Article March 23, 1912 Issue

The so-called mystery of evil has seemingly baffled theologians...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Indianapolis (Ind.) Sun

The so-called mystery of evil has seemingly baffled theologians and philosophers of all schools and in all ages, yet it is evident that the most mystifying phase of the whole gigantic problem has been, after all, the apparently incomprehensible simplicity of fundamental good. It is a significant fact that the world's greatest Teacher, who is humanity's Saviour, did not thunder the fiery edicts of Sinai nor dispense with vengeful hand the plagues in Egypt. Our Lord quietly but masterfully propounded the beatitudes, and spake in simple parables, inditing as the one commandment of all, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbor as thyself." In the further admonition, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," he eliminated from the whole proposition and at one master stroke that most mystifying of all the factors of evil, time.

The Pentateuchal writer in the very first chapter of the Book of books, gives us the effectual key to the entire labyrinth of false mortal sense designated evil, in the verse, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The words of this sweepingly significant declaration practically conclude the briefest and yet withal the most correct and comprehensive account of the nature, process, and completeness of that fundamental fact of all being known as creation. Successive chapters of the book of Genesis, and indeed successive chapters and books of the entire Old Testament, are but an account of the human misapprehension of creation, a history, as it were, of evil, written on the plane of human comprehension. This second account in Genesis proves upon close scrutiny to be a mistaken rendering of the fundamental, perfect, spiritual creation outlined in the first chapter and the first three verses of the second chapter.

As evidence of this, witness the fact that in the first account the term "God," meaning the self-existent and forever "I AM," is used to designate the creator and the term "create," meaning "to bring into being," expresses the divine activity; while the term used in the second account is "Lord God," i.e., Jehovah, or the Jewish tribal tutelary sense of Deity as a sovereign, and the incident activity is expressed in the word "formed," meaning literally "to give form or shape to" the already existent. It should be noted just here, also, that it was the spiritual, perfect, and complete creation of the first chapter, containing no taint of materiality or evil and inculcating dominion as man's dominant characteristic, which was pronounced "very good" in the estimation of the divine creative intelligence, or God; while of the latter, the human, material formation, we have the record that it was cursed.

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