, 
 That He may show Himself as God 
 In all His wondrous attributes. 
 
 Worlds must exist, for God has power; 
 Design must show, for God is wise ; 
 And shall not evil contrast good 
 To give God's love full exercise? 
 
 To show Himself, to perfect man, 
 God uses what He could not make, 
 A hostile force, opposing will, 
 And thirst His pity springs to slake. 
 
 God's finished work, called "very good," 
 No blemish saw nor swift decay, 
 No noxious weed the earth produced, 
 Nor pain nor pest beset man's way. 
 
 As Science, skilled in Nature's laws, 
 Evolves new forms in flowers and fruits, 
 So fecund earth, for man's "sake" cursed, 
 To raid and scourge brings fresh recruits. 
 
 What God created and approved 
 Commands our love and guardian care ; 
 The serpent's seed demands our hate, 
 Though "bruised heel" be ours to bear. 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 21 
 
 The enemy the tares has sown; 
 Yet noisome, hurtful, deadly things 
 God uses for our discipline, 
 And thus by them a blessing brings. 
 
 Slight is the hurt, the blessing great, 
 
 Of all who toil beneath the curse 
 
 Which shines so gemmed with promise bright, 
 
 It gilds with hope the universe. 14 
 
 When shown with its antithesis, 
 The truth in strongest light appears ; 
 How brief is man's mortality 
 Compared with God's eternal years. 
 
 Our knowledge is by contrasts gained, 
 We know the light because of shade; 
 Our joys we prize, for grief is felt 
 When in the grave our hopes are laid. 
 
 If nothing called forth pity's tears ; 
 If none were weak, or poor, or lone ; 
 If all were right and nothing wrong, 
 The softest heart would turn to stone. 15 
 
 What use were power where naught resists, 
 
 Or pity where is no distress, 
 
 Or pardon where no wrong is done, 
 
 Or patience where no foes oppress? 
 
22 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Now God is love, His followers kind, 
 The sinner free forgiveness knows, 
 Compassion shares Misfortune's pain, 
 And mercy like a river flows. 
 
 'Tis needful that offenses come, 
 Was uttered by the Master's voice; 
 Resistance lends to Effort aid, 
 But woe to him who sins from choice. 
 
 "It must needs be." How kind those words ; 
 Some treacherous cloud our eyes may veil; 
 We know in part ; our will is weak ; 
 The best and strongest sometimes fail. 
 
 God's curse imposed now works sin's cure; 
 Sore trials wake man's moral sense; 
 Afflictions chasten spirits proud, 
 And lead to humble penitence. 
 
 Though willful sinners oft require 
 Keen pain the law's corrective rod 
 Yet sometimes sufferings are sent 
 To manifest the works of God. 
 
 And thus God's best may suffer most, 
 Though sin and sorrow are akin ; 
 Were upright Job, the man born blind, 
 And Jesus, sufferers for their sin? 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 
 
 As punishment, or discipline, 
 Or that His glory God may show, 
 We sorely suffer, nor see why, 
 Nor is it needful we should know. 
 
 Enough if ministry severe 
 Its noble purpose shall secure 
 And make this world a safer place 
 Than Adam found in Eden pure. 
 
 Whence comes the fullness of the stream 
 In blessings to the thirsty vale? 
 It nursed the breast of mountain cloud, 
 Borne thence and torn by fiercest gale. 
 
 And whence this peace, serene and deep, 
 That makes life's dirge a joyful psalm? 
 God's strong hand smote my wayward heart, 
 Then gently poured sweet Gilead's balm. 
 
 Between the oyster and its shell 
 A grain of sand produces pain ; 
 Encisted there, what alchemy 
 Can turn mute suffering into gain? 
 
 Concentric folds of membrane laid 
 Tears calcified are Nature's means 
 To heal the wound and form a pearl 
 To deck the coronet of queens. 
 
24 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Howe'er benign, we cannot pray 
 
 For sickness, poverty, or grief ; 
 
 Nor should we plead for what may harm 
 
 For riches, fame, or pain's relief. 
 
 "If it be possible, O God, 
 Let this most bitter cup pass by; 
 Yet not my will, but Thine be done." 
 Thus Jesus prayed; "Amen," we sigh. 
 
 If I in my Gethsemane 
 
 Can breathe the prayer of God's dear Son, 
 
 Then I may face my Calvary 
 
 And cry "My Lord and I are one." 
 
 The hordes of ill, the hosts of good, 
 About us press with promise fair; 
 Perchance the good is blindly spurned 
 And ill embraced with eager care. 
 
 We dare not choose, we do not know, 
 What cup to drink, what voice believe; 
 We only know our thirst is great 
 And sweetest draughts may most deceive. 16 
 
 For virtue's sake God gives His Jobs 
 And Peters into Satan's hands ; 
 Nor could His Christ the trial shun ; 
 Who falls, yet rises, truly stands. 
 
EVIL IN THE WORLD 25 
 
 Thou, Who the cruel wine press trod 
 
 In sad Gethsemane alone, 
 
 Who captive led Captivity, 
 
 And didst for all our sins atone; 
 
 Thou, Who for sifted Peter prayed 
 
 He might the test of faith endure, 
 
 Then cast on him a timely look 
 
 The look that saved love's strongest lure; 
 
 Turn, look on us, ere faith quite fails; 
 Incline our hearts to things above, 
 To take what comes and lean on God, 
 For ALL works good to them that love. 
 
INTERLUDE 
 
 God in His wisdom made the sun, 
 
 With planets in his train, 
 And countless suns and systems still 
 
 Which realms of space contain. 
 
 In wisdom God hung out the moon 
 And did her course command, 
 
 And not amiss He flung the stars 
 From His Almighty hand. 
 
 To all He gave important work, 
 Assigned them power and place, 
 
 Prescribed their orbit's wondrous path, 
 And timed their tireless race. 
 
 Precision all their movements marks, 
 They all true balance keep, 
 
 Their inclinations are exact 
 
 As through deep space they sweep. 
 
 Therefore the grateful seasons turn, 
 Hence follow night and day, 
 
 So ebb and flow the ocean's tides ; 
 For WORLDS God's law obey. 
 
INTERLUDE 27 
 
 See how the face of nature fair 
 God's limning doth forever bear ; 
 His purpose grand in all is seen- 
 In ocean's surge and landscape's sheen, 
 In dew-gemmed grass and blooming flowers, 
 In rocks and glades, and oak that towers 
 Umbrageous over vale and hill, 
 Where nature freely works her will. 
 The seed has germs to reproduce 
 Its kind in numbers most profuse, 
 And thus the husbandman well knows 
 The source from which rich harvest grows. 
 
 The birds that chirp their modest lays 
 Or loudly sing their Maker's praise ; 
 The beasts that toil, or lurk in lair ; 
 E'en insects buzzing through the air; 
 Reptiles that slink from glance of men ; 
 The croakers of the dismal fen; 
 And finny tribes that fill the deep ; 
 To instinct true, their place all keep, 
 And be their mission good or ill, 
 They ne'er transgress their Maker's will. 
 This lesson, then, we learn with awe 
 All NATURE keeps God's perfect law. 
 
 And can our God less mindful be 
 Of those designed eternally 
 His image pure to bear? 
 
28 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Has he no work, no place, no plan 
 For noble, regal, godlike man, 
 Who may His glory share? 
 
 Where'er we look this truth is taught 
 Man lives in God's divinest thought, 
 
 Has in His plans high place. 
 As lord of all the world below, 
 His work is great as angels know, 
 
 O happy human race. 
 
 Yet man alone, with power to say, 
 "I will," "I will not," breaks away 
 
 And yields to passions base; 
 His lofty lineage he belies 
 And spurns the love no good denies, 
 
 Ah, wretched human race. 
 
 A planet from its orbit hurled 
 By force centrifugal a world 
 
 Enwrapped in doleful gloom 
 Is emblem of the fallen man 
 Whose will would thwart his Maker's plan 
 
 And rush him on to doom. 
 
 But grace shall melt the hardest heart, 
 And balm divine shall cure the smart 
 
 Of sin's malignant sores. 
 The Son of God for man hath died ; 
 " 'Tis finished," on the cross He cried ; 
 
 The Cross lost man restores. 
 
INTERLUDE 29 
 
 Great God, we fall before Thy face 
 And glad receive Thy saving grace, 
 
 So fully, freely given. 
 What joy, what ecstasy, what bliss 
 When Thou from sin the soul dost kiss ; 
 
 The night of storm is riven. 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN AND ITS SUBJEC- 
 TION EVERYWHERE 
 
 Evil in heaven ! Amazing fact, 
 That angels left their pure estate ! 
 How fell the first, the chief, the prince? 
 What world could lure a soul so great? 
 
 Endowed with power, enrobed in light, 
 His headship angels glad to own, 
 Too proud to render service high, 
 He craved a kingdom, sought a throne. 
 
 Did Lucifer, so near to God, 
 Bright sun of heaven's glorious morn, 
 Involve by sin the hosts he led 
 As Adam did his race unborn? 
 
 The facts we know would seem to point 
 To parent, offspring, kindred all ; 
 One law for every living thing; 
 "Seed of its kind" for great and small. 
 
 When God would send His Son to earth, 
 He must be parented like man; 
 As baby born in Joseph's home 
 
 His wondrous life on earth began. 
 
 30 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN 31 
 
 Or were angelic beings made 
 Each one distinct and separate, 
 No kinship felt, alone to hold 
 Or leave at will his pure estate? 
 
 Enough to know one angel proud, 
 With ranks of pliant satellites, 
 Dared challenge God's supremacy 
 And disavow His sacred rights. 
 
 The rebel hosts for conflict form 
 And horrid war in heaven they wage ; 
 There overcome, to earth they haste 
 And pour on man their vengeful rage. 
 
 But man, though like the angels free, 
 Did not through vain ambition fall; 
 The supple serpent Satan used, 
 Of creatures craftiest of all, 
 
 The serpent cursed beyond all hope, 
 The human pair from Eden sent. 
 Oh, why was Satan not rebuked 
 Unless his sway some service meant? 
 
 Indeed, in heaven he still appeared, 
 In council met with sons of God, 
 And brought report of what he learned, 
 As up and down the earth he trod. 
 
32 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 To angels fallen into sin 
 His tender mercy God reveals ; 
 Methinks redemption they are given, 
 Nor one in vain to Him appeals. 
 
 Cannot God's Son the angels save 
 And heaven's righteous law maintain, 
 Since from foundation of the world 
 The precious Lamb of God was slain? 
 
 The voice the human flock obey 
 The angels know who Christ's love share ; 
 Them He must bring His "other sheep" 
 To form one fold, one Shepherd's care. 
 
 As mercy moral law implies, 
 And finite powers may mercy plead, 
 So surely God must find a way 
 To meet a sinning angel's need. 17 
 
 When Jesus came in human flesh, 
 
 Thus lower made than Seraphim, 
 
 God gave command throughout His worlds 
 
 "Let all the angels worship Him." 
 
 Who disobeyed this righteous test, 
 E'en tempting Jesus to rebel, 
 Bore guilt God's justice could not brook, 
 And swift from heaven like lightning fell. 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN 33 
 
 By blood of Lamb, o'ercome, cast out, 
 To earth confined, let heaven rejoice; 
 Our brethren there no more shall hear 
 The serpent's false, accusing voice. 
 
 Woe for the earth and for the sea ! 
 To them the devil has come down ; 
 As prince he moves the powers of air, 
 As this world's god he wears the crown. 
 
 The fabled Harpies, Furies, Fates, 
 Producing storms and dire events, 
 Were mystic hints of Satan's power 
 In nature's active elements. 
 
 He lays on men infirmities 
 
 For which, alas, no cure is found; 
 
 The woman bent and bowed Christ healed, 
 
 Lo, eighteen years had Satan bound. 
 
 His power is great, his time is short, 
 He lays his lures on every hand, 
 With skill provides what weakness wants ; 
 Ah, who against his wiles can stand? 
 
 God is supreme; He won in heaven 
 When Michael 'gainst the dragon fought ; 
 And Christ, in pure humanity, 
 O'er Satan splendid triumph wrought. 
 
34 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 A moral government involves 
 A power supreme o'er subjects free, 
 And published law, adapted, just, 
 Whose sanctions weigh eternally. 
 
 Jehovah reigns, does not coerce, 
 Constrains by love and wisdom's voice, 
 Provides fair field, respects free will; 
 Oh, therefore, let the earth rejoice. 
 
 Evil abounds, but never rules, 
 It still contends, but must retreat. 
 While claiming all, it loses all, 
 And leaves the record of defeat. 
 
 The furnace heated seven fold 
 Receives the Hebrew children bound, 
 But fire their fetters only burns, 
 For there the Son of God is found. 
 
 In our dear Elder Brother's name, 
 As more than conquerors we sing; 
 The boasting Grave no victory claims ; 
 And vaunting Death has lost his sting. 
 
 All time, all things, the thick events 
 That crowd the earth or heavens above,- 
 All words and works, all joys and tears, 
 Are servants of the God we love. 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN 35 
 
 E'en Satan is God's minister, 
 And, though unwilling, serves Him well, 
 Else God would banish him from earth, 
 And justly cast him down to hell. 
 
 To hell? Ah, not to dark despair; 
 Sane law blest privilege provides ; 
 Unchanging goodness e'er invites ; 
 Fair Hope, like Faith and Love, abides. 
 
 "Until he finds," oh, welcome words 
 The shepherd seeks the sheep astray; 
 "Until she finds" the prized lost coin, 
 The woman's search knows no delay. 
 
 And thus in parable Christ shows 
 How long He will His grace declare, 
 "Until He finds," nor "wings of morn," 
 Nor "bed in hell" defeats His care. 
 
 i 
 
 Probation is a myth, as taught; 
 Can fickle choice fix changeless fate? 
 With life forever under law, 
 No soul shall hopeless cry, "Too late." 
 
 Too late to gather golden store, 
 Too late Ambition's crown to win, 
 Too late to use lost privilege, 
 But ne'er too late to cease from sin. 18 
 
36 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 "I am the door; if any man 
 Shall ope the door, I will come in," 
 No time lock on this promise sure, 
 "I will come in and save from sin." 
 
 One, only one condition given, 
 Though men another oft attach, 
 Sweet fellowship is found whene'er 
 Faith's fingers reach the ready latch. 
 
 When thus we see Thee, loving Lord, 
 Our dull delay we deep deplore, 
 And rise and press with eager haste 
 To open wide the welcome door. 
 
 A wasted spring lean harvest brings, 
 And age bemoans a youth misspent, 
 Neglect may bring uncovered loss, 
 An everlasting punishment. 
 
 Then whence this heaven of bliss secured? 
 Ah, not through our f orgetfulness ; 
 Our sins behind God's back are cast 
 When we in Christ's dear name confess. 
 
 'Tis here or there or any place, 
 High heaven is found, or deepest hell; 
 Each is condition bliss or woe 
 Wherever moral creatures dwell. 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN 37 
 
 God is the God of life, not death, 
 His kingdom ruleth over all; 
 His endless rule still signals hope; 
 No ear too deaf to hear His call. 
 
 Just punishment has purpose kind ; 
 For every sinner Jesus died; 
 He sees the travail of His soul, 
 And saving all, is satisfied. 
 
 Nothing is lost; the leaf that falls, 
 Feeding the roots of yonder tree, 
 Shall climb to life in flower and fruit, 
 In golden summers yet to be. 
 
 The rain descends and, warmed by sun, 
 Returns ethereal to the skies, 
 There soon compressed by cooling winds, 
 Again it falls, again to rise. 
 
 God sees each raindrop in its rounds 
 Above, below, through all the years, 
 And knows it still in mist or stream, 
 In dew gemmed flowers or flowing tears. 
 
 "Gather the fragments," Jesus said, 
 And thus to meanest things applied 
 His holy will concerning all, 
 And most of all for whom He died. 
 
38 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Ideals prophecies of truth 
 In time's ripe fullness are concrete; 
 To loftiest fancies Art gives form, 
 The dreams of Science spurn defeat. 
 
 Ideals too good to have been, 
 So good they must be, soon or late, 
 Embrace for all this wholesome hope 
 The endless, holy, blissful state. 
 
 For all mankind Christ came and died; 
 With thought of all He went away; 
 To all the Comforter He sends 
 To teach His truth and give it sway. 
 
 More potent now the words of Christ 
 Than when from His own lips they fell ; 
 And, added truth, the "things to come," 
 Yea, "all things" e'en, shall He foretell. 
 
 He knows no bounds ; not "straightened" He, 
 But "searches all," "convinces all," 
 "Shows all their sin," "commands return," 
 And "mighty signs" enforce His call. 
 
 Triumphant triune God, Thy work 
 Complete in earth and heaven I boast. 
 A sinless universe must come; 
 My faith is in the Holy Ghost. 
 
EVIL IN HEAVEN 39 
 
 We know not now, though sons of God, 
 What we shall be when Christ appears, 
 When face to face Him we shall see 
 With sight undimmed by clouds or tears. 
 
 We see Him not with vision clear, 
 Else our poor dross would turn to gold ; 
 But in the light of God's white throne 
 His glory bright we shall behold. 
 
 Yet not at once the full orbed view, 
 Nor sudden comes the wondrous change; 
 The law of moral life is growth, 
 Whatever be its realm or range. 
 
 "When He appears." Oh, glorious sight! 
 The worlds subdued before Him fall ; 
 Subjected all, Himself subjects 
 To God the Father "All in all." 
 
 Not once surprised nor unprepared, 
 Nor facing possible defeat, 
 God rules, and good and evil join 
 To make His victory complete: 
 
 Complete ; nor man nor angel lost, 
 Nor evil lifts defiant head ; 
 Christ's enemies are now His friends; 
 E'en Death, His last grim foe, is dead. 
 
40 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 As one who seeks the fields in spring, 
 Reviving nature's hope perceives, 
 Discovers buds of promise full, 
 And sweet arbutus 'neath dead leaves, 
 
 So he who loves God's word will find, 
 Assisted by the Spirit's breath, 
 Truth's radiant garb in forms effete, 
 And throbbing life mid husks of death. 
 
 Ah, who can say ill has no place 
 In realms by moral creatures trod, 
 Or who deny that it proclaims 
 The wisdom, power, and love of God? 
 
 Faith sees the universe at peace, 
 From evil gain, approved God's ways, 19 
 All knees in humble worship bent, 
 And vocal every tongue with praise. 20 
 
A REFLECTION 
 
 Methinks the birds that never sing, 
 Within their breasts have songs ; 
 
 They love and mate, and show the joy 
 To which all song belongs. 
 
 And birds that sing, more music have 
 Than their few notes impart; 
 
 Their voiceless airs are heard by Him 
 Who tunes the choiring heart. 
 
 So multitudes who lack the skill 
 To form the rhythmic line, 
 
 The soul of poesy possess, 
 And feel the flame divine. 
 
 And poets who most sweetly sing 
 Have sweeter songs unsung, 
 
 Melodious whispers from above, 
 For which there is no tongue. 
 
 God's gifts are good ; enough to know 
 
 His will His pleasure brings ; 
 Who made and touches, gladly hears 
 
 The harp of thousand strings. 
 41 
 
THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Sublime the thrill of those mute songs 
 
 Not tuned for stolid ears; 
 His life they make an epic grand 
 
 Whose soul their cadence hears. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS. 
 
 1. "In your Preface you say, 'The power of 
 free choice implies both good and evil as possi- 
 ble. And this is as true of God as it is of His 
 moral creatures, for He is free. He cannot 
 confer a power which He does not possess. 9 
 Does not the President of the United States 
 confer a power which he does not possess in his 
 appointment of postmasters? I hold that God 
 is not free; He cannot choose evil." A. E. D. 
 
 That which is morally impossible may be 
 absolutely possible. Our claim that God is free 
 in the absolute sense is justified by the reason 
 assigned. If further proof is desired, it is 
 found in the nature of goodness, which to be 
 praiseworthy must be voluntary, just as evil 
 to be blamed must be chosen. 
 
 The Federal Government forms, owns, and 
 controls the whole postal system. It has made 
 a class of postoffices appointive, and the presi- 
 dent is the government's representative, as also 
 is the postmaster, in the discharge of official 
 duties. The government confers the power 
 which it alone possesses. Its servants may 
 come and its servants may go, but the govern- 
 ment, as the highest expression of the sovereign 
 
 people, goes on forever. 
 45 
 
46 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 It is true that God, as God, cannot choose 
 evil. This leads me to a position beyond that 
 which is taken by many who deny God's absolute 
 freedom. With God, as such, there is only the 
 superlative degree. Good and better, as mean- 
 ing less than the best, are not in His vocabulary. 
 There are those who ask, "Why is the world as 
 it is, when Ged might have made it so differ- 
 ently?" Leibnitz, a celebrated German philos- 
 opher, held that "God saw an infinite number 
 of worlds before Him as possible." I hold that 
 the infinitely perfect Being must be actuated by 
 the perfect conception. In the creation and 
 government of the universe He is bound by His 
 very nature in all things to do His best. Nei- 
 ther suns nor planets could better serve the high 
 purpose of their existence. Angels in their 
 realm are the complete expression of God's per- 
 fect ideal concerning them. Man, crowned 
 with freedom, and this world as his starting 
 point could not have been made otherwise. 
 Nor beast nor bird nor butterfly, as such and 
 in their respective spheres, could be improved. 
 Perfection stamps every thought and action 
 and purpose of God. To the question, "Why 
 hast Thou made me thus ?" there can be but one 
 answer; it was the best that God could do. 
 When God surveys all that He has made or done 
 or spoken, He pronounces it "very good," 
 the best, with the end in view, that infinite wis- 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 47 
 
 dom could devise or power execute or love con- 
 template. The works of the Lord, like His 
 law, are perfect. Instead of there being an 
 infinite number of possible ways open before 
 God, there is ever but one way and that is not 
 the good nor the better, but the best way. 
 Even morally our world is as good as God has 
 been able to make it. God, as God, must do 
 His best and be so unchangeable in respect to 
 His own perfections and the principles of His 
 administration as to be without the "shadow 
 of turning." 
 
 Such a God choosing to be such who would 
 not adore? His character is the source of our 
 hope, our joy and our confidence; our incentive 
 to watchfulness, prayer, and fidelity; our en- 
 couragement to the practice of every virtue 
 and the cultivation of every grace. If God be 
 so unchangeable in His attributes and character 
 that He must do for us always that which is 
 the best that our circumstances will allow, then 
 it follows that in His manifestations He is the 
 most changeable, the most responsive being in 
 the universe, every moment suiting His action 
 toward us according to our changing conditions 
 and relations. When we turn toward Him, He 
 turns toward us ; when we are tempted, He is 
 concerned; when we pray, He listens; when 
 we strive, He assists ; when we weep, He com- 
 forts. It becomes us, therefore, to come into 
 
48 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 closest relation of loving obedience to God so 
 that His best for us may not be punishment 
 and pain, but pardon and purity and peace. 
 This view renders superfluous any test, scien- 
 tific or otherwise, of the value and efficacy of 
 prayer. * 
 
 . "If I take exception to anything in your 
 Preface it is to: 'It was necessary for God to 
 permit evil, 9 etc. I infer that you mean He 
 could not prevent it." D. c. B. 
 
 You state my position correctly. While to 
 permit implies the power to prevent, yet by the 
 creation of free beings God to a limited extent 
 surrenders that power. He cannot prevent 
 the exercise of the creature's given power of 
 freedom. He cannot prevent evil if the free 
 agent chooses it. He may deny the right to 
 choose it by forbidding it; He may attach to 
 evil choice painful consequences and encourage 
 the choice of good by loftiest motives, but be- 
 yond this on any principle of justice, He can- 
 not go. 
 
 I make no distinctions in my conclusions be- 
 tween evils physical or moral, original or con- 
 sequential, parental or progenial. Stress is 
 laid upon the fact that God uses evil of every 
 kind and that He gives it such a ministry as 
 justifies Him in the creation of free beings, 
 under law, while foreseeing the full character 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 49 
 
 and extent of the evil which they would choose. 
 Freedom does not necessitate evil choice, there- 
 fore God could create free beings, knowing that 
 they would choose evil; knowing, also, that He 
 could make good use of that evil. Now, having 
 created such beings, God cannot prevent by 
 the display of His almightiness the exercise of 
 their given power. To do so would destroy 
 their moral responsibility and His moral gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Calvinism in some of its aspects has cast a 
 baneful shadow over the theology of Christen- 
 dom. Theologians have been frightened by the 
 cry of "divided sovereignty." But the sover- 
 eign choice of the free agent has not been 
 usurped. God has yielded it, and not only so, 
 He has hedged it about with prohibitions and 
 penalties and limited it to the fullest degree 
 consistent with perfect moral agency. More- 
 over, while He yields limited supremacy over 
 the will, He retains absolute sovereignty over 
 the resulting act, compelling the wrath of free 
 creatures to praise Him. ' 
 
 So related and ordered are the zone of the 
 creature's moral agency and the realm of God's 
 moral sovereignty that any infringement of^pne 
 upon the other is impossible. God cannot en- 
 ter the zone of free agency with any compelling 
 power over the will. Look at that first diso- 
 bedience in Eden. The first Adam stood in the 
 
50 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 presence of evil, unaided and alone. God saw 
 the approach of the serpent, observed his in- 
 sinuating address, heard His own command 
 contradicted, realized fully the gradual yield- 
 ing of Adam's will and what the result would be, 
 yet gave no sign of His presence, no signal of 
 warning, no outward or inward influence, to 
 shape the fateful decision. Adam stood alone 
 in that crisis as the second Adam, four thou- 
 sand years later, stood alone in that dark hour 
 when He cried, "My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me?" 
 
 God saw the serpent of Satan possessed, 
 Approach mother Eve with exquisite grace; 
 He saw falsehood clothed with specious half-truths, 
 And knew the result, yet hid He His face. 
 
 Why? Because, having made our first parents 
 perfect moral beings and given them perfect 
 law for the government of their moral conduct 
 a law that was clear to their understanding 
 and appealed to their conscience, He could 
 not interfere with their power of free choice; 
 He must respect His own gift free will. 
 
 Occasionally we hear someone say, "If I had 
 God's power, I would not allow men to sin and 
 wreck themselves and bring so much suffering 
 upon the innocent." But God will exercise His 
 power only in righteousness. He derives no 
 pleasure from evil and does everything He can 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 51 
 
 to prevent it. Yet God must suffer evil in the 
 event of its choice, in order to have moral crea- 
 tures in His universe under a beneficent moral 
 government. Still, evil must ever bow to the 
 Divine prerogative of supreme moral sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 This view not only relieves God from every 
 degree of responsibility for the existence of 
 evil in the universe, but it removes the prevail- 
 ing difficulties which have made it so hard, 
 sometimes, to love Him. Calvinists have taught 
 that "All is of God, ordained by Him." To 
 the average jmind this view makes God the 
 author of evil. The view of Arminians is 
 scarcely better, which is that God could, if He 
 would, avert the evil and the anguish. It is 
 impossible for the ordinary mind not to feel 
 that this view makes God cruel. 
 
 I have a better faith. I believe that God, 
 while He made me capable of evil, made me 
 wisely, governs me kindly, loves me tenderly, 
 and does the best He can for me even in cir- 
 cumstances for which He is not responsible; 
 that if He cannot withhold me from choosing 
 evil, He will overrule my evil for good, and that 
 if He cannot remove the "thorn" from which I 
 suffer, He will glorify Himself by giving me 
 grace to bear it, and make it work out for me, 
 under conditions which I can control, a far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
 
52 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 In this faith His yoke is easy and His burden 
 light. 
 
 3. " 'Is evil needful in the universe? 9 I 
 answer , no; for God forbade it in advance. 
 He would not forbid what was needful" 
 j. w. A. 
 
 I answer, no and yes. It is not necessary, as 
 a fact, undeniably, absolutely. If it were, 
 God would be responsible for it; nor could 
 He forbid it, for it could not be prevented. 
 
 Evil is absolutely necessary as a possibility 
 to free moral agents. It is absolutely neces- 
 sary as a possibility where good is possible. 
 As a possibility evil is eternal. As a fact evil 
 is temporal. For the eternal possibility of evil 
 God is responsible. For the temporal fact of 
 evil the free moral creature is responsible. 
 
 Evil as a fact is needful conditionally. It 
 is needful in order to obtain certain ends or 
 results, as tools are necessary to profitable la- 
 bor, or clothing to greatest comfort, or schools 
 and teachers to higher education. No one 
 should deny, I think, that evil is needful in or- 
 der to show us God in the tran:scend,ently 
 beautiful side of His character. Evil was 
 necessary in order that Christ might come. 
 True, God forbade it in advance, for the law 
 must conform to the normal and the perfect. 
 
 You are familiar with maple sugar making. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 53 
 
 Well, the magnificent maple tree might have 
 stood on the hillside in the beauty of unmarred 
 perfection and the world remained ignorant of 
 the sweetness of its sap, had not some woods- 
 man wounded it with a blow of his keen-edged 
 ax. But from that wound there flows in profu- 
 sion its very life to nourish and regale even the 
 one who gave the cruel stroke. To obtain the 
 delicious sugar, however, the wound was needful. 
 So God might have occupied His throne as 
 Creator and Lawgiver, displaying the evidences 
 of His wisdom and power on every hand, and 
 the world never have known Him in the tender- 
 ness of His nature, had not our first parents in 
 Eden wounded Him by their disobedience. But 
 from that wound has poured the sweetness of 
 His love and His very life, sufficient for the 
 nourishment and regalement not only of Adam 
 and Eve, but of every member of their sin-con- 
 tinuing race. Yet for this manifestation of 
 the heart of God the introduction of evil was 
 needful. 
 
 4<"Man 9 s will can 'countervail 9 His 'mil. 9 ' 
 L. D. w. 
 
 The word "countervail" has been carefully 
 chosen. It means to offset, to counterbalance, 
 to oppose with equal power. Man can disobey 
 God's will, but if he can oppose it successfully, 
 he is therein the equal of God. The finite will 
 
54 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 never can oppose with equal power the Infinite 
 will. The power, not the right, to oppose the 
 Divine will is God-given. When Pilate said to 
 Jesus, "Knowest Thou not that I have power 
 to release Thee and have power to crucify 
 Thee?" Jesus answered him, "Thou wouldst 
 have no power against Me except it were given 
 thee from above." God could not confer a 
 power superior to His own and He would not 
 confer a power equal to His own. He would 
 not render possible His own defeat by such gen- 
 erous equipment of His creature. 
 
 Moreover, God's will is not so pivoted that 
 the completed human act of disobedience can 
 void the far reaching Divine purpose. That 
 by which man intends to thwart God's plan 
 often becomes the means of its speedier ful- 
 fillment. The act committed, man is done with 
 it; but it is then that God begins with it. 
 The act committed passes from the limited 
 zone of man's freedom to the unlimited realm 
 of Divine sovereignty. God is not dependent 
 on man's fidelity for the accomplishment of 
 His purposes. Man does not work God's will. 
 God works His own will. He who sees the end 
 from the beginning; who sitteth upon the circle 
 of the heavens and turns the seasons round; 
 whose moral administration involves Him in no 
 difficulties, and who cannot be surprised or 
 disappointed or defeated, works His own per- 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 55 
 
 feet will, and so instead of its being counter- 
 vailed in any instance, in the end it is always 
 accomplished. Read the second Psalm. "The 
 nations rage, the peoples make vain plans, the 
 kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers 
 take counsel together, against the Lord and 
 against His anointed ; He that sitteth in the 
 heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them 
 in derision." i 
 
 While there is much that is not according to 
 God's will, yet nothing can defeat His will. 
 Time is an important element in the struggle 
 between right and wrong, but the issue is not 
 doubtful. 
 
 5. "7 seriously question the truth of your 
 lines : 
 
 'All evil, bounded, God compels 
 To swell His praise through earth and skies.' '' 
 
 S. J. M. 
 
 It is, indeed, difficult to see how the meanness 
 and wickedness of men can be made to swell 
 God's praise. But God permits evil, for we 
 see it all about us. God overrules evil, for it 
 is among the "all things" that work together 
 for good to them that love Him. God limits 
 evil, for unlimited evil would destroy His moral 
 government. In permitting and limiting evil, 
 God has a purpose and all God's purposes are 
 high and worthy. Now in limiting evil, where 
 
56 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 will He draw the line? Will He limit it to 
 what He can control, or will He let it get the 
 best of Him? The question answers itself. 
 
 Apropos of the limiting of evil is the follow- 
 ing passage in "Titus Andronicus," which 
 Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Aaron, 
 the Moor: 
 
 "I am no baby, I, that with base prayers 
 I should repent the evils I have done; 
 Ten thousand, worse than ever yet I did, 
 Would I perform if I might have my will." 
 
 As the Rev. Joseph Cook observes: "It is 
 certainly significant that Shakespeare, who has 
 given us the most complete science of the hu- 
 man passions ever written, should teach that 
 men are not permitted to do all that they would 
 of evil." 
 
 We may add, if men are limited, so is Satan. 
 Indeed, we have one notable instance of Satan's 
 limitations. When God first delivered Job into 
 Satan's hands for trial, Satan could touch 
 Job's possessions, but not his person. In the 
 second trial he could touch Job's person, but 
 not his life. The psalmist says (Psalms 76: 
 10) : "Surely the wrath of man shall praise 
 Thee, O Lord, and the remainder of wrath 
 Thou shalt restrain." If these words mean 
 anything, they teach that God will allow no 
 more evil than He can overrule for good. In 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 57 
 
 restraining what He cannot use and in using 
 what He permits, His name is honored in earth 
 and skies. 
 
 6. "Did not man really know the power of 
 good before the fall?" s. j. M. 
 
 In Genesis 3:2 we read: "And the Lord 
 God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, 
 to know good and evil." I doubt if God ever 
 says anything superfluous, much less mislead- 
 ing. He would not say good AND evil if He 
 meant only evil. 
 
 The Infinite One knows absolutely, while our 
 knowledge is largely by comparison, as hard 
 and soft, wet and dry, sweet and sour, light 
 and shade, rich and poor, high and low, near 
 and distant, and, also, good and evil. We 
 really know not the one until we know the 
 other. 
 
 Experience, also, is a source of our knowl- 
 edge, and man in experiencing the fall did not 
 lose his God-likeness, as many teach, but en- 
 hanced it in one respect, at least, viz., "to 
 know good and evil." 
 
 7. "I cannot believe that the fall of Adam 
 was into 4 'clearer light 9 or 'greater strength. 9 " 
 
 \ S. J. M. 
 
 In reading the verses which speak of the fall 
 as being advantageous in respect to light and 
 
58 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 strength, it is necessary to connect the lines 
 preceding : 
 
 "To human fall is closely joined 
 Love's intervention all divine." 
 
 It is because of love's intervention, which in- 
 cludes the curse pronounced upon man, that 
 Adam's fall was into clearer light and greater 
 strength. Love's intervention did more than 
 merely to make good the loss involved by the 
 fall of our first parents. Whether every fall 
 since Adam's has been a fall upward, I do not 
 know. It cannot be denied that men may profit 
 by their faults and failures if they will. 
 Tennyson's lines are no less true than they are 
 beautiful : 
 
 "I hold it truth, with him who sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 I believe that all evil, whether of sin or sor- 
 row, has its ministry, either positive or possi- 
 ble. We may not be able always to discern 
 the divine service which weakness and wicked- 
 ness are compelled to render, but may we not 
 trace enough to establish the fact? Does not 
 the indifference of the heartless priest and 
 Levite magnify the tender humanity of the 
 good Samaritan? Does not the prodigal 
 teach us a lesson of our heavenly Father's 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 59 
 
 mercy? Is not Peter's denial of Christ made 
 a blessing to the Church through all time, as 
 it was the occasion of defining in the clearest 
 manner possible the work of a faithful and 
 efficient minister? Would we have had some 
 of the most precious truths contained in the 
 gospel but for the narrow bigotry of scribe 
 and Pharisee? Do we not love Jesus better 
 for not having where to lay His head than if 
 He had reposed on pillows of down in the palace 
 of a king? If the woman had not been taken 
 in adultery, we should not have heard His ten- 
 der words : "Neither do I condemn thee." If 
 His enemies had not nailed Him to the cross, 
 we should not hear falling from His lips those 
 words of infinite sweetness: "Father, forgive 
 them ; they know not what they do." 
 
 St. Paul found such meaning and blessing 
 in the "thorn in his flesh" that he came to glory 
 in his infirmities, and Christians ever since, be- 
 cause of it, have trusted God more fully for 
 grace to bear each his own peculiar trial. 
 
 That which is base, as well as that which is 
 noble, comes to us in blessing by the power 
 and word of God. There are angels that 
 climb up to us from below as well as those that 
 descend upon us from above. 
 
 8. "Was Eden's 'enervating bower 9 fit to be 
 pronounced 'very good*?" j. w. A. 
 
60 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 There is no doubt that Eden's bower was 
 perfectly suited to Adam and Eve for the brief 
 time which God well knew they would occupy 
 it, and, therefore, very good. If it was not 
 enervating before the fall, it would certainly 
 prove so afterward, and God mercifully drove 
 them out of it. We now develop strength by 
 enduring hardness, nor can we conceive of ease 
 as developing either brawn or brain. 
 
 9. "You say, 'Man's fall was forward into 
 hope.' Are the unj 'alien angels hopeless? I 
 never fall into an old cellar that I may secure 
 the hope of getting out" j. w. A. 
 
 Yet you must admit that having fallen into 
 an old cellar, your hope becomes more active 
 and you become more conscious of its reality. 
 That our first parents in Eden had the hope 
 faculty there is no doubt ; but was there scope 
 for its exercise? Notwithstanding the fact 
 that the paradise of Adam and Eve was an 
 earthly one, there is no reason to think that 
 they were at all dissatisfied with it. They had 
 the stream, the foliage, the birds, the balmy 
 air, and the soft blue sky. They had no use 
 for raiment, and they ate their food without 
 work or weariness. Evidently they were con- 
 tented, knowing nothing of hope that stimu- 
 lates to effort for the betterment of conditions. 
 
 Probably the unfallen angels, if there are 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 61 
 
 such, are not, strictly speaking, without hope. 
 "Which things the angels desire to look into," 
 would indicate that they hope for more exten- 
 sive knowledge. They also may hope for the 
 good of the human race, for they know about 
 us and our needs. But hope, as we understand 
 it, would seem to belong to an imperfect state. 
 Whether it is increased or diminished by 
 fruition may be a question, but "Hope that is 
 seen is not hope," and the angels with God, in 
 whose presence is fullness of joy, are satisfied. 
 
 10. " "Fair Modesty therein -finds birth. 9 
 Are not all holy beings modest?" j. w. A. 
 
 Well, it cannot be supposed that they are 
 immodest. Before the fall, Adam and Eve 
 "were both naked and were not ashamed." Im- 
 mediately after the fall "their eyes were 
 opened and they knew that they were naked ; 
 and they made for themselves aprons of fig 
 leaves." There was then the birth of some- 
 thing new in this world, which I call modesty. 
 Holy beings are neither modest nor immodest, 
 as we understand the term. They are neither 
 bold nor timid, forward nor shy, obtrusive nor 
 reserved, but preserve the happy medium. I 
 refer to the modesty that is the offspring of 
 conscious limitations, that is born of a sense 
 of weakness or ignorance or, as in Adam's case, 
 of guilt. In one of his sermons the Rev. F. 
 
62 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 W. Robertson says: "Modesty is seldom the 
 attribute of the untried. Modesty is a thing 
 we learn generally by shame and failure." 
 Surely holy beings are not modest in the Ro- 
 bertsonian sense. 
 
 11. "7 question that the -first pair in their 
 innocence were unconscious of sex; that, made 
 capable of reproduction, they had no use for 
 that capacity; that one of the results of sin 
 should be pain in childbirth if there was not 
 intended to be painless childbirth in the sinless 
 state" j. w. A. 
 
 This criticism, embodying the popular belief 
 on this point, seems plausible but is not un-i 
 answerable. 
 
 Presumably Adam and Eve from the begin- 
 ning had eyebrows, but they had no use for 
 those hirsute arches until the curse compelled 
 them to eat their bread by the sweat of their 
 face. If man had one thing that he had no use 
 for in his innocence, he may have had other 
 things and faculties. 
 
 When those two disciples, Cleopas and his 
 companion, were joined by Christ on their way 
 to Emmaus, until He became a guest in their 
 home "their eyes were holden that they should 
 riot know Him." So the consciousness of 
 Adam and Eve in relation to some of their 
 bodily functions may have been held from them 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 63 
 
 for a time, and held in love, as were the eyes 
 of the two disciples. 
 
 Everyone possesses faculties that are dor- 
 mant and unrealized until occasion calls them 
 forth. How often men awake to self-knowl- 
 edge and astonish both themselves and the com- 
 munity by their power. Is it likely that our 
 first parents were at once fully and clearly 
 aware of all their physical and mental capabil- 
 ities? Is it not far more probable that they 
 came to the consciousness of their faculties 
 gradually and as necessity called them into 
 exercise? 
 
 Prior to the fall there had been no desire 
 for parentage. After the fall and after God 
 had driven our first parents from the garden 
 of Eden, we read: "Adam knew his wife and 
 she conceived and bare a son." Would God 
 have said that if Adam had known Eve in the 
 same sense before? Again, after the fall and 
 after banishment from Eden, God said to the 
 woman, as a part of His curse upon her: "Thy 
 desire shall be to thy husband." Would God 
 have said that if her desire had been so in 
 Eden? 
 
 Our 1 view is confirmed by Romans 11 :32i 
 "For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, 
 that He might have mercy upon all." It is 
 the most important verse in a very remarkable 
 chapter. Those who sympathize with our 
 
64 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 critic (and they include Bible students gener- 
 ally) on account of their fundamental error in 
 relation to the propagation of the race before 
 the fall, have given to that verse either no in- 
 terpretation or a very feeble one. Do we not 
 see in that verse that God, who foresaw man's 
 fall, withheld from our first parents the desire 
 of any expression of their reproductive facul- 
 ties, and even held them unconscious of those 
 faculties, until such a time as their fall would 
 become a voluntary act and fact? How many 
 ways has God of shutting up all unto disobe- 
 dience? He has only one way, and that is by 
 shutting them up to be the offspring of volun- 
 tarily disobedient first parents. Any other 
 way would make God responsible for the diso- 
 bedience committed, while now every man's 
 moral act is a free act for which he is account- 
 able. And God has only one way that we know 
 about of showing the mercy of salvation to all, 
 which is by the equal application to all of the 
 atonement of Jesus Christ, "who died once for 
 all." 
 
 In view of this interpretation, how pertinent 
 the exclamation of the apostle that immediately 
 follows, unaccountable on any other theory, 
 "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom 
 and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are 
 His judgments and His ways past finding 
 out." 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 65 
 
 But why pain in childbirth? You assume 
 that it is one of the results of sin, but that is 
 only an assumption. I answer that it is sim- 
 ply and solely because God said: "In sorrow 
 thou shalt bring forth children." True, He 
 could not say it before the fall, but in view of 
 our welfare it was necessary for Him to say 
 it after the fall if He would continue the race. 
 The reason underlying it is not difficult to dis- 
 cover. Just as the ground was cursed, not for 
 man's sin, but for man's sake; not for his 
 punishment, but for his development; so pain 
 should attend childbirth for the same reason, 
 not as the payment of a penalty, but for the 
 perfection of virtues. As cost and estimated 
 value are closely related, so the act of bring- 
 ing a child into the world through pain would 
 make it a serious and solemn thing, and would 
 ensure for the child in its long period of help- 
 lessness the tender love and the unwearied sac- 
 rifices which its condition should demand. A 
 curse so laden with blessing both to parent 
 and child is worthy of our God. 
 
 In Eve's "Farewell to Paradise," Milton, 
 with the exquisite touches of Fancy's pencil, 
 represents Eve as leaving all the attractions of 
 Eden with comparative tranquillity except her 
 nuptial bower which she had beautified with gar- 
 lands formed and placed by her own hands. 
 But error may be made to appear in array as 
 
66 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 beautiful as the garb of truth. Indeed, truth 
 is not dependent upon its vesture. 
 
 Oh, it is so hard to get away from the pre- 
 judices imbibed from our childhood. We are 
 so in the habit of looking upon the elements 
 of the curse which followed the fall as being 
 altogether penal that we lose sight of the fact 
 that they contain less of hurt than of healing. 
 
 12. "If 'like simple child he disobeyed,* was 
 Adam responsible?" s. j. M. 
 
 We do not treat a child who understands our 
 commands as irresponsible when disobedient to 
 them. The command alone makes disobedience 
 wrong and the disobedient guilty and subject to 
 just correction. Adam had the command, which 
 he understood. The accompanying threat of 
 death in case he disobeyed could have no special 
 deterrent effect, for he knew nothing of death, 
 never having seen it. It could mean little 
 more to him than the threat of a whipping 
 would mean to a child who had never seen or 
 felt any kind of punishment. And yet, as law 
 implies a penalty, it was necessary to state 
 the penalty which infraction of the law would 
 incur. 
 
 It may be pertinent to add in this connection 
 that such disobedience not only receives but 
 deserves mercy, without detracting from grace, 
 to the extent to which the creature limitations 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 67 
 
 may plead. When I think of man in Eden as 
 God's child, with powers of perception limited, 
 with capacity for enjoyment or suffering al- 
 most unlimited, and of the palliating circum- 
 stances attending his sin, I think I can see that 
 such conditions should create in the loving heart 
 of God a sense of obligation such as He has 
 implanted in me toward my disobedient child, 
 the feeling that it is my duty as a parent 
 to do all in my power to bring about reconcilia- 
 tion and a mutual relation of love and loyalty. 
 I cannot say, therefore, what often I have 
 heard said, that God was under no obligation 
 to provide salvation for fallen man on condi- 
 tions within his power to meet. I do not affirm 
 that God was under such obligation, but I do 
 know that love compels, that limitations plead, 
 that creation implies responsibility, and that 
 parental and filial relations impose solemn and 
 unceasing obligations. From the death pen- 
 alty, incurred as Adam incurred it, it seems 
 to me that not only mercy but justice required 
 some measure of relief if relief were possible. 
 
 13 " 'A higher type of man He wills. 9 A 
 different type, I admit; is the reformed drunk- 
 ard a higher type than the abstainer?" 
 
 j. w. A. 
 
 No, the reformed drunkard is not a higher 
 type of man than the abstainer; but the well 
 
68 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 born, well bred, virtuous, God fearing, hope 
 inspired man of to-day is a higher type than 
 the man in Eden who fell before his first temp- 
 tation. Adam had innocence and so has the 
 sweet babe that lies in the cradle; but God's 
 man now has virtue, which is goodness under 
 trial. Adam was obedient when it was easier 
 to be so than otherwise ; but God's man now 
 is obedient from choice in the face of tempta- 
 tion. Adam had love, but it was weak com- 
 pared with that loyal, tested love which binds 
 the believing heart to God through long years 
 and still cries out: "Whom have I in Heaven 
 but Thee and there is none upon the earth that 
 I desire besides Thee." The Christian, the 
 man whose faculties are all developed, yet di- 
 rected and controlled, is the highest type of 
 man. 
 
 Having created us with varied capabilities, 
 God would develop and perfect them. Having 
 given to us the faculty of love, He would call 
 it forth in expressions unknown and impossible 
 in Eden. He would call this faculty into exer- 
 cise in expressions of sympathy, compassion, 
 and pity. This can be done by virtue of the 
 curse which God pronounced upon man. In a 
 word, it can be done through the discipline of 
 suffering. Even Christ, who came into the 
 world on moral equality with Adam, was "made 
 perfect through suffering." Either these 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 69 
 
 words are meaningless or the faultless Son of 
 God received, as "the man of sorrows," some 
 higher consciousness, some additional qualifica- 
 tion, some increase of light, or a more sympa- 
 thetic relation to humanity, that made Him a 
 higher type of High Priest and Savior than 
 He otherwise could have been. And God 
 would bring us through suffering into fellow- 
 ship with Christ's suffering. He would have 
 us partakers of Christ's character "grace for 
 grace." There is possible, therefore, in this 
 world a nobler manhood than Eden knew. If 
 the sinless second Adam received benefit from 
 suffering, then He became, to the extent of 
 the benefit thereby secured, superior to the sin- 
 less first Adam in pure but painless Eden. It 
 is our privilege to bear the likeness, not of the 
 first, but of the second Adam. 
 
 14. "7 must protest against the doctrine ex- 
 pressed in the words: 
 
 'Slight is the hurt, the blessing great, 
 Of all who toil beneath the curse/ 
 
 There can be no comparison between the curse 
 and the blessing. The coming of sin into the 
 world is an irreparable calamity. Our world 
 is poorer and heaven will be poorer because 
 there is forever the stain of sin upon the great 
 white throne. All the palliating things which 
 
70 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 may be spoken will not efface the fact that 
 God's universe without the curse upon it made 
 necessary by the fall would have possessed a 
 luster of which we can never so much as dream. 
 . . . The glory of God will always be less be- 
 cause of the human choice of evil. Had man- 
 kind been always good, God's glory in the end 
 would have been immeasurably greater. . . . 
 " 'High noon's estate and heaven's pure bliss! 9 
 are indeed priceless heritages, but it is impossi- 
 ble to think that they would not be dim glories 
 beside the joys which would have grown out of 
 'Eden's bower' had man been true to the higher 
 destiny which God would have given him. . . . 
 The benefits which may accrue to men through 
 the existence of evil can never in all eternity 
 equal the sum total of curse. . . . To the man 
 who has felt upon his soul the stain of sin, 
 heaven itself will be a state of modified happi- 
 ness. To such a man, there is an infinite 
 tragedy in the fact that 'through sin's dark 
 portals Jesus comes,' and the good which He 
 brings in His bloody train, indispensable as 
 it is to sinful men, is purchased at an unneces- 
 sary cost and is less than would have accrued 
 to men had there been no sin? . . . My con- 
 ception is that in creating such a world as this 
 one, God had regard to the end. Rather than 
 deprive a race of finite beings whom He might 
 create, of the blessings of fellowship with Him- 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 71 
 
 self, even though He foresees the certain dis- 
 aster and must be satisfied with a second best 
 world, God permits even the -fall and 'the Lamb 
 slain from the foundation of the world and the 
 final universe wherein there is darkness -forever 
 for a part of His race, for by so doing He 
 gives eternal life to some, and this, even under 
 the modified light of such a heaven, is better 
 than no life at all for any" G. w. o. 
 
 My brother, I appreciate your full and frank 
 criticism of one of the central doctrines of my 
 poem. You will pardon me if I find excep- 
 tional pleasure in attempting to answer it. I 
 like its ring of positiveness. Where others 
 question, you dissent. Instead of expressing 
 doubt of my view, you state clearly your own 
 opposite view. It is all the more interesting 
 since it reflects, as you tell me, the teaching 
 which you received at the seminary, which I 
 know to be one of the leading theological 
 schools of a great Church. 
 
 The view which you have so well expressed 
 I once entertained, but the more I tried to de- 
 fend it the less firmly I held it. At length I 
 gave it up altogether. I found many reasons 
 urging a radical change of opinion. The poem 
 contains some of them. It justifies God in 
 making evil possible by the creation of free 
 beings because He foresaw that He could make 
 good use of evil in the event of its existence. 
 
72 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 That, I think, is a better justification than 
 yours that "eternal life for some, with dark- 
 ness forever for many, is better than no life 
 at all for any." Your view places God on the 
 losing side in a serious struggle. 
 
 The poem shows that the curse that follows 
 the introduction of evil into the world is for 
 man's "sake" ; that is, the curse in all its 
 features and effects in man's condition outside 
 of Eden is a blessing. Instead of saying that 
 the curse which God pronounced upon the race 
 was "made necessary by the fall," I should say 
 that it was necessary to make it possible for 
 God to continue the race, and to continue it 
 in hope, after the fall. And this is a most 
 important distinction. It helps to solve, in- 
 deed it solves, the so-called "mystery of suf- 
 fering." Your view makes the common ills of 
 life penal; infants are treated as sinners be- 
 cause they suffer. 
 
 The curse, involving toil, pain, death, and 
 their attendant sorrows, as we know them, is 
 in no sense or degree the punishment of Adam's 
 sin or of our sin. The penalty which our first 
 parents incurred was not suspended but exe- 
 cuted. Christ, as the second Adam, suffered 
 the punishment of the first Adam's sin. But 
 for love's intervention the race would have ended 
 then and there. We have no relation to the 
 original law given to Adam nor to its penalty. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 73 
 
 In defining the ordinary sufferings of life 
 as the "natural consequences of sin," the theo- 
 logians are in error. It is not difficult to see 
 that the eating of the forbidden fruit on the 
 part of Adam could not cause the earth, as a 
 natural consequence, to bring forth "thorns 
 and thistles." A violation of the moral law 
 could not so affect the physical world. But 
 in view of the purpose of God in continuing the 
 race in the consciousness of His love and favor, 
 He transformed the character of universal na- 
 ture. As the doom of the serpent was not a 
 natural consequence of sin but by the direct 
 word and power of God, so the curse of toil, 
 pain, and death pronounced upon man did not 
 arise naturally from his disobedience but came 
 by the arbitrary pronouncement of Jehovah. 
 Every tear or trial which I am called to suffer 
 in infancy or age, proclaims the love of my 
 heavenly Father. The sweat of toil, the pains 
 of motherhood, the sorrows of infancy, the in- 
 firmities of years, and the pangs of dissolution 
 are a part of the so-called curse made possible 
 by man's sin, found necessary for man's sake. 
 
 The sense of guilt, the feeling of condemna- 
 tion, and the fear of punishment are natural 
 consequences of sin ; but they are no part of 
 the curse pronounced after the fall and have 
 no connection with the common ills of life, 
 which none, whatever their goodness, can 
 
74 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 escape. The curse made proper by man's first 
 sin, ushered in, under new conditions and laws 
 no longer arbitrary as in the Garden of Eden, 
 the present administration of God in this world. 
 It was prompted by infinite wisdom and justice 
 and love alike. When it shall have served its 
 purpose, it shall pass away, as did the former, 
 and ultimately the "new heavens and the new 
 earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" shall ap- 
 pear. But for the present the hostile forces 
 in nature, the opposing wills of men and of 
 devils, and all the sufferings which we experi- 
 ence in common with each other are made to 
 minister to our improvement and highest de- 
 velopment, i 
 
 Whatever the creeds may contain or the 
 schools may impart, the poem teaches, as does 
 the Bible, that God makes evil His own and His 
 human creature's servant ; that the evil which 
 He cannot overrule to His praise He restrains ; 
 that evil is made to contribute to man's knowl- 
 edge, strength, and hope; that it is made the 
 occasion of the birth of modesty, genius, and 
 the desire for the propagation of the race ; that 
 it is made the basis of the highest type of char- 
 acter and the loftiest expression of love ; and, 
 above all, that it is made the occasion of the 
 coming of our Lord the sublimest possible 
 manifestation and revelation of God to His 
 universe. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 75 
 
 To confirm more fully our teaching, although 
 truth when seen in its relations is so self-evi- 
 dencing that it needs no oath and little argu- 
 ment, your attention is called to a few con- 
 siderations not contained in the poem. 
 
 It is impossible for me to look upon God 
 with any feeling of pity, or compassion, or 
 commiseration, which your view would seem to 
 make necessary. My nature demands a God 
 who cannot be defeated or surprised or disap- 
 pointed in the least degree. I could not wor- 
 ship as God a being whose glory I could 
 tarnish or the luster of whose universe I could 
 diminish. My view of God compels me to be- 
 lieve that His blessedness and glory, like His 
 natural attributes and moral perfections, are 
 infinite. 
 
 I cannot believe that God would or could 
 create a being able to thwart or countervail 
 His will. Turn your eyes to the incomparable 
 splendor of a midnight sky, worlds upon 
 worlds, planets and suns and systems and con- 
 stellations and clusters, range upon range, 
 some of them fixed centers of astonishing mag- 
 nificence, others swinging in their orbits and 
 revolving upon their axles, all of them moving 
 with mathematical precision throughout the 
 ages and symbolizing the glory of God who is 
 the central Sun of all. Behold Him, in His 
 triune capacity, counseling over one further 
 
76 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 and perhaps final creation and then couching 
 His conclusion in the lofty words: "Let us 
 make man. in Our image, after Our likeness." 
 His purpose in such a creation, evidently, was 
 not to obscure His glory, but to enhance it. It 
 was not to dimmish the luster of His universe, 
 but to give it a higher purpose and to extend 
 the sphere of its appreciation. It ought to be 
 inconceivable that God, who sees the end from 
 the beginning, would create a being, who by 
 the exercise of given powers could place an 
 ineradicable "stain upon the great white 
 throne." God's throne was never whiter than 
 it is now. The disobedience of a child cannot 
 tarnish the parental escutcheon. 
 
 The history of Joseph is a most illuminating 
 incident, illustrating God's overruling provi- 
 dence. It was when Jacob was blinded by his 
 tears that he said: "All these things are 
 against me." There is not a fact or a feature 
 in the story of Joseph that God has not caused 
 to reveal His goodness and glory to a degree 
 beyond what we can conceive as possible under 
 other and happier circumstances. The world 
 is richer for the grievous incident of that early 
 day. Now if God could take the quarrel of 
 a patriarchal family and use it in all the de- 
 tails of its development for the enrichment of 
 the race and the clearer revelation of Himself, 
 could He not use the fall of Adam in all the 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 77 
 
 details of its development for the good of the 
 universe and the fuller manifestation of His 
 glory? And if He could thus use it, He surely 
 would do so. 
 
 The Bible abundantly teaches that the world 
 in its completed history must fulfill the purpose 
 and pleasure of God in its creation. Even in 
 his deepest sorrow Job was inspired to say of 
 God: "But He is in one mind and who can 
 turn Him? And what His soul desireth, even 
 that he doeth." (Job 23:13.) 
 
 The psalmist, contemplating the glory of 
 God, declared : "But our God is in the heavens ; 
 He hath done whatsoever He pleased." (Psalm 
 115:3.) 
 
 Through the mouth of His prophet Isaiah, 
 God says: "My word that goeth forth out 
 of My mouth shall not return unto Me void, but 
 it shall accomplish that which I please, and it 
 shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." 
 (Isaiah 55:10.) 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, after a most humiliating 
 experience, his understanding having returned 
 to him, worshiped the Most High, and ex- 
 claimed: "He doeth according to His will in 
 the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants 
 of the earth, and none can stay His hand or 
 say unto Him what doest thou." (Daniel 
 4:35.) 
 
 The apostle Paul says: "For our citizen- 
 
78 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 ship is in Heaven from whence also we wait 
 for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall 
 fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that 
 it may be conformed to the body of His glory, 
 according to the working whereby He is able 
 to subject all things unto Himself." (Philip- 
 pians 3:20, 81.) 
 
 These and numerous other passages like them 
 do not sound as if God were defeated by "the 
 human choice of evil" or that its introduction 
 into the world is an "irreparable calamity" or 
 that "God's glory and the luster of His uni- 
 verse are diminished" by the creature He has 
 made, or that "He is compelled to be satisfied 
 with a second-best world." 
 
 My dear critic, called to preach the un- 
 searchable riches of Christ, the view which you 
 present does not honor God, and whatever fails 
 to honor Him is false. The gospel which you 
 are commissioned to proclaim lacks nothing; it 
 makes a man whole ; it meets the world's need 
 and meets it fully. Heaven will not be a state 
 of "modified happiness." It will be as much 
 superior to Eden and its possibilities as the 
 heavens are higher than the earth, and man 
 himself, in intellectual power and moral expan- 
 sion, as much superior to man in Eden as a 
 giant athlete is superior physically to one 
 whose muscles are pulp and whose bones are 
 gristle. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 79 
 
 There have been rebellion and war in Heaven, 
 but God's will is accomplished there. The 
 prayer which our Lord gave to His disciples 
 declares it and that prayer is not impossible 
 of fulfillment here. "Thy will be done on earth 
 as it is in Heaven," is not given us to offer 
 doubtfully but in faith. He who will not give 
 His glory to another will not suffer it to be 
 dimmed by another. Tragic, indeed, the com- 
 ing of Christ and bloody His train, but in be- 
 ing "wounded for our transgressions," God's 
 glory did not suffer, for "by His stripes we are 
 healed." 
 
 In the joy of triumph over evil, in the bless- 
 ings of a gracious overruling Providence, in the 
 hope of a blissful immortality, and in the 
 revelation of God's mercy in the face of Jesus 
 Christ, whose suffering our SALVATION has 
 made necessary, it is not unreasonable that we 
 should bear some scars of our victorious con- 
 flict. But our hurt, figuratively speaking, is 
 the ache of a bruised heel compared with the 
 joy of crushing the serpent's head. Moreover, 
 our hurt is for a moment, while our felicity is 
 eternal. Listen to Paul (2 Corinthians 4: 
 8-18), "pressed on every side, yet not straight- 
 ened ; perplexed, yet not unto despair ; pursued, 
 yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not de- 
 stroyed; always bearing about in the body the 
 dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may 
 
80 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 be manifested in our body. . . . Wherefore we 
 faint not, . . . for our light affliction, which 
 is for the moment, worketh for us more and 
 more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory." 
 
 Brother, I submit that what you condemn 
 in my poem Paul seems to commend. As be- 
 tween the somber colors of your plaint and the 
 rainbow hues of Paul's picture, I cannot hesi- 
 tate to choose. 
 
 I conclude this defense with the observation 
 that the curse contained the first promise of 
 the Savior. Therefore, I continue to sing: 
 
 "Slight is the hurt, the blessing great, 
 Of all who toil beneath the curse, 
 Which shines so gemmed with promise bright 
 It gilds with hope the universe." 
 
 15. "On reading your lines: 
 
 'If all were right and nothing wrong, 
 The softest heart would turn to stone/ 
 
 I thought, if they are true, what a stony- 
 hearted place heaven must be, and what a stony- 
 hearted being God must be" s. j. M. 
 
 If I were to say that occasion is everything 
 in love, while you would know that it is not 
 strictly correct, still you would not dispute it. 
 Occasion does not change one's nature, nor 
 does it create the capacity for loving, but it is 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 81 
 
 so related to love's expression that without it 
 love has little value. So of my lines, while 
 not literally, they are poetically true. 
 
 If we have the faculty of love we must have 
 the objects of love. If in pity, compassion, 
 and sacrifice, love finds its highest expressions, 
 then there is required those things or condi- 
 tions that call forth pity, compassion and sac- 
 rifice. It follows, therefore, that our first 
 parents could neither have known nor developed 
 love in its highest forms in Eden. 
 
 And what shall we say of God in this con- 
 nection? From a part we know the whole; 
 from the finite we get a conception of the in- 
 finite; to know God we study ourselves, made 
 in His image and likeness. As He is love in 
 the dominating quality of His character, it is 
 the demand of His nature that there shall be 
 beings to love, and He creates them. They, 
 being "flesh," assaulted by temptation; "earth- 
 ern vessels," frail, brittle, perishable, easily 
 shattered, furnish the occasion for that highest 
 demand of His nature the infinite compassion, 
 the infinite sacrifice, the gift of His only be- 
 gotten Son. 
 
 The tendency and general effect of trouble 
 is to soften the heart. The first serious illness 
 of my eldest child at the age of eight years, 
 was the occasion of the revelation, not only to 
 him but to myself, of how much I loved him. 
 
82 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 How impressive the refrain in the 107th Psalm, 
 "Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble 
 and He delivered them out of their distresses." 
 Trouble does soften the heart. That is the 
 rule. Now and then we seem to find an excep- 
 tion. Apparently Job's wife was one. That 
 which should have softened her heart seems to 
 have hardened it. If she had been what a wife 
 always should be, Job would have found large 
 compensation for his suffering in the richer dis- 
 plays of her love, and he would have said to 
 her: "My dear, I had no reason to doubt your 
 love in the years of our prosperity, but your 
 heart was a stone then compared to what I have 
 found it in this period of my sorrow ; you have 
 been touched with the feeling of my infirmities." 
 All that my poem says about the occasions or 
 means of softening the heart may be true and 
 heaven not be a stony-hearted place, for heaven 
 is cognizant of earth, and its inhabitants are 
 those who have witnessed, experienced, and re- 
 lieved poverty, weakness, and loneliness. It 
 occurred to me that my line, "The softest heart 
 would turn to stone," might be too strong, but 
 remembering that God, in speaking to His 
 prophet Ezekiel (35:26) in deliberate prose 
 called the heart "stony," I concluded that in 
 poetry it might be called, relatively and meta- 
 phorically, under certain conditions, stone. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 83 
 
 I do not teach that a life of righteousness 
 hardens the heart, but that the tears of sorrow 
 soften it and awaken within it tenderness, sym- 
 pathy, benevolence, compassion, pity, and sac- 
 rifice, love in its highest possible expressions. 
 
 16. "Is it true that, 
 
 'We dare not choose, we do not know, 
 What cup to drink, what voice believe?' ' 
 
 s. J. M. 
 
 In 2 Corinthians 11:13, 14, Paul speaks of 
 "false apostles, deceitful workers, 'fashioning 
 themselves into apostles of Christ ; and no mar- 
 vel, for even Satan fashioneth himself into an 
 angel of light." "Devils soonest tempt, re- 
 sembling spirits of light." So much for the 
 uncertain voice. 
 
 Now, how about the cup? We have drank 
 some cups (some experiences) that we have 
 taken most reluctantly, simply because we had 
 to take them, and afterwards have thanked 
 God for them. On the other hand, we have 
 found that the most coveted potions ever 
 pressed to human lips have proved only a sweet 
 poison whose effects have filled the future with 
 regret. 
 
 The popular feeling on this point I think is 
 expressed in the following fugitive lines: 
 
84 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 "It ain't so far from right to wrong, the trail ain't 
 
 so hard to lose; 
 There's times I'd almost give my horse to know 
 
 which one to choose; 
 There ain't no signboards on the road to keep you 
 
 on the track. 
 Wrong's sometimes white as driven snow and right 
 
 looks awful black. 
 
 "I don't set up to be no judge of right and wrong 
 
 in men, 
 I've lost the trail sometimes myself I may get 
 
 lost again; 
 And if I see some chap who looks as though he'd 
 
 gone astray, 
 I want to shove my hand in his an' help him find 
 
 the way." 
 
 17. "Is it likely that there would be the ab- 
 sence of samples of repentant angels if God 
 provided for their salvation?" J. w. A. 
 
 That angels, more or less of them, have fallen 
 from their original pure estate and that God 
 has left them in hopeless revolt is the almost 
 universal belief of Christendom. This belief 
 is never opposed and is seldom questioned. 
 Such general agreement in a matter of so much 
 importance should have a solid foundation. 
 But has it any basis either in revelation or rea- 
 son? 
 
 It is well to remember that the Bible was not 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 85 
 
 written for angels but for men, and is largely 
 limited in its teaching to what most vitally con- 
 cerns men. Therefore, samples of repentant 
 angels or full and explicit statements concern- 
 ing their redemption or repentance, would not 
 be expected. 
 
 We may argue, however, redemption for an- 
 gels from various considerations. First, from 
 the fact that there is no conceivable advantage 
 in their not being redeemed. Second, the view 
 that God provided for the pardon and salvation 
 of angels honors Him in the highest degree, and 
 whatever honors God most is most likely to be 
 true. Third, from the nature of God, revealed 
 as delighting in mercy. Would He be likely to 
 miss what would seem to be the best of all op- 
 portunities for displaying it? 
 
 Fourth, from the fact that He showed 
 His mercy to man with a promptness which 
 amounted to haste, which was in perfect har- 
 mony with His mercy-loving character. 
 
 Fifth, from His impartiality. His ways are 
 represented as being equal. Angels and men 
 being equally His creatures : why should He be 
 supposed to pass by one and save the other? 
 If partiality be a blemish in the character of 
 an earthly parent, can it be a virtue in our 
 Heavenly Father? 
 
 Sixth, from the fact that as finite beings, un- 
 able to see the full import of their acts or to 
 
86 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 weigh the consequences of disobedience, angels 
 deserved mercy to the extent to which their lim- 
 itations might plead. 
 
 Seventh, from the absence of any reason why 
 "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world" could not save them. I would not like 
 to doubt God's ability to redeem them, and 
 conceding His ability, I could not doubt His 
 willingness to do so. 
 
 Eighth, from the fact that the angels are 
 "ministering spirits," rendering to each of us 
 a tender and helpful service. (Hebrews 1:14.) 
 May not the basis of this sympathetic relation 
 be found in the fact that they have sinned, suf- 
 fered, and been saved themselves? 
 
 Ninth, from the consideration shown to fallen 
 angels, especially the chief of them, who had 
 access to heaven and met with the "sons of 
 God" on more than one occasion. His presence 
 there was not rebuked. Indeed, God honored 
 him with conversations upon a very important 
 topic and indulged him in a way that was very 
 painful to Job, involving the loss of his prop- 
 erty, the death of his children, the reproach of 
 his friends, and the keenest bodily suffering. 
 It may be that God did not welcome him, but 
 He permitted his approach, heard his charge 
 and challenge, let down the bars of the hedge 
 about Job .(which Satan never could break 
 through), and as the sequel shows, used him to 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 87 
 
 the advantage of sufferers to the end of time. 
 Tenth, from the words of Jesus (St. John 10: 
 16), "And other sheep I have which are not of 
 this fold; them also I must bring, and they 
 shall hear my voice; and they shall become one 
 flock, one shepherd." The Church has never 
 found Christ's "other sheep." Oh, yes, her 
 preachers and teachers have claimed to find 
 them and have said, as if there could be no doubt 
 about it, that Christ was addressing Jewish 
 converts and that the other sheep were Gentiles. 
 They forget that St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 
 12:13), "In one spirit were we all baptized into 
 one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether 
 bond or free." They forget, also, that with 
 reference to believers in their relation to Christ 
 Paul says (Colossians 3:11), "There cannot be 
 Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumci- 
 sion, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman." 
 Christ does not regard our outward distinc- 
 tions, and to say that He referred to the Gentile 
 world as His other sheep who should hear His 
 voice would be no more true than to say that 
 He referred to the as yet uncalled and uncon- 
 verted Jews. As sheep all these human classes 
 belong to this fold. Still He has "other sheep 
 which are not of this fold." Who are they if 
 they are not the fallen, yet redeemed, angels? 
 This interpretation gives significance to one of 
 the most beautiful portions of the teaching of 
 
88 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 our Lord, rendered unworthy of Him and so 
 worse than meaningless through the error that 
 God passed by the angels to redeem man. That 
 man, as is often claimed, will be able to touch 
 a higher note in the heavenly song than angels 
 can ever reach is altogether fanciful. Angels 
 and men will sing the same song in sweet ac- 
 cord. 
 
 Eleventh, from Revelation 12:7-12: "And 
 there was war in heaven ; Michael and his angels 
 going forth to war with the dragon; and the 
 dragon warred and his angels, and they pre- 
 vailed not, neither was their place found any 
 more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast 
 down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil 
 and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; 
 he was cast down to the earth, and his angels 
 were cast down with him. And I heard a great 
 voice in heaven saying, Now is come (in heaven) 
 the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom 
 of our God, and the authority of His Christ; 
 for the accuser of our brethren is cast down 
 which accuseth (hath accused) them before our 
 God day and night. And they overcame him 
 because of the blood of the Lamb, and because 
 of the word of their testimony; and they loved 
 their lives not even unto death. Therefore 
 rejoice, O heavens, and ye that dwell in them. 
 (But) Woe for the earth and for the sea, be- 
 cause the Devil is gone down unto you, having 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 89 
 
 great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short 
 time." 
 
 There is nothing figurative in this language, 
 nothing difficult to understand. No historical 
 statement could be plainer or more definite. It 
 is obscure only when seen through the mists of 
 prejudice or misconception. If the victorious 
 angels in heaven overcame Satan because of the 
 blood of the Lamb and the word of their testi- 
 mony, then it follows that they overcame there, 
 as we do here, and sustain the same relation to 
 the Redeemer which we hold, belonging, as we 
 do, to His redeemed flock. 
 
 It is evident that the greater portion of the 
 angels, if not all of them, who fought against 
 the dragon had known sin, had been redeemed 
 by the sacrificial suffering of the Son of God, 
 and by faith shown by faithfulness had accepted 
 that sacrifice to their salvation; otherwise how 
 could it be said of them as a whole that they 
 overcame because of the blood of the Lamb and 
 because of the word of their testimony? 
 Throughout the universe, and forever, the con- 
 ditions of salvation are the same and unalter- 
 able. 
 
 Twelfth, from the words of St. Paul (Ephe- 
 sians, 3:14, 15), "For this cause I bow my 
 knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 of whom the whole (every) family in heaven 
 and earth is named." No one can reasonably 
 
90 ; THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 deny that this passage may be given an inter- 
 pretation consistent with the theory of angelic 
 redemption. How beautiful the thought that 
 every morally accountable creature in God's 
 universe belongs to God's family, full provision 
 having been made for all the members to form 
 one household of faith, united in fellowship and 
 called after one name. 
 
 Thirteenth, from various passages of Scrip- 
 ture, found especially in the Revelation of St. 
 John the Divine, by means of which we are per- 
 mitted to look as through windows into the 
 completed fold and to see of whom it is 
 composed. We find there the Savior and the 
 saved, men and angels engaged without a dis- 
 cordant note in the same worship, the redeemed 
 giving ascriptions of praise to the Redeemer. 
 
 We do not wish to deny that the unfallen 
 angels, if there are such, may be forever asso- 
 ciated with the redeemed as Christ Himself 
 is associated with them. They could be in- 
 cluded provisionally in the redemption of fallen 
 angels, as the later provision of mercy to men 
 extends to the unborn and to infants. 
 
 It may be thought by some that this subject 
 has no importance to us that is either essen- 
 tial or practical. But is it nothing to know 
 that Christ died not only for me, but for sin- 
 ners everywhere? Is it nothing to be able to 
 interpret consistently portions of Scripture 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 91 
 
 generally considered difficult to understand? 
 Is it nothing to honor God in the highest de- 
 gree possible to our conception? Is it noth- 
 ing that in Christ angels and men are united 
 by the strongest of all bonds in one vast and 
 precious brotherhood? Indeed, the subject is 
 invested with the highest interests of the king- 
 dom of God its complete triumph among 
 men, angels, and moral beings everywhere, its 
 infinite and everlasting glory in every portion 
 of God's boundless universe. 
 
 18. f'Does not the fact of life being under 
 law imply probation?" j. c. 
 
 Yes, in the sense of trying, testing, and prov- 
 ing ; in its application to novitiates ; as we see it 
 in Church, state, school and home; and, in 
 some measure, in connection with the divine ad- 
 ministration. Being under law implies proba- 
 tions rather than probation. 
 
 It is the theological probation the one, 
 single, temporal, all-determining probation as 
 taught by the Church that I regard as a 
 myth. By "life forever under law" I mean 
 that man (and all other moral creatures) will 
 be forever under God's moral discipline or 
 government. That government implies a Su- 
 preme Lawgiver, capable subjects, and perfect 
 law. The subjects must have understanding, 
 conscience, and free will. The law, to be per- 
 
92 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 feet, must be appropriate, intelligible, and 
 present influencing motives. These elements 
 are essential to God's moral administration, 
 and where any one of them is lacking there 
 cannot be ideal moral government. Young 
 children, idiots, and lunatics, not having the 
 understanding to perceive the rule of con- 
 duct or the conscience to feel its obligations, 
 are not able to obey it and, therefore, are not 
 its subjects. Now if beyond the grave there 
 is to be a continuation of moral government, 
 it must retain its essential elements, carrying 
 there, as it does here, hope and opportunity to 
 its subjects. > 
 
 I have been taught from my boyhood that 
 the offer of divine grace is limited to this life; 
 that here is my only day of trial; that my 
 choice in this single stage this brief moment 
 of my existence is final and must determine 
 my eternal destiny for weal or woe; that a 
 failure now is a failure without remedy or 
 relief forever. The theological probation ter- 
 minates at, often before, death, when if I have 
 not chosen wisely, however brief may have 
 been the period of my accountability, irre- 
 spective of my temperament, environment, or 
 faulty training, the law under which I live 
 and by virtue of which I have hope will exe- 
 cute its irrevocable sentence, cutting me off 
 forever from all possibility of virtue or hope 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 93 
 
 of benefit to be derived from the clear view 
 of truth which shall come when the veil of 
 the flesh and the present accidents of my being 
 are taken away. 
 
 From such teaching my soul revolts. I be- 
 lieve that it contradicts reason, lacks the con- 
 firmation of Scripture, and libels the character 
 of God. As an accountable being, I am under 
 a beneficent moral government, having hopeful 
 opportunity. This is true of me here. Moral 
 being, moral government, hopeful opportunity, 
 are logically related. Now is there any evi- 
 dence that I shall not be a moral being under 
 moral government in the world to come? Then 
 there, as here, opportunity must complete the 
 trinity. If I am to remain forever under law, 
 it follows as the shadow follows the substance 
 that I must be able to keep that law let us 
 hope better there than here, being free, per- 
 haps, from bodily infirmities and prejudicial 
 conditions. 
 
 So far as we know, there is nothing in death 
 than can destroy or change any faculty of the 
 soul. It loses nothing, either in its character 
 or powers, in its passage through the portals 
 into the beyond. It is true of the soul's cas- 
 ket, and true of only that part of us, that 
 "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, 
 nor wisdom in the grave." The eye loses its 
 vision, the foot its swiftness, and the hand 
 
94 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 its cunning. Any other or more extended 
 application of this text is a perversion of its 
 meaning. The soul retains its knowledge, its 
 activities, its intellectual and moral percep- 
 tions, its moral sense, and its powers of im- 
 provement and progress. The fact of life be- 
 ing forever under law implies, not probation 
 as theologically understood, but eternal hope 
 and boundless privilege. 
 
 But I am told that eternal hope is impossi- 
 ble; that hope is founded on reasonable expec- 
 tation of fulfillment; that if it is impossible to 
 realize the thing looked for, it is not hope, 
 and if it is realized, it is then no longer hope 
 but reality. Well, all this may be true of 
 commodities, but not of character. You may 
 have your fill of money but not of morals. 
 Hope is a faculty of the living soul, as inde- 
 structible as the soul itself. While it con- 
 stantly realizes, it continually anticipates the 
 perfection which, being infinite, can never be 
 compassed. 
 
 Do you say that our first parents in Eden 
 were under law and yet on probation? True, 
 they were under law and on such a probation 
 as I have admitted, but not such as I have 
 described as the theological probation. They 
 might eat of all the trees in the garden ex- 
 cept one ; partaking of that, they should surely 
 die. To vindicate His law God sent His Son 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 95 
 
 in their humanity and He died that they might 
 not die. Their existence was continued, and 
 driven out of Eden, they were not deprived 
 of hope and promise and possibility. 
 
 19. "/ cannot get away from the thought 
 that if Adam's fall was upward and forward, 
 then every transgression of God's command 
 must in its nature be the same" p. A. c. 
 
 "If 'from evil gain,' it is not best to be al- 
 ways good. Too good? If, on the whole, it 
 was better for Adam to disobey than to obey, 
 why not for us all?" jr. w. A. 
 
 Either I have carelessly written my poem 
 or my critics have not carefully read it. 
 
 Adam's disobedience was not in itself a 
 blessing. No disobedience of God's command 
 can be "in its nature" upward or forward. 
 Sin in the abstract is always friendless. But 
 better than Adam is Christ, and conformity 
 to His likeness is the loftiest character. The 
 righteousness which is of faith transcends the 
 righteousness which is of the law. The reve- 
 lation of hope in Christ and of heirship with 
 Christ and of the immortality brought to light 
 in the gospel are more than the law of works 
 could ever reveal. And these are ours be- 
 cause God made man's sin the occasion of 
 their provision. 
 
96 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 I teach no more than Paul, nor differently 
 from him, when he says (Romans 5:0), 
 "Where sin abounded grace did abound more 
 exceedingly" ; and the conclusion which he 
 draws is the very opposite of that which my 
 critics seem to think is logical. "Shall we 
 continue in sin, therefore, that grace may 
 abound? God forbid." (Romans 6:1.) 
 
 20. "The closing verses of your poem are 
 very agreeable, presenting as they do the com- 
 plete victory of good over evil. But does that 
 victory signify the actual salvation of every 
 moral being in God's universe? 1 hope it does. 
 While I am not inclined to oppose the pleasing 
 view, I am not able, at present, to adopt it." 
 
 G. T. 
 
 My brother, fully appreciating your deli- 
 cately expressed criticism, your superior 
 scholarship, and the modesty characteristic of 
 scholarship, I will state some of the reasons 
 why I firmly believe in the ultimate destruction 
 of all evil by the complete subjection of all 
 evildoers. 
 
 This is the only way of ending evil in God's 
 universe, except by annihilation, which has no 
 foundation either in science or revelation. It 
 is not by the subjugation of evil doers (as is 
 often taught), which leaves evil, though in- 
 active, still existing, but by their subjection. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 97 
 
 Complete subjection is in the Bible ; forcible 
 subjugation is not there. There is a broad dis- 
 tinction between "subjection" as the term is 
 used in the Scripture, and "subjugation" as 
 we understand it. The subjected are so wil- 
 lingly; the subjugated are so unwillingly. 
 The subjected are so by their full consent; 
 the subjugated are so against their consent. 
 The subjected are voluntarily submissive; the 
 subjugated are sullenly rebellious. God 
 brings moral creatures into glorious subjection 
 to Him ; He does not eternally subjugate 
 them. He does not conquer by the exercise 
 of superior force. He has servants, but no 
 slaves. He has victors through Him, but no 
 victims under Him. Eloquent as the thought 
 may seem to be, God never puts His foot on 
 the neck of an evildoer as a giant might sup- 
 press a weak and fallen foe. God subjects 
 His enemies by instruction, discipline, train- 
 ing, influence, persuasion, constraint, and 
 restraint. He "destroys" His enemies by 
 causing them, through the use of these means, 
 without coercion, to put away their enmity 
 and become His friends. 
 
 Hell, no less than heaven, is a moral neces- 
 sity. Virtue and vice must produce their 
 logical results. These results are not arbi- 
 trary, but consequential. Men suffer hell 
 here, and they will suffer it hereafter. Men 
 
98 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 enjoy heaven here and they will enjoy it here- 
 after. Harmony with God brings bliss. Op- 
 position to God brings woe. This is true here 
 and will be in all worlds. Heaven and hell, 
 therefore, are not so much localities as condi- 
 tions, though they may be spoken of as we 
 speak of places. God's law is a stern reality 
 and it is the demand of a righteous moral gov- 
 ernment that its sanctions shall be executed. 
 
 But does a righteous administration de- 
 mand the endless and hopeless torment of the 
 sinner dying in his sins, with no possibility 
 of repentance and pardon beyond the grave? 
 As the curse which was pronounced upon man 
 after his fall was not an expression of God's 
 vindictiveness, but for man's sake, so is ev- 
 erything that is related to the curse. It 
 follows that temptation, trial, suffering, pun- 
 ishment, and hell are all elements in God's re- 
 demptive plan. Each has a lofty purpose 
 a purpose worthy of our God. 
 
 God uses means for the salvation of the sin- 
 ner here; may He not use means for the same 
 end hereafter? Punishment, or chastisement, 
 is used as a means of salvation in this age ; may 
 it not be used for the same purpose in some 
 other age or ages? In the administration of 
 an infinitely good Being punishment cannot be 
 vengeful; it must be beneficent. If the law of 
 God is given for the moral creature's good 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 99 
 
 ("the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to 
 Christ"), then its penalty cannot defeat its ob- 
 ject, which it would do if punishment were end- 
 less and hopeless. 
 
 Those who hold that the wicked who leave this 
 world unforgiven will be subjected to pro- 
 nounced endless torture declare that "sin is an 
 infinite evil." But how can an infinite quality 
 belong to a finite act done by a finite being? 
 The Commentator Barnes, in his notes on Job, 
 22:15, says: "There is no intelligible sense in 
 which it can be said that sin is an infinite evil." 
 
 It is said frequently that the sinner becomes 
 fixed in sin and incapable of repentance, even 
 though otherwise repentance were possible. The 
 fact and force of habit are admitted, but that 
 any habit of the will can become fixed in this 
 embryo life is an assumption without proof ; in- 
 deed, it is preposterous. Those who discourse 
 on the fixedness of character here as determin- 
 ing unalterable moral destiny hereafter should 
 remember that even in Christian countries one 
 third of the people die before they have passed 
 far into a state of moral accountability, when 
 there can be no possibility of a fixed habit of 
 any kind. 
 
 Every man who goes out of this world, to 
 whatever place or condition, carries with him 
 all the faculties which he possesses here. He 
 will have his will, which will be free. He will 
 
100 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 retain his powers of faith and hope and love. 
 Annihilate any one of these faculties or render 
 any one inoperative by taking away its objects, 
 and a different being is punished there from the 
 one that sinned here. 
 
 Admit that this little province of God's 
 boundless empire is in revolt; that it is "the 
 place of Satan's seat" ; it is plainly seen that 
 God does not abandon and leave it in the hands 
 of a usurper. It is His world still, and to re- 
 deem it He has given the costliest ransom of 
 which He was capable. Does not this infinite 
 outlay demand a complete recovery? The sac- 
 rifice must be justified by the end achieved. 
 Moreover, if God, having done His best, fails, 
 it will be because He has undertaken a task for 
 which He is not equal or that there is a task 
 not undertaken because beyond His ability. 
 Neither horn of this dilemma could I possibly 
 accept. 
 
 If death ends hope ; if this life is a probation 
 which terminates with our mortal breath; if 
 the moral law, carrying with it the opportunity 
 of obeying it and the hope of its rewards, con- 
 tinues not beyond the grave, then there is no 
 escaping the conclusion that God's ways are 
 not equal and that His effort to save men is a 
 dismal failure. We see the strong oppressing 
 the weak ; some reveling in luxury all their 
 days, others living and dying in abject pov- 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 101 
 
 erty; some scarcely ever knowing pain, others 
 enduring lifelong suffering; some mentally en- 
 dowed to read the rocks or harness the light- 
 ning or tell the distances of the stars, others to 
 whose simple and feeble minds come no visions 
 of beauty, no revelations of worth, no pleasing 
 fancies, no gleams of hope; some born and 
 reared amid delightful surroundings, blessed 
 with freedom and nature and music and art, 
 others existing in obscurity, pining in darkness, 
 chained in dungeons crawling, shrinking, 
 shriveling things, a part of the putrefaction 
 in which they lie and more wretched than the 
 vermin by which they are slowly consumed. If 
 this be the end or, worse still, the prelude to a 
 deeper gloom, God cannot be acquitted of par- 
 tiality. 
 
 Go into the slums of our large cities and see 
 the multitudes who are born with the single 
 talent of mere existence, with little of hope and 
 less of opportunity. Their home is a dingy 
 basement or a suffocating attic. They know 
 nothing of the being and goodness of God. 
 They never hear hymn or sermon or prayer. 
 Their employment is in cellars and tubes and 
 tunnels and mines. They seldom see clear sun- 
 light and rarely breathe pure air. Their en- 
 vironment is their shroud. Their substance, 
 their very existence, is given to those who al- 
 ready have ten talents. Bound hand and foot, 
 
102 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 they are in outer darkness, and their self-ut- 
 tered dirge, unheard, or heard indifferently by 
 the rich and powerful, is weeping and wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth. Millions on millions of 
 our race have lived and died under such or 
 worse conditions. There is no salvation ex- 
 cept by "repentance toward God and faith in 
 our Lord Jesus Christ," yet millions have died 
 who never heard of Christ as a Savior. Must 
 not the conditions of salvation be made known 
 to them, some time, somewhere, with the privi- 
 lege of accepting them? They yet live. 
 Whtere are they? What is their condition? 
 Are they given knowledge and yet denied hope 
 and opportunity? What shall be their des- 
 tiny? Truly, "if in this life only we have hope 
 in Christ, we are of all creatures the most mis- 
 erable." 
 
 But this earth life of ours is only a punctu- 
 ation point of a sentence of a paragraph of a 
 page of a chapter of a volume of a series in the 
 limitless sphere of our existence. God's moral 
 administration must continue. Hope must sur- 
 vive the grave. The inequalities of the present 
 must be explained and righted if mercy and 
 justice are the foundation of God's throne. 
 
 Why God suffered John to be beheaded and 
 Stephen stoned and Cranmer burned while 
 faithfully engaged in His service, and their 
 murderers to be applauded and honored, will 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 103 
 
 yet be fully understood and approved. Why 
 Paul when he was Saul of Tarsus and while he 
 was yet breathing out threatenings and slaugh- 
 ter against the humble followers of our Lord, 
 nor sought nor wished additional or different 
 light was favored with a manifestation of the 
 Savior approaching the glory of His appear- 
 ing which we shall behold beyond the grave, but 
 as yet denied to all others will be fully ex- 
 plained and justified. God does not deal with 
 His children unjustly. He uses men as He 
 does events, subordinating all to the advance- 
 ment of His kingdom and the revelation of 
 Himself. The working out of God's plans are 
 begun but not completed here. "What I do 
 thou knowest not now; but thou shalt under- 
 stand hereafter." (St. John 13:7.) 
 
 The angel flying in the midst of heaven, hav- 
 ing the "eternal gospel" to proclaim, does not 
 at once preach it to all men everywhere. Cen- 
 turies have passed and yet there are portions 
 of the earth still dark and full of the habita- 
 tions of cruelty. Shall the generations that 
 have gone out from the darkness untaught 
 never hear the "eternal gospel," never see the 
 heavenly light, never taste celestial bliss? 
 
 It will not be because God is too good or be- 
 cause He loves His creatures too well to see 
 them lost forever that they will be finally 
 saved, but because some time, somewhere, they 
 
104 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 will meet the conditions of salvation which His 
 wisdom and justice and love impose. The final 
 choice of every moral being in the universe, 
 I believe, will be for God and righteousness. 
 
 When I find two classes of texts that seem 
 to teach directly opposite doctrines, only one 
 of which can be true, I adopt the class whose 
 teaching appears so reasonable that it ought 
 to be true, that is least likely to be the result 
 of human bias or interpolation, and that has 
 the strongest Scripture supports. I then try 
 to find an interpretation of the other class that 
 shall transform apparent antagonism into act- 
 ual consistency. Such an interpretation can 
 be given, but this reply will deal only with texts 
 of the former class. 
 
 Isaiah (53:11), clearly beholding the hu- 
 miliation and exaltation of Christ, declares: 
 "He shall see of the travail of His soul and 
 shall be satisfied." Would He be satisfied in 
 saving only a few? Would He be satisfied if 
 one sinner for whose salvation He had suffered 
 were eternally lost? Much less would He be 
 satisfied if the vast majority of those whose 
 redemption He had purchased with His blood 
 were to plunge into a hopeless hell, as May- 
 flies into flame. 
 
 God Himself, in Isaiah 45:22, 23, says: 
 "Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of 
 the earth, for I am God and there is none else. 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 105 
 
 By Myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth 
 in righteousness and shall not return, that 
 unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue 
 shall swear." What virtue in homage ren- 
 dered, or victory in homage secured, if it is not 
 given voluntarily? What shall every one 
 swear to God if not allegiance? By that oath 
 all become citizens of the kingdom of heaven, 
 loyal subjects of the King of kings. Some 
 time, before death or afterward; somewhere, 
 this side of the grave or beyond it, God's word 
 sworn by Himself must be fulfilled. 
 
 The apostle Paul (Romans 14:11), quotes 
 Isaiah 45:23 almost verbatim: "As I live, 
 saith the Lord, to Me every knee shall bow, and 
 every tongue shall confess to God." And we 
 are not left in any doubt as to the character 
 of the worship which is here declared, for Paul, 
 in his Epistle to the Philippians (2:9, 10, 11), 
 quotes with some elaboration the same facts: 
 "Wherefore, also, God highly exalted Him and 
 gave Him the name which is above every name, 
 that in the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow, of things in heaven, and things on the 
 earth, and things under the earth, and that 
 every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
 is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." We 
 submit that to bow in the name of Jesus and 
 to confess Christ to the glory of God, means 
 not coerced but voluntary surrender. 
 
106 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 In 1 Corinthians 15:21-28 we read: "For 
 since by man came death, by man came also the 
 resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all 
 die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 
 But each in his own order; Christ the first- 
 fruits ; then they that are Christ's at His 
 coming. (When that shall be we have not been 
 told.) Then cometh the end (not the end of 
 all things, but the end of Christ's mediatorial 
 reign), when He shall deliver up the king- 
 dom to God, even the Father, when He shall 
 have abolished all (opposing) rule and all 
 (antagonistic) authority and power. For He 
 must reign until He hath put all His enemies 
 under His feet. (Not in the sense of subju- 
 gating but x of subjecting them.) The last 
 enemy (last because He can use it longest) that 
 shall be abolished (because impersonal) is death. 
 For He hath put all things in (voluntary) 
 subjection under His feet; but when He saith, 
 All things are put in subjection, it is evident 
 that He is excepted who did subject all things 
 unto Him. And when all things have been sub- 
 jected unto Him, then shall the Son also Him- 
 self be subjected to Him that did subject all 
 things unto Him, that God may be All in all.' 9 
 Observe that the Son is subjected to the Father. 
 He must become so voluntarily or willingly. 
 Christ's enemies are subjected to Him. Their 
 subjection must be of the same kind and in the 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 107 
 
 same voluntary or willing manner, for the word 
 "subjected" is used in each case, the same word 
 not only in our translation but in the original 
 Greek. With the sinner means are used, but 
 they produce loving surrender. All the sev- 
 erity which so many see in Christ's putting 
 His enemies under His feet disappears before 
 this simple and plain interpretation. What 
 has Christ been doing in the past? He has 
 been putting His enemies under His feet; that 
 is, bringing them into willing subjection to 
 Himself. What is Christ doing now? He is 
 putting His enemies under His feet, bringing 
 them into willing subjection to Himself. And 
 He will continue this work, as He has hitherto 
 prosecuted it, not by force, but by the word 
 of truth, the influence of the Spirit, the con- 
 straint of love, the ministry of evil, the exercise 
 of moral government, and by the revelation of 
 Himself, until every enemy shall be brought 
 into voluntary subjection to His will except 
 death, which shall be destroyed when, perfectly 
 satisfied with the travail of His soul, He shall 
 deliver up the kingdom to the Father that God 
 may be All in all. Then, and not till then, 
 when His triumph is complete, will His media- 
 torial reign cease. 
 
 We call attention to 1 Peter 3:18, 19, which 
 reads : "Because Christ also suffered for sins 
 once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that 
 
108 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 He might bring us to God, being put to 
 death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit, 
 in which also He went and preached unto the 
 spirits in prison; which aforetime were dis- 
 obedient, when the long suffering of God 
 waited in the days of Noah, while the ark 
 was a preparing." Prejudice and precon- 
 ceived opinions often give to some portions 
 of God's word a forced and inconsistent inter- 
 pretation. The passage under consideration 
 seems to be one of them, although it contains 
 nothing abstruse or difficult. Its statements 
 are plain, simple, and direct. Why should we 
 teach as its meaning, that at the time when 
 Noah was preaching to the ear of the antedilu- 
 vians, Christ in spirit was preaching to their 
 spirits, which are now in prison? Yet this ab- 
 surd interpretation is the one that generally 
 obtains. Is not the plain meaning of the pass- 
 age this that Christ, between His death and 
 resurrection went in spirit to the place of the 
 departed spirits of the antediluvians, disobedi- 
 ent in the days of Noah, and preached to them 
 salvation? He could tell them of the fulfill- 
 ment of the promise and of His finished sacri- 
 fice on Calvary for the conditional salvation of 
 the whole world. What haste He manifested. 
 He did not wait even for His resurrection to 
 inform those souls of their glorious privilege. 
 Let us have the true meaning of God's word, 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 109 
 
 even if it shatters our creeds and confirms the 
 idea held by Alford and others of "a day of 
 grace in Hades." A day of grace should be 
 welcome anywhere, and if it can end, that fact 
 should be the saddest in all the realm of truth. 
 As the Bible, however, is given us for this life, it 
 does not emphasize the possibilities of the fu- 
 ture life. All its emphasis is placed most 
 properly on the present not present life, but 
 the present moment. "Behold now (not to- 
 morrow or next year) is the accepted time ; be- 
 hold now is the day of salvation." Yet some 
 will wait, and come and find to-morrow, when 
 the morrow becomes the now. But delay means 
 difficulty, if not doom ; loss, if not to be lost. 
 If it be said that the preaching to the "spirits 
 in prison" proves nothing concerning an offer 
 of grace to the dead in general, we point to 
 another statement of Peter (I Peter 4:6) that 
 is not limited and does not exclude the idea of 
 totality. "For unto this end was the gospel 
 preached even to the dead, that they might be 
 judged according to men in the flesh, but live 
 according to God in the spirit." This passage 
 has been the despair of theologians obsessed 
 with the idea that there is no offer of grace 
 beyond the narrow boundary of this present 
 life. Surely it seems to be obvious that only 
 the preaching of the gospel beyond the grave 
 can compensate the defects and inequalities of 
 
110 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 the present or give to God's judgment of man- 
 kind the character of equality and righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 Consider 1 John 3 :, "Beloved, now are we 
 children of God, and it is not yet made mani- 
 fest what we shall be. We know that if He 
 shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 We are all children of God by creation, 
 preservation, and redemption. The Israelites, 
 turning to idols, were backsliding children. 
 The prodigal of the parable was a prodigal 
 son. Therefore when John says: "Now are we 
 children of God," we think that he meant, or 
 might have meant, whether churched or un- 
 churched, baptized or not, believers or infidels. 
 When, continuing, he says : "And it is not yet 
 made manifest what we shall be," we think that 
 those words may be equally true of all classes. 
 He admits that to believers, at least, there will 
 come a change in the moral character, if not 
 in moral relation, beyond the grave. If a 
 change can occur in believers after death, why 
 not in unbelievers, at least to the extent of their 
 becoming believers, and, if so, of entitling them 
 to all the benefits to which believers are eligible. 
 
 The difference in men here in respect to 
 moral character is only in degree. The best 
 are not altogether good and the worst are not 
 altogether bad. If the best, being imperfect, 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 111 
 
 need and will have a true and transforming 
 view of the Savior, why should such a vision 
 be denied to those who need it most? Would 
 there be such varying types of moral character 
 among believers if all saw Christ with equal 
 clearness? Would not the number of believers 
 be very largely increased if all men saw Christ 
 with the clearness with which some behold Him? 
 For example, would not the vision which was 
 given to Saul of Tarsus produce a similar effect 
 in others to that which was produced in him? 
 Indeed, was it not the most sublime purpose of 
 that heavenly vision, to which Saul was not 
 disobedient and to which probably no man so 
 favored would be disobedient, to emphasize the 
 truth that all men will be like Christ when they 
 come to really and truly behold Him? 
 
 When John says: "We know that if He 
 shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is," I can find no reason 
 for limiting it to a mere fraction of those of 
 whom Christ is "not willing that any should 
 perish, but that all should come unto Him and 
 live." If when Christ shall be manifested, one 
 class shall see Him as He is, shall not the other 
 class, also, see Him as He is? If that revela- 
 tion and vision shall make one imperfect class 
 perfect, may it not have the same effect on the 
 other imperfect class? 
 
 Millions upon millions of our race have lived 
 
THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 and died without ever having seen or even heard 
 of Christ. They must see Him, every eye 
 shall see Him, even they who pierced Him, 
 and shall their vision of Him who gave Him- 
 self a ransom for all be without effect? 
 
 Isaiah says (45:4), "And all that are in- 
 censed against Him shall be ashamed." That 
 shame implies the desire for Christ's likeness. 
 No moral change can come to any man, here 
 or hereafter, against his volition. Those who 
 are now incensed against Him shall long to be 
 like Him when they shall see Him in the fullness 
 of His splendor. When Christ shall appear 
 we all of us, without distinction shall see 
 Him as He is ; we shall behold the King in His 
 beauty, and that beauty shall astonish and at- 
 tract us; it shall transfix our gaze and trans- 
 form our soul. 
 
 For full confirmation of this view read the 
 110th Psalm, which surely includes Chri&t's 
 enemies and contains the clear notes of Mes- 
 sianic triumph. "Ruling in the midst of His 
 enemies, Christ shall stretch forth the rod of 
 His strength and they shall become His foot- 
 stool, offering themselves willingly in the 
 beauties of holiness, in the day of His power." 
 All days are days of Christ's power, but that 
 will be the day of His power when, according 
 to John, He shall be clearly manifested. Then 
 all shall become willingly His footstool, offering 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 113 
 
 themselves in the beauty of unreserved surren- 
 der. They shall be like Him, for beholding 
 His glory, not as now through a glass darkly, 
 but clearly, face to face, they shall be changed 
 into ever ascending degrees of glory by the 
 still operative law of assimilation and the trans- 
 forming energy of the Almighty Spirit. 
 
 And Satan, also, is to be manifested. "The 
 man of sin to be revealed" ( Thessalonians 
 2:3) is not the Jews as a people, or Titus, or 
 Caligula, or the Pope, or some representative 
 of Satan yet to come, but Satan himself, whom 
 "Christ will bring to naught by the manifesta- 
 tion of His presence." We do not see Satan 
 now as he is, but he shall yet be revealed in all 
 the repulsiveness of his real character. And 
 when we see him, we shall be astonished and 
 dismayed, and turn from him with inexpressible 
 abhorrence. We shall be ashamed that ever we 
 rendered him any service. But when we see the 
 Lord Jesus in the glory of His Father, we shall 
 be ashamed that we have not served Him with 
 all our heart. It is often said that without 
 holiness no man shall see God, as if holiness were 
 essential to the sight. The reverse is true, 
 the sight, or the revelation of God, being essen- 
 tial to our holiness. It is morally impossible 
 to see God without becoming holy. "No man 
 cometh unto Me except the Father draw him." 
 "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
 
THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 This implies that the divine manifestation is 
 first in order. Saul of Tarsus, without holi- 
 ness, yet favored with a manifestation of Jesus, 
 became holy and the Savior's most valiant 
 champion, as he, above all others, had received 
 the clearest vision. "No man hath (clearly) 
 seen God at any time." But we shall see Him ; 
 we shall all see Him; we shall see him with a 
 clearness of which the vision of Paul was only 
 the hint and harbinger; we shall see Him as He 
 is, and the sight will be so transforming that 
 we shall be "changed into the same image." 
 We shall be like Him. 
 
 In Romans (8) the apostle Paul, personi- 
 fying creation, represents it as unwillingly sub- 
 mitting to the curse with which it was smitten 
 for man's sake and impatiently waiting for the 
 revealing of the sons of God, so mysteriously 
 are its destinies linked with man's destiny. 
 "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
 pain with us ... who groan within ourselves, 
 waiting for our adoption." There is not a 
 beast in the field or forest, not a bird in the air 
 above us, not a fish in the sea beneath us, not 
 a feature or particle or element in nature that 
 has not been affected by the transactions con- 
 nected with Eden. But "creation was sub- 
 jected to vanity in the hope that creation it- 
 self also shall be delivered from the bondage 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 115 
 
 of corruption into the liberty of the glory of 
 the children of God." As the whole creation 
 was made to suffer on account of man after his 
 fall, it shall be restored to its primeval per- 
 fection on man's complete restoration to the 
 likeness of God. John, on the isle of Patmos, 
 was blessed with a vision of the full, perfect, 
 and universal deliverance from sin and the 
 curse, not only of angels and of men, but of 
 material creation itself. "And I saw and I 
 heard a voice of many angels round about the 
 throne, and the living creatures and the elders, 
 and the number of them was ten thousand times 
 ten thousand and thousands of thousands, say- 
 ing with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that 
 hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, 
 and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, 
 and blessing. And every created thing which 
 is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, 
 and on the sea, and all things that are in them, 
 heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the 
 throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and 
 the honor, and the glory, and the domin- 
 ion, forever and ever." (Revelation 5:11-14.) 
 John's vision shall become reality. Creation 
 does not groan and travail in vain. There 
 shall be new heavens and new earth, wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness, no thunderbolt of 
 wrath within the sky; no tornado on the land 
 or tempest on the sea ; no fiery volcano or de- 
 
116 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 structive earthquake; no poisonous reptile or 
 ravenous beast of prey; no seed of thorn or 
 thistle in the ground; no wevil in the kernel, 
 or rust on the stock, or mildew in the bin; no 
 pest to annoy, or pain to bear, or death to 
 fear. The fair morning of the sinless universe 
 shall be surpassed by the unclouded splendor 
 of the culminating day. The worship and serv- 
 ice of God shall employ every creature and pre- 
 vail everywhere throughout the universe. Then 
 there will be no devil; there will be no hell; 
 there will be no discordant note in the universal 
 anthem of praise ascending to God and the 
 Lamb. I am glad that the apostle is so par- 
 ticular in mentioning every conceivable place, 
 and in embracing and emphasizing by repeti- 
 tion, every inhabitant thereof, for it must fol- 
 low that there is no location of despair and 
 no despair to locate. i 
 
 To an unbiased mind, unbiased by creeds and 
 the teachings received from childhood, the 
 Bible, though often colored by the bias of 
 translators, abounds in confirmation of the 
 views here presented. I stand by the old Book, 
 correctly translated and rightly interpreted, 
 from the first word of Genesis to the final Amen 
 of the Apocalypse. Read without prejudice, 
 it relieves the perplexity which is so often and 
 deeply felt concerning the inequalites of life,- 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 117 
 
 and justifies, without mystery, God's moral 
 government of the world. 
 
 Those who believe that "everlasting" means 
 without end when applied to future punishment, 
 should be consistent enough to concede that it 
 means as much when applied to the gospel. 
 The everlasting gospel implies everlasting hope. 
 The gospel and the punishment will last while 
 need requires. All will hold, however, that 
 "He who knows his Master's will and does it 
 not, shall be beaten with many stripes." 
 
 It may be well to add a special word in rela- 
 tion to the final surrender of Satan to God. 
 If God redeemed the fallen angels, as we be- 
 lieve, Satan is included, for he is one of them. 
 There is nothing absurd in the thought that 
 sometime Satan will surrender to Him whose 
 authority is absolute and to whose supremacy 
 he is compelled ever to yield. Even Milton, 
 representing Satan in hell in the midst .of his 
 standard bearer and lords in chief, pictures him 
 with deep scars upon his face, care upon his 
 faded cheek, and signs of remorse in his cruel 
 eye. 
 
 "He above the rest 
 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
 Stood like a tower. His form had not yet lost 
 All her original brightness; nor appeared 
 Less than archangel ruined, and the excess 
 
118 THE MINISTRY OF EVIL 
 
 Of glory obscured; . . . but his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek; . . . cruel his eye, but cast 
 Signs of remorse." 
 
 That is poetry, but it is the expression of 
 one who entertained no thought of Satan's sal- 
 vation. It is something, however, that Milton 
 pictures him as showing signs of remorse. The 
 apostle James says: "The devils believe and 
 shudder." If that be true of them now, the 
 time may come when they shall believe and sur- 
 render. 
 
 That Satan will sometime cease his active op- 
 position to God, either voluntarily or involun- 
 tarily, no one can doubt. He has no posses- 
 sions, no kingdom, and no authority. His 
 record of failure must be disappointing to him- 
 self. As one has said: "He works now, not 
 with the vigorous inspiration of hope, but with 
 the frantic energies of despair." He led the 
 angels in their revolt, not to victory but to 
 defeat. He tempted man to his fall, but God 
 interposed and made that fall a blessing. He 
 tempted Christ in the wilderness, but Christ 
 proved Himself the victorious Captain of all 
 the warrior host of God. He sorely afflicted 
 and expected to overcome Job, but Job over- 
 came him. He thought he was doing a fine 
 thing when he got Joseph sold into Egypt and 
 the three Hebrew children cast into the fiery 
 
REPLIES TO CRITICS 119 
 
 furnace and Daniel into the den of lions and 
 John Bunyan into Bedford jail, but soon he 
 saw his purpose foiled, and he has been sorry 
 ever since if at the present time he is capable 
 of repentance or regret. It may be that since 
 his banishment from heaven his opportunities 
 are suspended for a season, for while he is very 
 active here, he is said to be reserved in chains 
 under darkness until a day of which God knows 
 everything, but of which we know nothing. It 
 may be that during the present dispensation 
 he is so bound in darkness and given to evil and 
 separated from God that he is incapable of re- 
 pentance, but sometime he will humbly bow and 
 confess to God "in the name of Jesus the 
 Christ" and "to the glory of God the Father." 
 My conception may be wrong, but it seems to 
 me that God's highest glory demands it. 
 
 Does evil ever win the victory? Does it not 
 always, in the end, go down in defeat? When 
 Zophar said to Job that "the triumphing of 
 the wicked is short," he told the truth, although 
 he made a mistake in classing Job with the 
 wicked. A short triumphing always spells de- 
 feat. When God shall be "All in All" the con- 
 summation will be realized. But forever the 
 conditions of salvation will be the same and un- 
 alterable. Jesus, now and evermore, is the 
 door of the sinner's hope and destiny. 
 
A STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
A STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 A preacher had given his people a sermon 
 on heaven. Mrs. M., a member of his flock, 
 returned to her home quite unprofited, saying 
 that she did not go to church to hear specu- 
 lations upon what no one knows anything about. 
 She believed in heaven as a blessed fact and 
 was content to leave her future life with Him 
 who is the Lord of her present life. There are 
 many Mrs. M.'s in the world. 
 
 Another preacher discoursed on the activities 
 of heaven. A worn, weary, overworked woman 
 listened and derived no comfort. She returned 
 to her home to pursue her incessant toil, say- 
 ing that she wanted a future life in which she 
 could sit down and take a good, long, undis- 
 turbed rest. There are many such who, having 
 never missed a stroke in the world's strong cur- 
 rent that has set against them, hope to end 
 life's tiresome voyage in a haven of complete 
 repose. 
 
 There are others who think of the future life 
 as bringing reward for unappreciated and un- 
 compensated service, or reunion with loved ones 
 beyond the possibility of separation, or that 
 
 clear intellectual vision which solves all prob- 
 123 
 
124 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 lems and providences and explains all mysteries. 
 With many who have deeply drunk the cup of 
 sorrow, the only thought of the future life is 
 that it will be happy, filled with beauty and 
 brightness and fragrance and melody and joy, 
 no tears, no sorrows there. There are some 
 who dismiss the subject of the future life by 
 saying that it will be enough for them to be 
 with Christ, or that they will be satisfied when 
 they wake in His likeness. 
 
 Dr. Dick has gone so far as to say that he 
 believes that hereafter we shall go from planet 
 to planet as we now go from house to house. 
 To those here who are not content to stay long 
 in any one place, who are filled with what is 
 called the "wanderlust," a life "on the wing" 
 would be all that their heart could crave. Such 
 are the varied notions concerning the future 
 life ; and such, also, is the indifference regard- 
 ing a rational view of the great hereafter. 
 
 No philosophy of the future life has ever 
 been written and possibly one never can be writ- 
 ten. A study of it, however, may be made in- 
 teresting and even profitable, for there is 
 scarcely any other subject concerning which so 
 many absurd and stupid notions prevail. 
 
 The fact of the future life may be assumed. 
 It is the universal hope and expectation of 
 humanity, and, as one has said, a universal hu- 
 man quality is the assurance of a universal 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 125 
 
 reality. Moreover, man's immortality is 
 brought to light in the Scriptures. 
 
 One other fact may be equally assumed, 
 namely, the possibility of man's constant im- 
 provement and development. Created with 
 mental and moral powers in the image of God, 
 surrounded with opportunities for calling these 
 powers into exercise, and endowed with immor- 
 tality, man is stamped with the law of unlimited 
 progress. When we lose sight of the fact that 
 this world is an omnipotently governed and 
 omnisciently taught school, the grand purpose 
 of which is human development, that moment 
 life is a maze, man is a mystery, evil is a rid- 
 dle, God's government an enigma, and the uni- 
 verse itself one vast, unsolvable problem; but 
 with this fact in view, progress becomes a large 
 word, teeming with importance and written in 
 letters so plain that even he who runs may 
 spell them out. 
 
 The conditions of our future life and the 
 methods of our progress there cannot be as- 
 sumed, and therefore they challenge our care- 
 ful study. 
 
 We understand quite clearly the means of 
 our development here, but we have very vague 
 notions of the conditions and methods of our 
 progress hereafter. We believe that God never 
 changes the principles of His administration, 
 yet we fail to apply those principles, as we have 
 
126 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 learned them, to the life that is to come. We 
 know that reasoning from what has been to 
 what will be is a correct method of inference, 
 especially in relation to God, yet we limit the 
 application of our conclusions to this present 
 state. If our development is God's supreme 
 thought concerning us in this world, it must be 
 supposed that our progress will ever be in- 
 cluded in His plans and that the conditions of 
 our future advancement will bear some resem- 
 blance to those which now obtain. 
 
 Upon resemblances, not upon possibilities, 
 are founded opinions, theories, philosophies, 
 which command our faith. Even if some de- 
 gree of speculation attaches to them, they may 
 still hold the mind in persuasion of their truth. 
 When, however, there is added to resemblances 
 the basis of Scripture in its most rational in- 
 terpretation, and the theory itself reflects 
 beauty upon our life, upon the universe signifi- 
 cance, and upon God honor, all of which is 
 true in relation to our present study, it bears 
 the seal of divine sanction and the conviction 
 of its value is irresistible. 
 
 In Genesis 2:7 we read: "And the Lord 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; 
 and man became a living soul." This verse is 
 quoted as it stands, both in the Authorized and 
 Revised Versions, and there is no intimation 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 127 
 
 that it reads differently in any other transla- 
 tion. The word translated "life," however, 
 should be rendered "lives," for that is its literal 
 meaning and is admitted to be so by all biblical 
 scholars, but the translators, believing in life 
 immortal for the inbreathed part of man and 
 not knowing what to do with "lives," have pur- 
 posely mistranslated the word, making it ex- 
 press a single life when it should express plural- 
 ity. 
 
 God breathed into the nostrils of the body 
 which He had formed from the dust of the 
 ground the breath of lives; and man, combin- 
 ing the material and the spiritual, man as a 
 whole, body and mind, became one living soul. 
 What does this mean? It must have a mean- 
 ing and a meaning which we ought to know. 
 
 Its meaning must be, not abundance of life 
 (a construction sometimes given to the Hebrew 
 plural), in which case it would be as true of 
 the prolific lower animals as of man, but a 
 living soul, presenting a succession of unlike 
 bodies ; a single life continued through many 
 separate and consecutive lives ; a man, or living 
 soul, finding his discipline and development and 
 preserving his immortality through an indefi- 
 nite succession of different yet related bodies, 
 each new body being a resurrection of the pre- 
 ceding body. It is the continuity of complex 
 man through a succession of different human 
 
128 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 organisms, each organism being a more refined 
 and delicate vehicle than its predecessor, and 
 the period of the continuance of each, prob- 
 ably ever lengthening, being properly termed 
 a life. 
 
 Why do I say bodies? Because the Bible 
 teaches bodily resurrection, and because a body 
 and the inbreathed spirit are equally essential 
 in constituting the "living soul." Neither the 
 body nor the spirit operates apart from the 
 other. The two elements in union constitute 
 the man. ' \ 
 
 Why do I say human bodies? Because we 
 must always belong to the human race, however 
 diverse our bodily forms may be. 
 
 Why do I say unlimited succession of bodies ? 
 Because God's word, "breath of lives," is in- 
 definite as to number. 
 
 Why do I say each body more refined and 
 delicate than its predecessor? Because in each 
 succeeding life the man, or living soul, has a 
 higher, sublimer, and more spiritual purpose 
 to fulfill than was possible under the conditions 
 of the former life. 
 
 To illustrate this definition of man in his in- 
 finite progress and to show that my interpreta- 
 tion of the word "lives" is not absurd but 
 highly probable, attention is called to some of 
 the creatures which are much lower than our- 
 selves in the scale of being. 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 129 
 
 We all know that a caterpillar, probably a 
 resurrection of the moth, becomes in its resur- 
 rection a butterfly, and that the life principle 
 in one is the permanent living element in all. 
 One living being continues in unlike bodies 
 through distinct lives, in separate realms. It 
 is a strange yet instructive transformation. 
 The clumsy and repulsive worm, crawling on the 
 earth and feeding from the dust, at length 
 weaves its own shroud, from which it soon 
 emerges winged and beautiful, flying in the air 
 and nourished by the nectar of leaf and bud and 
 flower. Will it have yet other and higher 
 forms of existence in still loftier realms? We 
 do not know, but our ignorance is no proof 
 that it will not. 
 
 There is a sluggish grub that rambles among 
 the water plants and shows a fondness for the 
 deep and shaded bottom of the pool. The 
 time comes, however, when turning away from 
 its companions and familiar haunts, it finds the 
 stalk of some reed or rush which it slowly 
 climbs to sunlight and air; there, with a shud- 
 der, it drops its body back to its former home 
 and, as the dragon fly, spreads its four gauzy 
 wings and soars away, the creature of a new 
 and higher realm. The one living soul passes 
 by resurrection from a lower form of life to 
 another that is higher, and it can no more re- 
 turn to its former world than it can to its 
 
130 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 former mode of being. Its companions see the 
 old body, having legs with which it crawled, 
 and perhaps bury it from their sight, but they 
 do not see the new or resurrected body having 
 wings with which to fly. 
 
 In the progressive life of what we come to 
 know as the frog, by evolution rather than by 
 resurrection we find three clearly distinct lives 
 and two widely separated worlds. In the first 
 life of the frog it appears as a small dark 
 speck in a mass of white jelly that floats upon 
 the surface of the pond. Gradually that 
 speck, or egg, absorbs into its enlarging pulpy 
 form the glutinous bed in which it rests. When 
 this process is completed the spawn life of the 
 frog ends and its polliwog existence begins. 
 Now it breathes through gills, like a fish, and 
 has a tail by which it sculls its way about the 
 pond in search of food. Its only element or 
 world is water. At length, however, the gills 
 give place to lungs, the tail is absorbed in legs 
 and its polliwog stage has come to an end. It 
 now enjoys a still larger life, where it propels 
 itself in the water by means of its legs or with 
 them climbs the banks, where it hops in the 
 grass, or sits upon a log, basking in the rays 
 of the summer sun. It has become an inhabit- 
 ant by turns of two worlds, the world of water 
 and the world of air and dry land. 
 
 Thus we see even in these lowest creatures a 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 131 
 
 single life not only continued, but developed, 
 through different lives in ascending forms, no 
 life, in any one of them, having any resemblance 
 to the other life or lives. We see, also, that 
 in every case the body, or form of existence, is 
 perfectly adapted to its conditions, and that 
 the conditions always serve the purpose of 
 higher progress. i 
 
 While not germane to my central thought, 
 yet I am constrained to ask, have these lowly 
 creatures reached their limit, or will they ascend 
 still higher, through additional transitions? A 
 categorical answer cannot be given to this ques- 
 tion. But the God who made man, made them, 
 and He made them for man, whose nature re- 
 quires them for observation, study, and im- 
 provement. Will man's nature so change that 
 he will not need, hereafter, diverse forms of life 
 below him as well as varied orders of life above 
 him, all adapted to his wants and to their con- 
 ditions ? They can be advanced to other worlds 
 and in other worlds, as they have been advanced 
 from one element to another in this world. 
 There should be no call, it seems, for new and 
 original creations to meet the wants of man's 
 nature, when God has shown us that even here 
 a caterpillar may become a butterfly. It may 
 be that God will promote from lower to higher 
 stages the creatures which we have found help- 
 ful to our progress in this world, that in our 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 advance from life to life in worlds to come we 
 may have their presence and influence forever. 
 
 Ever since Adam and Eve, every living soul 
 of our race has had one life, an embryo exist- 
 ence, prior to this present life. The living 
 soul of our former life is the living soul of the 
 present life and will be of all our future lives. 
 This life, while it is a continuation of our 
 former life, is yet distinct and separate from 
 it, and our next life will be a continuation of 
 this and of our former life and still be distinct 
 and separate from either. 
 
 Our transit from our former life was our 
 birth, or resurrection, into this larger and bet- 
 ter life; and our departure from this life will 
 be our birth, or resurrection, into another life 
 of ampler opportunities and transcending pos- 
 sibilities. Thenceforth, ascending from life to 
 life, each painless birth or resurrection, will be 
 a grand promotion, while the body will undergo 
 such changes as shall adapt it always to its new 
 conditions. 
 
 Our first life of a few months' duration an- 
 swered its purpose; this life of a few years' 
 duration accomplishes its higher object; the 
 next life will achieve its still sublimer end; so 
 will the next and the next and the following, 
 in unlimited succession. 
 
 It was necessary that our former life should 
 end in order to secure the advantages of this 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 133 
 
 present larger life; this, too, must end as an 
 essential condition of the higher thought and 
 loftier action of the life to come ; that, also, 
 must end for the same purpose, and so the liv- 
 ing soul, to realize infinite progress, must move 
 out and on and up, in successive human embodi- 
 ments, by new births or resurrections forever. 
 
 This does not imply, however, that the tears 
 of separation and the pangs of dissolution are 
 to be feared and felt hereafter. The partial- 
 ities of the present and the pains which they 
 occasion, being based upon physical functions 
 and relations, are peculiar to this procreative 
 state. Where they neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage, but all are as the angels of 
 God, the bonds of our union will not depend 
 upon earthly kinships or outward resemblances. 
 
 In its essentials only, will the living soul pre- 
 serve permanence of identity or furnish the 
 basis of enduring fellowship. 
 
 In our former embryo life we had all the 
 faculties which we have now, or ever shall have, 
 but how limited was their action and how un- 
 conscious we were of their possession. In our 
 present life we have come into consciousness of 
 many powers and have large opportunity for 
 their exercise; yet such are the conditions in 
 this world, the scope of their action and develop- 
 ment is still limited. They reach out and find 
 barriers which they cannot penetrate and 
 
134 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 boundaries which they cannot pass. Like a 
 bird encaged, we beat in vain the bars that en- 
 close us. With Tennyson we cry betimes : 
 
 "But what am I ? 
 An infant crying in the night; 
 An infant crying for the light; 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 Our next life will extend, but by no means 
 complete, the scope of the faculties we now use, 
 and will awaken into consciousness faculties of 
 which we now know nothing. While each suc- 
 cessive life will enlarge the living soul's oppor- 
 tunities, it will also limit them according to the 
 materiality or permissive character of our 
 bodies. We shall remain finite creatures for- 
 ever. 
 
 We have now come in our study, not through 
 speculation, but by reason, resemblance, and 
 revelation, to a mount of vision which com- 
 mands a broad and bright horizon whose vaulted 
 arch is studded with stars that flash a new and 
 beautiful light. Questions that have puzzled 
 scholars here find solution. Scriptures that 
 have been misunderstood or regarded as obscure 
 are now luminous. What are some of the things 
 which we learn? 
 
 We learn that the living soul and our in- 
 breathed spirit are not synonymous. Our 
 translators of the Bible have erred in using 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 135 
 
 the words "soul" and "spirit" interchangeably. 
 The former is the more comprehensive term 
 for it includes the spirit and its essential body 
 the body which God is pleased to give in the 
 successive stages of our development. 
 
 We learn that we shall enter into another life, 
 as we entered into this life, by birth. I be- 
 lieve that Christ's words to Nicodemus, "Ye 
 must be born again," express this great truth 
 and do not refer to a change of heart or re- 
 generation, as popularly understood. I believe 
 that they declare, not a conditional moral re- 
 quirement, but an unconditional necessity; and 
 that they were as applicable to Christ Himself 
 as they were to Nicodemus or as they are to 
 us ; for even He, the Son of God, in order to 
 come into this world as a revelation of the 
 Father, had to be born into it as we are born 
 into it, and when He would return to the right 
 hand of God, He had to die and rise in other 
 words, be born again just as we must die and 
 rise, or be born again, in order to go to the 
 world in every way prepared for us and to the 
 life for which we have fitted ourselves. 
 
 This application of Christ's words, contro- 
 verting the teaching of the whole Christian 
 world, should be, perhaps, more than merely 
 stated. Note, therefore, that while John sev- 
 eral times speaks of men as being spiritually be- 
 gotten of God, he never refers to them as being 
 
136 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 begotten again, or anew, of God. The birth 
 of which John speaks stands in contrast with 
 nothing. He uses the term very much as Paul 
 uses it when in relation to the conversion of 
 Onesimus, he says, "Whom I have begotten in 
 my bonds" ; or, as he again uses it when, writing 
 to the Corinthians, he says, "For though you 
 should have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet 
 not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I have 
 begotten you through the Gospel" ; or as Peter 
 uses it when he speaks of God "who begat us 
 again unto a living hope by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead." 
 
 The term "birth" or "begotten" in relation 
 to the work of spiritual regeneration is used in 
 the Scripture in a purely symbolic sense; but 
 the birth of which Christ speaks to Nicodemus 
 is not symbolic but actual; it is as real and 
 literal as our birth into this life, over against 
 which it stands, and Nicodemus so understood 
 it, as is evident from his question, "How can a 
 man be born when he is old? Can he enter a 
 second time into his mother's womb and be 
 born?" If Nicodemus received a false impres- 
 sion in this respect, it is reasonable to suppose 
 that Christ would have corrected it ; on the con- 
 trary, he confirmed it by proceeding at once to 
 indicate the nature of the birth declared, viz., 
 that it was by spiritual and not by physical 
 agencies. The two births are equally real and 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 137 
 
 stand in contrast to each other, each one the 
 door of entrance to a life of the ever living soul. 
 
 The difficulty of Nicodemus had respect to 
 the feebly hoped-for resurrection and future 
 life. Job wrestled with the same problem when 
 he asked, "If a man die, shall he live again?" 
 The only answer which he could give was, "All 
 the days of my warfare will I wait till my release 
 comes." That would settle the question, though 
 he yearned for a present and authoritative an- 
 swer. And what was true of Job in this re- 
 spect was equally true of the people in general. 
 Christ, who knew what was in man, in every man, 
 knew the difficulty of Nicodemus and of his 
 class, and met it with the most beautiful, com- 
 prehensive, and illumining term ever applied to 
 the great truths of the hereafter, a term that 
 explains death misnamed and dreaded, reveals 
 the resurrection as positive and certain, and 
 declares the most welcome fact in all the realm 
 of truth another life in another world. In- 
 deed, in the words, "Ye must be born again," 
 Jesus took Nicodemus to the gate of the tomb 
 and wrote thereon what he and all the world 
 might read: "The door of our birth into a 
 brighter and larger life." Born into our pres- 
 ent life, we must be born again to enter our next 
 life. This application of Christ's words is not 
 strained, but simple, natural, and logical. 
 
 We learn that there is no call for the gener- 
 
138 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 ally supposed intermediate state; that there is 
 no unconscious sleep, no purgatory, no jail 
 where we await a formal trial, and no disem- 
 bodied spirits looking for their laid-off caskets 
 to be resurrected and returned. Our theolo- 
 gians talk of disembodied spirits, but there is no 
 evidence of their existence. Professor E. A. 
 Shafer of Edinburg University says: "We 
 cannot conceive of life, in the scientific sense, as 
 existing apart from matter." 
 
 We learn that the judgment which approval 
 or condemnation awaits is a process a present 
 and continuous judgment; that all days are 
 judgment days. True, we read, "After death 
 the judgment"; but that judgment is not after 
 the death of the whole human race ; it follows the 
 death of each individual and probably consists 
 of our just and proper entrance into that par- 
 ticular world that can serve us best. But is not 
 the last parable in Matthew (chapter 5) a 
 picture of a single, final, general judgment? 
 Being a parable, it is not to be literally inter- 
 preted. It may be a symbolic representation 
 of the judgment that is searching, constant, and 
 universal. It doubtless teaches the separation 
 of the righteous and the wicked. But are not 
 these classes separated now by virtue of their 
 opposite characters? Will the righteous ever 
 be more on Christ's right hand or the wicked be 
 more on His left hand than they are at present? 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 139 
 
 It does not require the pronouncement of a judge 
 to separate from each other the righteous and 
 the unrighteous. The antipodal in character 
 go their separate ways. 
 
 We learn what Paul means when he says: 
 "This mortal must put on immortality." Our 
 body is not immortal, but it puts on immortal- 
 ity while it still remains mortal. How can this 
 be done? The process can be explained on 
 our theory of a succession of births and an 
 equal succession of lives. How does the wheat 
 put on immortality? By periodic or frequent 
 resurrections, exchanging old bodies for new 
 ones. "That which is sown is not the body 
 that shall be." 
 
 When a man, or the living soul, quits his 
 present visible body, he quits it forever. He 
 takes his new body from his dying body, for 
 where there is no life there can be no resur- 
 rection. He takes his resurrection body in the 
 moment of what we call dissolution here, for 
 Death is birth and birth is resurrection. My 
 present body is a resurrection out of the body 
 or external wrapping which, no longer needed, 
 was left behind when I was born into this pres- 
 ent life; and so another body shall be a part 
 of me in my next succeeding life, where this 
 body would be as unsuitable as was the body 
 of my embryo life for this present stage of my 
 being. Thus, through an indefinite number of 
 
140 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 new births, or resurrections, or successive lives, 
 I shall put on the immortality, which the mor- 
 tal part of the living soul requires. 
 
 This is the only conceivable way in which 
 this mortal can put on immortality, for the 
 resurrection of that which is mortal and ma- 
 terial must still be mortal and material or it 
 could not be a resurrection; and being so, it 
 will become old, like the former body, and like 
 it, also, will demand the youth of a new birth. 
 How many resurrections of mortality immor- 
 tality may require no one can tell. The body 
 will become less gross with each renewal, and 
 therefore the resurrections will become less fre- 
 quent; but it is called "a spiritual body" not 
 so much on account of its spirituality as be- 
 cause it is the result of spiritual, instead of 
 physical, agencies. 
 
 It is possible that the "aura," which, by 
 means of the Roentgen rays, scientists tell us 
 they see departing from the body at the in- 
 stant of death, is itself the faintly outlined 
 expression of the living soul in the life that fol- 
 lows this terrestrial life. 
 
 It will be noted that our view, as here pre- 
 sented, is entirely free from such difficulties as 
 are involved in the absurd theory that the 
 resurrection is the reassembling, reclothing and 
 revivifying of the dry bones and scattered dust 
 of the world's graveyards. It will be noted, 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 141 
 
 also, that our view is analogous to what we see 
 taking place in some of the lower creatures. 
 
 It is the fact of resurrection, not the man- 
 ner of it, or time of it, or number of its occur- 
 rences, that the Bible clearly teaches. 
 
 We learn that Christ's second coming is a 
 gradual and continuous manifestation and not 
 a single, sudden, spectacular, and complete 
 event. It began when Mary Magdalene saw 
 Him through her tears, the first to behold 
 Him after His resurrection. It continued to 
 the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, and 
 to the eleven as they sat at meat in Galilee. 
 His very parting from His brethren over 
 against Bethany was an incident in His second 
 coming, and the words then spoken, "Lo, I am 
 with you always," have been, are now, and ever 
 shall be true in their continuous fulfillment. 
 Christ's second coming is a perpetual and an 
 increasingly glorious advent. A blind man, 
 after an operation to restore lost vision, is 
 not permitted a full sunburst. Christ's mani- 
 festation to men is according to the power of 
 their spiritual appreciation. Special manifes- 
 tations there may be, as on the day of Pente- 
 cost, to Saul of Tarsus, and in the destruction 
 of Jerusalem the end of the Jewish state. 
 
 His second coming 1 is not like His first 
 with scarred visage, wounded and bruised, and 
 having no beauty that men should desire Him 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 but attractive and winsome; He is the Rose 
 of Sharon, the Lily of the valley, the Fairest 
 among ten thousand, the One altogether lovely. 
 His second coming, unlike His first, is not in 
 weakness, but in power. He comes not as a 
 victim, but as the victor ; not to make salvation 
 possible, but to make it sure, to perfect that 
 which in His first coming He began. . He comes 
 to us, and to all who have lived in this and in 
 all worlds, as the revelation of the glory of 
 the Godhead. He comes as the light that 
 illumines every man's path and that shineth 
 "more and more unto the perfect day" ; more 
 and more, not only here, but hereafter, as we 
 advance 
 
 "From world to luminous world as far 
 As the universe spreads its shining wall" ; 
 
 more and more as we ascend in our successive 
 lives toward that central, mighty, metropolitan 
 orb in which rises "the throne itself of God" ; 
 more and more unto "the perfect day" when 
 every knee shall bow and every tongue confess 
 to Christ, to the glory of God the Father; 
 more and more unto that crowning day, when 
 all having been assimilated into the divine 
 image by the clear vision of the Savior, His 
 Kingdom shall be complete and God shall be 
 ALL IN ALL. The record of eternity will be 
 the progressive and transforming revelation of 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 143 
 
 God the Father through Jesus Christ His Son. 
 I have no sympathy with the lines of Bonar : 
 
 "The Church has waited long 
 Her absent Lord to see, 
 And still in loneliness she waits, 
 A friendless stranger she. 
 Age after age has gone, 
 Sun after sun has set, 
 And still in weeds of widowhood, 
 She weeps a mourner yet." 
 
 God's children are not orphans. Christ's 
 Church is not a widow, but a bride adorned and 
 joyful. The Lord is ever present with His 
 people. He is touched with the feeling of their 
 infirmities. He is in the midst of them who 
 assemble in His name. The physical atmos- 
 phere does not more surely surround men than 
 His arms enfold them. He is nearer to them 
 than their breath in their body, for in Him they 
 live and move and have their being. While 
 vividly realizing His presence hovering over 
 them and soothing them more than the caresses 
 of a tender mother's love, there is ever a more- 
 ness in His coming; He may come more 
 graciously, more gloriously, more triumphantly, 
 and so men should not cease to pray, "Even 
 so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen." 
 
 We see much more from our mount of vision ; 
 more than we have time and space to name. 
 
144 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 We see how the future may be a continuation 
 of the present and not altogether out of har- 
 mony with it; how our service of God may be 
 perpetuated in the service of His creatures 
 the only way in which we can serve Him ; how 
 the present laws of moral discipline and devel- 
 opment may always obtain; how God may be 
 our Father and Christ our Savior no less hence- 
 forth than now ; how hope and love and oppor- 
 tunity may survive successive transitions ; how 
 the imperfectly begun web of our existence may 
 yet be advanced toward completion that for- 
 ever recedes ; how the purposes that are broken 
 off in this life may be consummated in a later 
 life; how the blighted buds of this dull spring- 
 time of our existence may bloom in infinite 
 beauty in the golden summers that are yet to 
 be. 
 
 But where are we to pass our numberless and 
 constantly expanding! lives? Such lives, in- 
 volving the material, require locality, habita- 
 tion, distinct yet related, limited yet enlarging 
 spheres of action. If we are able to find the 
 possible places of habitation, their very exist- 
 ence tends to confirm the truth of our theory; 
 indeed, the evidence altogether would seem 
 sufficient to establish the theory as a doctrine. 
 It is clear that we are passing the present life 
 of our infinite series on one of the smaller 
 planets of one of the minor solar systems a 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 145 
 
 very appropriate starting point of a stupen- 
 dous journey. 
 
 At the close of His last supper with His 
 disciples, Jesus said to them in substance : Do 
 not be anxious about the future; you believe in 
 God fully, trust just as implicitly in Me. In 
 my Father's house, that is, in the illimitable 
 space which He occupies, are many mansions, 
 numberless abiding places ; if it were not so, 
 I would have told you, such is its importance. 
 I go, and you are grieved in view of My de- 
 parture, but I go to prepare a place not a 
 permanent abode, not a final home, but a place 
 for you. The many mansions are for your 
 many lives, which they imply. No matter 
 which mansion I prepare for you first, or what 
 the conditions of your discipline and develop- 
 ment there may be, you can leave that to me, 
 for I shall be there; where I am, you shall be 
 also. 
 
 Surely no one would wish to take from, or 
 add to, or misrepresent the gracious words of 
 Jesus, as full of comfort as they are of in- 
 struction, and spoken to each one of us as 
 really as to those entranced disciples who sat 
 at His feet. 
 
 We now go out and look up to the starlit 
 sky. What a scene of grandeur and magnifi- 
 cence invites our astonished gaze ! And yet 
 we see only the fringe of a universe that 
 
146 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 stretches in every direction beyond the reach 
 of human thought. Those brilliant orbs, 
 worlds upon worlds, systems and constellations 
 and clusters, that bejewel the infinite space, 
 have now assumed a new and wondrous mean- 
 ing. While they declare the glory of God and 
 show His marvelous handiwork, while they are 
 great lights hung out by the Almighty hand to 
 illumine the realms of unlimited space, while 
 they stir our amazement over the marvel and 
 magnitude and miracle of creation, they yet 
 speak a purpose more practical and precious ; 
 they are our celestial possessions, they are co- 
 relative to the lives which we are destined to 
 live, they are mansions in our Father's house 
 abiding places for us, representing stages of 
 progress in our march of immortality. 
 
 I am overcome with delight. My vision is 
 as beautiful as an angel's dream. The maze 
 and the haze that have obscured my view of 
 the future are largely cleared away. Now I 
 see why the mansions are many, why they vary 
 in magnitude and splendor, why one star dif- 
 fers from another star in glory. Each one 
 must answer to a distinct type of life, having 
 its own definite adaptations and lofty purposes. 
 The home must correspond to the life that 
 shall there be lived. My line of three known 
 lives is extended to many, as many as their pos- 
 sible habitations. 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 147 
 
 True, the whole created universe, having had 
 a beginning, must have an end. When the 
 planet on which we now live shall have served 
 its high purpose, its very elements shall dis- 
 solve. Yonder sun shall yet exhaust its light 
 and heat and pass away. There is not a star 
 in the firmament that shall not become dim and 
 dark. The far off Milky Way, breaking up 
 into different parts, proclaims that it is not 
 eternal. "The wreck of matter and the crash 
 of worlds" is not mere poetry. Still we never 
 shall be left mansionless. Our God has at His 
 command unlimited creative power, and scien- 
 tists tell us that new planets are constantly 
 being born and that in the universe there are 
 planets in all stages of development. When a 
 world shall have fulfilled its sublime mission, it 
 shall pass away and another world, more glori- 
 ous and with loftier purpose, shall appear; and 
 so Christ may say to us in our next life and 
 in each of our succeeding lives, what He says 
 to us in this life, "I go to prepare a place for 
 you." Thus shall we have a "progressive 
 revelation of God, given to us, as it were, in a 
 series of concentric circles rising one above 
 another toward their Source." Thus, also, 
 we shall continue to see in God's visible crea- 
 tions the invisible things of God, even His 
 eternal power and divinity. 
 
 I see, also, how progress is ever orderly, 
 
148 STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 under law, and by effort and discipline. I see, 
 moreover, how not only Judas, but every man 
 may go to "his own place," and how the con- 
 sequences of good or evil conduct here may 
 follow into the hereafter forever without there 
 being a hopeless soul in all the universe of God. 
 
 Oh, the grandeur and blessedness of the 
 Father's thought and plan and will concerning 
 me, for my infinite series of progressive lives 
 an infinite succession of prepared worlds. 
 
 Eloquence may garland many themes, but 
 not this one ; it becomes mute in the soul-absorb- 
 ing view of the ineffable splendors and floods 
 of melody and divine unfoldings that shall 
 glorify our ever brightening immortality. 
 
 Fancy may take its flight far beyond the 
 ken of eye or telescope in the limitless domin- 
 ions of God, but at last it must fold its wings 
 in weariness and sink exhausted amidst the 
 glories of immensity, crying: "This is but 
 the vestibule of His temple." 
 
 My Father's house, the universe, 
 Has mansions many worlds of light 
 Full furnished for my separate lives 
 That rise in series infinite. 
 
 This mansion is a place prepared 
 Through countless years and ages vast; 
 Rocks, stars, and sunless depths reveal 
 God's thought of man through aeons past. 
 
STUDY OF THE FUTURE LIFE 149 
 
 And God still works, preparing homes 
 With lavish hand and purpose high. 
 In what bright orb shall I next dwell; 
 Which first call "home" in yonder sky? 
 
 Ah, what my term of schooling there? 
 And whither then shall I remove? 
 Still brighter spheres, still larger lives, 
 The progress of my soul shall prove. 
 
 And when I've traversed, one by one, 
 And dwelt in all the worlds I see, 
 Will then my progress have an end? 
 'Tis but begun: ETERNITY. 
 
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