shall find that there are things that the Almighty Ones cannot do. They cannot do evil, and They cannot create evil, and They cannot overcome evil by evil. The Almighty Ones are responsible for all the good things created, but they are not responsible for evil. Evil is self-existent, independent. The Almighty Ones can resist it, and with Their power all creation can resist it. But constant dependence on the Almighty powers is perpetually required, and implicit obedience to Their commands. Failing these, the independent power

of evil encroaches and enthrals.

The reader will observe that I speak of "The Almighty Ones," for that is really a true translation of the original. This plurality of divine parentage is not shown in the English translation, and numerous misconceptions as to the All-Protecting Parents and Creators of the universe have arisen therefrom. Again, man, who is absolutely incapable of making himself, objects to the presence of evil, and in vain tries to water it away to nothing. It is an appalling fact, and what an awful thing it must be is patent from its mention being intruded even into this peaceful picture of Paradise. It occurs to me that, awful as it is, its horrors are lessened when fairly faced. For my own part, I fail to see that there is any warrant in Holy Writ for what so many theologians seem to find there, viz., that evil is only fallen good, any more than I do for the theory that evil takes its origin in matter. appears to me that we are distinctly told by Revelation that the whole of the universe, and every being of the universe created by God, is

It

very good. For that very good to cease to be such, it must come in contact with some entity which has nothing in common with good, and which proceedeth not from the same source. As St. James saith, "Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter?" (St. James iii. 11.) This entity which is awfully capable of coming in contact with good, and has an eternal enmity to it, the Scripture calls EVIL, and there is no hint of sufficient weight to show that it was ever anything else. It seems only too plain that we are not justified, because of the terribleness of the fact, in trying to escape from it by a side door. Indeed, if following the glowing imagination of the immortal Milton we personify evil in a fallen archangel, and make that apostate the only source, we surely make the mystery not less terrible, and incur the danger of pity softening our repugnance to the apostate angel.* It does not remove the difficulty of why the Almighty Ones did not keep their bodyguard from falling, if there be no independent and antagonistic power to seduce him; nor does it but increase the inconceivability of the unsolicited free will of his body-guard being permitted by the Most High to disturb the harmony of heaven. It also makes it doubly dangerous in concentrating our thoughts upon attributes which, however grand, are really used for a foul purpose, and almost makes us view with admiration the Satanic sentiment, "that it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."

* Vide too, that remarkable book "The Sorrows of Satan" a terrible half-truth as regards the author of evil. Pace Marie Corelli.

Again, were it true that this apostate cherub were the sole source of evil, and that he fell, like Nebuchadnezzar fell, from innate pride, then there is no reason why, after a period of punitive probation, he should not repent and be restored to his place in heaven. For, be it remembered, the cherubim are children of the Almighty Ones, and if they fell, from their own frailty of will, all the loving patience of the Almighty Ones goes to prove that it would never rest until it had recovered its lost child. Into this dilemma are we thrown if we make the source of all evil to have been once good and archangelic. Over such a being the emotions of pity could not fail to soften our revulsion against evil and make it less frightful than it is, and we would be brought into sympathy with the agonized cry of King David over his apostate son, when he rent the air with those thrilling words, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (2 Sam. xviii. 33).

Do not let me be mistaken in what I have written with regard to the inimitable poem of Paradise Lost. Had Milton's creation referred to Lucifer, it would have been theologically and imaginatively correct, and such a conception would, I think, have added to the sublimity of the poem, for Lucifer would have found that he had to serve in hell as well as in heaven, only under a sterner master, even the source of all evil. If we take to the study of Holy Writ no preconceived opinions or poetic imaginings, we shall be forced to the conclusion that the evil one is a personal entity, who never had any good in him, and that instead of the proverb being true "that the

devil is not as black as he is painted," it were more scriptural to assert "that the devil cannot be painted too black." So dangerous is he that it would be better not to try and paint him at all. There can be no doubt that the hideous caricature of horns and hoofs has done more to rouse ridicule and lessen the real sense of evil than anything else. What a fascination the subject has, has been shown by the reception of Goethe's Faust, and the new piece by a modern dramatist called The Tempter. The tendency of modern thought is to eliminate a personal evil existence altogether. Satan is a word that must not be allowed to escape from lips polite. Education, science, and fashion, between them, have succeeded in convincing society that we are gradually being "evolutionized" out of evil, which is not an existence at all, but merely a providential arrangement of "adverse influences" which, when humanity shall have overcome it, will become heroic! You are dubbed "a pessimist if you venture to remark that the numerous accounts of murders, divorces, burglaries, suicides, drunkenness, libels, slanders, strikes, dynamite outrages, over-stocked asylums, hardly point to an elimination of evil, or of even "adverse influences."

Now, the present author, having read almost every book upon the subject, and endeavoured to arrive at an impartial conclusion, is convinced that from the ability of the writers and the bulk of the volumes the subject is a most absorbing one, and that the Bible, when interpreted critically and reverently and in such a way as not to make one part contradict another, alone points both to the

disease and to the Remedy. It warrants the statement that the evil one, or evil ones-for they do not appear to be sexless-are self-existent and exist for SELF. There is no denying that these powers have consummate hatred of the All-Good, and for this reason, if for no other, that, whereas the latter are inherently creative and life-giving, and exercise their Almighty power and love by besprinkling space with infinite spheres and infinite offspring who reciprocate with loyalty and love their Creator's care, the evil ones are essentially sterile and selfishly stagnant. Being neither omnipotent nor almighty, and their selfish attributes not permitting of their taking pleasure in the existence of others, as they inherently desire all pleasure to be concentrated in themselves, these evil self-existences lack the power of perpetual procreation, and are filled with envy at the limitless love of the Most High. The evil ones can only extend their power either by satisfying their envy by murder, or their lust by seduction. Restless to revenge their inferiority of infinity, they hatch a lie, and bide their time till they can seduce by its means one of the sons or daughters of the Truth, and make them their slaves. Evil, by its very essence, is a pernicious parasite, which sinks into satiety, and can only extend its existence by feeding upon some fresh victim not of its own creation, and upon whom it may gratify its appetite. The existence of such a bastard brood becomes indeed a bane to the spheres, and to stem the tide of those rebel recruits calls forth watchfulness on the part of the warriors of the Most High!

And this word "watchfulness" reminds me of