Article February 6, 1915 ISSUE

For ages humanity has accepted evil as a fearful reality,...

Judge Clifford P. Smith

Haverhill (Mass.) Sunday Recorder

For ages humanity has accepted evil as a fearful reality, never doubting that the wretched havoc following as the consequence of this belief was in some manner ordained by an actual power. Intelligent Truth-seekers have sometimes perceived more or less clearly that the government of the universe could not possibly be divided between two opposite and antagonistic powers; and sometimes they have inquired how evil can exist in spite of divine and infinite Love; but no explanation consistent with the omnipotence and goodness of God has ever been furnished by scholastic theology. So Christendom has taken its choice between evil as an independent and actual power and a concept of God which includes evil as His agent. In either view the resistance to evil has been vitiated by the admission of its reality; for no effort which concedes the truth of evil can ever overcome it; it can be abolished only with the understanding which dispels it as illusion or error. Therefore, although Christ Jesus plainly taught the omnipotence and the absolute goodness of God and the consequent unreality and nothingness of evil, the adulteration or dilution of his instruction has postponed for centuries the fruition of his work.

One reason—perhaps the main reason—why Christianity has not yet accomplished all that Christ Jesus foretold for it, is that his ministry has been misunderstood. The various theories which have been formulated to explain his life-work need to be reconsidered; they need to be reexamined in the light of both reason and revelation; and in the final decision, predominance should be ascribed to what he himself said concerning his mission.

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The teachings of the Bible, and especially of the New Testament,...
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