Man is, to man's own reasoning mind, the great problem of all,—the masterpiece, yet the mystery, of all God's works. His powers, his condition,-his duties, -his prospects-what? and whence? and why?

Chief among his inquiries into his own being and condition, stands the eternal question of EVIL. It meets him every where,―never fully answered, ever recurring. Evil, natural and moral,—sin and misery,—whence and why are they? Is the one to be regarded as the cause of the other, and that other as its punishment? A simple theory; but is it accordant with fact? Is human suffering simply and solely, uniformly and proportionately, the penalty of sin? If so, were these appointed from the first, by the great Creator, to make part in the human lot? Were they originally inherent in our nature and condition? And if so, why (with reverence be it asked), why was man thus formed and circumstanced by a benevolent Creator? Or, was human nature free from these plagues at first; and were they incurred, imported, engrafted upon it afterwards? And if so, how?

These are questions which have occupied the mind of every thinker in every age. They are questions on which there is room enough for thinking yet.

The unknown, very ancient, writer of this second section of the book of Genesis, has left us his earnest thoughts towards their solution, in his picture of the

Paradise is not so lost as is sometimes thought. The Garden of Eden is now spread out into the width of the world. Our homes are bowers in it; our roads are walks in it; and always within reach hang forbidden fruits, though now they are such as are often their own punishment in the eating,-apples of Sodom, golden in the rind and dust inside. There is in the Garden still the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and this we may eat of now; for it is full grown, and the fruit of it is ripe. And by eating of it, we too have our eyes opened, and so are able to recognize, as the very tree of life, what otherwise looks deadly, and itself dead wood; I mean the tree of the crucifixion." (Euthanasy, p. 71.)

Garden of Eden. I would make myself simply the expositor of his thoughts,-the thoughts, doubtless, of many besides him in his own and subsequent days, but very different (as will be obvious to the careful student) from the ideas now generally prevalent and believed to be founded upon this history of Eden. We need not take his venerable musings as a creed for ourselves, nor be anxious to reconcile them with existing beliefs. But let us try to find out what he himself, that early religious thinker, believed.

The intelligent and devout mind, reflecting earnestly upon its own emotions and upon the conduct of others, contemplating the mixed good and evil of human actions, characters and motives,-now nobly exulting in its conscious power of virtuous action and high resolve, but again the more acutely ashamed for the degradation and vices of human life, and confessing even in its own virtuous consciousness of resistance, that the seeds of frailty are in itself, as partaking that same nature which sometimes rises to angels and sometimes sinks below brute natures;―pondering these things, the thoughtful and religious mind has more than whispered a doubt whether the moral faculties and free-agency of man are, on the whole, a blessing to his existence, or a curse. If, when rightly used, exalted and improved, they give him enjoyments such as no other creature on God's earth can know ;-perverted, they sting him with misery and plunge him into degradation unknown to any creature not similarly endowed. And if, in the reveries of thought, the best state of human happiness is sometimes imagined as that which should be simply free from these dark evils of the perverted moral nature,-if the mind, while musing on the dark side of human actions, forgets to consult the brighter;—aye, if in the infancy of human society no adequate idea could be formed of the adap

tation of the human powers for perpetual growth and improvement, and of the necessity of their exposure to Evil in order to the developement of their Good;then it must have been very natural for the musing moralist to give his preference to the idea of a state of simple innocence, void of virtuous action and endurance, above that of mixed virtue and vice which actual life presents. And this train of thought might lead him to wish that the perilous gift of reasoning choice could be recalled, and instinct sufficient for the purposes of the lower life be given instead. Without adopting such a view of man, we can understand it and sympathize with it as held by earlier thinkers on these difficult questions.

Then, again, when it is seen how many of the miseries of human life plainly arise out of human errors and misconduct, it is easy (yet very rash) to conclude (as was the very prevalent conclusion of ancient moralists, and is a not uncommon opinion with the moderns), that all the sufferings and evils of human life, without exception, are to be referred to this cause,—that the natural evil in the world is altogether the penalty and punishment of moral evil. To mantain this theory, some resolute self-closing of the eyes to the facts of the case is indeed necessary, and some confounding of the principle of personal responsibility and retribution; but the theory has widely prevailed.

Having arrived thus far, the moral speculator wanted but one step further back,- —a great and hazardous one, with little but conjecture to guide him in taking it, namely, How came moral evil-sin? The sufferings of life being ascribed (truly or not) to the vices of human beings, whence came those vices? How came man to do wrong?

The plain answer is, From that which man has, and which he abuses.

freedom of choice

From his partial

"knowledge of good and evil" (his moral faculty), and from his imperfect compliance even with that knowledge, his imperfect obedience to conscience.

Then, whence or why this "knowledge of good and evil”—this moral faculty? was the ultimate question in the mind of the philosopher who had thus reasoned. Was man thus endowed with moral perceptions at first by his Creator? And was it, then, a good and benevolent gift of his Creator to him? Or was man created differently, without the moral faculty, in the first instance? And did he afterwards, in contravention of his Maker's wiser and kinder will, become possessed of these perilous powers, by which he has conscience of good and evil? And if so, how? And why did a kind Providence permit him to gain what Creation had mercifully denied him?

The chronicler of the Garden of Eden has chosen the latter alternative. Deeming this moral nature of man a gift to be deprecated rather than desired, he has believed that the Almighty originally created man without it. He would not ascribe to the Creator the direct bestowal of those moral powers upon man, which are so liable to perversion, and are so often perverted to worst abuse. He represents them as jealously withheld by heaven, yet stealthily obtained by man.

The

The difficulty is thus only removed a step. It is not got rid of. But more could not be done without the aid of Christian light and love; and even they cannot solve the mighty problem of Evil completely. Hebrew sage could only push it back. Having rashlygranted that the moral nature of man is a curse to him rather than a blessing, he will not ascribe it directly to the Creator as His original gift; but he is still forced to allow that the Creator made man in such a manner, that he would inevitably attain the perilous boon of

knowing good from evil. God, he admits, gave sight and smell and taste, and presented a tree of delightful attractiveness to all these senses. He gave a quicker sensitiveness to the womanly perceptions of Eve, vivacity to her imagination and curiosity to her desires; and though the command, "Thou shalt not eat thereof," had been laid upon the man, there could be (by the theory) no knowledge of the good of obedience, or the evil of contrary inclination, before he had eaten of that very "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Providence permitting and arranging this, was equivalent to the Creator's endowing him thus at first; or rather, he must have been thus endowed, to some extent, from the first, to have sinned as he did. To have been qualified to understand a command, and guilty in breaking it, implies to a certain extent the possession of moral faculties,—the knowledge of good and evil. So essentially do they belong to man, in his inherent nature as man, that the very theory which tries to explain their acquisition, tacitly assumes their previous existence. On his own principles, then, the writer has but removed or disguised the difficulty, not solved it. But he has done his best, and has given us a rich and earnest vein of thought.

Let us, then, look into the details of his theory. We must notice first what these evils of human life are, which the writer thinks it necessary to account for, and then see how he considers them to have been produced.

The natural evils expressly enumerated, are those of toil and pain, the necessity of clothing, and the liability to death.

First comes the necessity of toil as the condition of human subsistence. Labour is an undoubted law of the human condition in general. But any one who calmly reflects upon its influence in the exercise and developement of the human powers and character, will scruple