-finds its solution most easily in the conclusion that those works were known to its author. It would seem then, as a result of analysis, that the sources of the work are of three kinds: (1) genuine traditions, not preserved in any of the canonical gospels; (2) unreliable legends, also not found in those gospels; (3) passages from two or more of those gospels which have been worked over by the author of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in the light of his own independent materials. If these are just conclusions, we cannot allow the gospel that position of authority by the side of the Synoptics, sometimes in preference to them, and always in preference to the fourth gospel, claimed for it by Oscar Holtzmann. On the other hand, we must conclude that the almost scornful treatment of it by Dr Salmon and other conservative scholars is not just. The book must be very ancient, almost contemporary with the Synoptics, and it contains some fragments of historical tradition and teachings of Jesus, the neglect of which is unwarrantable. Still more unjust is it to treat this gospel as a heretical work, wilfully perverting the true tradition of Christian origins. Assuredly it is honestly written; and there is no reason to doubt the good faith of its author.

LANCASHIRE COLLEGE.

WALTER F. ADENEY.

DISCUSSIONS

N.B.-The contributions under this heading refer to matters previously treated in the "Hibbert Journal." Criticism of any article will, as a rule, be limited to a single issue of the Journal. The discussion ends with a reply from the original writer.—Ed.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.

(Hibbert Journal, July 1904, p. 766.)

I.

Does not Mr St George Stock, in his essay on the Problem of Evil, create for himself much of the difficulty which he subsequently admits that he is unable to resolve? Having ruled out, on the authority of Lactantius, whom he seems to consider final from the Christian point of view, any theory of dualism, he finds that "this doctrine leaves no loophole for ascribing evil to anything but the will of the divine creator." Later on we are told that the two propositions, "God is all" and "God is good," bring us inevitably to the proposition, "There is no evil," which is contrary to experience. But it is just because God is all, in other words, each one of us is a sharer in the Divine Nature, and therefore in right of this possesses free-will, that evil has been brought into the world, because both human and angelic intelligences, being free because Godlike, have chosen evil rather than good. God in creating other personalities has necessarily limited what we must call His Divine Personality, but not His essential Being, in which His creation shares. Anyone who believes in the Divine Nature in humanity, as Mr Stock does believe, judging by his concluding pages, must logically admit that it involves a freedom of the will inconsistent with our being mere puppets of God. Our task is to rise from a mere unity of being to a personal union with God.

This double sense in which we naturally think of God as Person and as Substance, and of our rise from one form of union to the other, becomes an insoluble difficulty to Mr Stock; first, because he rejects the Christian doctrine of free-will, thus making a personal union with God impossible, and secondly, because he rejects the general Christian belief in the existence of Lucifer or Satan, the "Prince of this world," whose fall gives the reason for the something out of joint which we all feel in the world of nature. We feel that God is the Substance, and yet that Nature

rate an

as we know it does not adequately express Him. The problem of Evil returns in another shape, and is not to be entirely explained by human freewill. Differing from the belief of Lactantius as to the creation, Mr Stock considers this belief in the existence of Satan as obsolete, but on what grounds he has formed this opinion he does not tell us. It supplies at any answer to his difficulties as to the cruelty in Nature. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," and would not this result naturally happen if the great Angel set over this world had in pride declared himself independent of any higher power, and thus cut himself off in his consciousness from God, thus becoming Mephistopheles, the "spirit that ever denies," because he cannot believe in God and the soul? "I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven," said our Lord, not referring to the fact that His messengers had had power over evil spirits, but to this fall of Satan from the inner communion with God to outer darkness, from the spiritual plane to the infernal. In his fall, the earth, his kingdom, was involved, so that God could no longer look upon it and see that it was 66 very good." In some way which we can only dimly apprehend it is out of harmony with the inner realities, and this constitutes evil. But in the exercise of our free-will we can individually pass from the kingdom of Lucifer to that Kingdom of Christ which He set up on earth; and we hope for the restitution of all things, when God's will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This, I submit, is a truer presentation of the Christian belief than that given by Mr Stock, and I fail to see anything in his arguments which can subvert it. His easy supposition that no one any longer believes in the personality of "the devil" is part of a point of view which is a little out of date, and of this he seems to have some suspicion himself when he later on asks whether, after all, we are sure that the spirit of God in its turn is a mere abstraction. We are beginning to realise that the key to the understanding of the world is to be found in Personality rather than in abstractions; that, just as the justification for the pain and struggle of the evolutionary process is to be found in the development of personality, so it is a far truer view of God to think of Him as the great Personality, personal (i.e., full of relations) in a fuller sense than we can conceive. So, too, with Lucifer; the instinct to personify, like all our deepest instincts, is justified by results as well as by the nature of man. The belief in the angelic hierarchy, because it was not at first held in its fulness by the Jews, is not on that account necessarily mistaken. The Spirit of God gives divers revelations at divers times, and this growing belief in Personality may be the form which that revelation is to take in this age. Such beliefs cannot be proved; they must be judged by the extent to which they help us to "see life steadily and see it whole."

BROCKENHURST.

SYBELLA GURNEY.

VOL. III.-No. 1.

11

II.

MR STOCK'S able and interesting article fails to be convincing because it omits all consideration of what many would deem the most essential factor in the Problem of Evil, viz., the free-will of man.

Mr Stock contends that theology will have to give up the position that "all things are the work of a perfect and all-powerful Creator," because all things are not good. This argument has an attractive simplicity, but it does not really touch the kernel of the question.

The theological position, as I understand it, may be thus summarised :— It was the intention of a perfect and all-powerful Creator that man should develop to the highest point possible within the necessary limitations of his finite nature. Man must therefore be a moral being. If moral, he must be endued with a free will. But the possession of a free will involves of necessity the power of choice between good and evil.

And since the higher morality can only be evolved (as theology holds) "through suffering"-and suffering is per se an evil—and, since, moreover, among the myriads of beings endowed (ex hypothesi) with free-will there is a practical certainty that some would choose the evil which is easy, rather than the good which is hard, it follows that evil must needs enter such a world. Mr Stock further maintains (if I understand him aright) that Nature, being "non-moral," cannot be the work of a moral Creator. Why not? A clock or a steam-engine is "non-moral," but that fact does not preclude the possibility that the men who made it are moral. A steam-engine may be the occasion of suffering; so may the forces of Nature: and this suffering may be a part of a scheme whereby mankind may be made (within their limits) perfect.

Mr Stock gives us a syllogism

God is all, God is good, .. all is good.

I would venture to amend it thus

God is over all, God is good, .. all tends to good.

In such a theory, most imperfectly sketched in the above paragraphs, I at least can see nothing inconsistent with the truths of science, the principles of logic, or the doctrines of theology.

That there has been a great evolution of religious ideas about God since the epoch of the early Hebrews hardly requires detailed demonstration in the twentieth century.

GODMANCHESTEr Vicarage, HuNTINGDON.

A. SLOMAN.

III.

MR STOCK appears to have overlooked a double interpretation of which the proposition "God is All" is susceptible. It may mean that God is all in the pantheistic sense; so that if we take up a stick or a stone, or

even think of an immoral act, we must say "This is God." Or it may mean "All is from God," that is, "everything derives its being from God, and is maintained in being by Him." This latter interpretation is, I take it, the specifically Christian version of the statement as against the pantheistic. If the words are not susceptible of this meaning, the proposition "God is all" is not accepted by the great majority of Christians.

It is true that this interpretation does not at once relieve us from the difficulty which Mr Stock states. For it may be said, "If God is not Himself the direct cause of evil, He must have so created things as to be susceptible of evil, and being, as Creator, all-powerful and under no conditions, He cannot but be held responsible for the evils that ensued from conditions which He created." True, if God in creating is subject to no conditions. The argument is good against those who maintain that God can do whatever He pleases by a mere fiat-that is, without means; that He could, for instance, if He chose, instantly transform every wicked man into a good man, and every evil spirit into an angel. It has often been assumed that the Divine power is of this absolute and unlimited character. If it were so, I agree that we could not rationally think of God as perfectly good. For we must think of God by means of data furnished by our own experience. His goodness must be like ours, however infinitely it may transcend it. And, unquestionably, one who can do a good action and omits it, cannot be regarded as wholly good. "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." (James iv. 17.)

We are, therefore, thrown back on the question, "Are there limitations to the Divine power, and if so, of what kind?" Mr Schiller, in the "Riddles of the Sphinx," maintains that there are, and that the idea of an Infinite God must be abandoned. Mr Stock maintains that there are, and that the limitations are to be found in "A God of Nature," who may be "feared or admired," but who is unworthy of worship or love; who is "not moral, nor yet immoral, but simply non-moral"!

If we assume, as all Christians do, at least theoretically, that the Infinity of God is an Infinity of Love and Wisdom, it is obvious that this Infinite must in its action be in several very real respects limited. Such a God cannot do anything that is unloving or unwise. He is selflimited. This is a limitation which has its counterpart in human experience. So far as a man's love and wisdom become exalted and stable, so far does moral evil become impossible to him. In either case, the Divine or the human, it is a limitation which is necessary for perfection.

But further, if we assume an immanent God, that is, a God who not only created the universe, but sustains it from moment to moment by an act as truly creative as that which first brought it into existence; and that He created and creates it not "out of nothing," as Lactantius said, but "out of Himself," as Swedenborg taught, we shall easily see that He must be limited by His own creative acts. Having created anything, God