II. At the Back of the Beginnings. Frontiers of CHRISTIANITY looks for a further explanation to a revelation to come. Science anticipates a development of knowledge, but never expects to escape from the undetermined. She places man, a mere speck in the infinity of space, between an immeasurable past and an immeasurable future. She declines to search for an intelligible Cause in all causation, and has no satisfactory interpretation of the conflict between Good and Evil. But we must not regard the Unknowable as unworthy of curiosity or exploration. Sea and land are not constant quantities, but are continually in process of adjustment. There are ever extending peninsulas of enquiry into that vast ocean. The things that we formerly assumed to be certainties may have to be surrendered to the Unknowable, and fresh acquisitions of knowledge rise like dim shapes out of the night to grow into greater distinctness. Existing impressions of time and space prevent our comprehension of infinitude and eternity, but this incapacity does not preclude our adventurous quest into the Unknown. If we assume the appearance of a creative Being of perfect holiness and goodness-God blessed for evermore we must also assume that He emerged from that antecedent totality in which exist the beginnings of all life. In entering time and space as a personal existence He becomes finite and limited. Such an evolution of God involves dissociation from all imperfection, a separation from anything which, under the primal conditions of the Unknowable, may have shared existence with evil. Out of the Void. Out of the void appears this vast Personality. How He came we know not. With what sublimity of struggle He separated Himself from the antecedents, one or many, we have no record, and cannot expect to have. It may be that after the lightnings, the thunderings and the trumpet sounds, which typified the struggle, it was a still small voice that proclaimed the advent of the Maker of our universe. He came to work within the broad arena of His own future cosmos; but although He Himself was perfect in goodness and had cast back the assaults of Evil, He could not secure the boundaries of His own sphere of action from the intrusion of other influences out of the Unknowable. The material upon which He works is part of that primal mass, the embryo of all energy, pliant to His dominant will and idea, but bound by inherent laws characteristic of it. The Secret of Everlasting motion is the last Eternal motion. word of physical science. Break up matter into its constituent atoms, and within each atom there is a still smaller unit, a whirling electron. Change, progression, retrogression, the dance of life and of death proceed. There is no rest, no halting place, either in the clash of atoms or in the march of worlds. Even when life leaves an individual organism it is immediately crowded with the busy housebreakers, who hack to pieces the waste material in order that it may be worked up elsewhere. elsewhere. Whence comes this perpetual motion? Is that activity due to a continual struggle between the forces of cosmos and of chaos? For planets flung from the parent sun continue to rotate, and that peace which passeth all understanding is not an arrest of power but a co-ordination of its forces. So that we dare not even attribute immobility to God, as if it were a characteristic of Goodness. For Goodness tends to ordered production of peace through a regular distribution of motion. Harmony is evoked to replace clashing wills and disorderly efforts. A bird is said to be sleeping on the air when the vibrations of its wings are too minute to be detected. The motion of a child's spinning-top is so rapid as not to be noticed by the eye when the hum dies into silence. Travellers in a balloon may imagine that they are stationary, when a piece of paper would show them that they are either rapidly ascending or descending. The Peace of God. God dwells at peace with Himself and with His universe because He foresees His final victory in the midst of present conflict. Like His Son, He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. Like His Son, He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, Himself the Captain of our salvation, made perfect through His own suffering. If He Himself has ascended to the great heights of His own Being, through His divine experience, He can have compassion on the ignorant and on those who are out of the way. For if Evil has accompanied Him into this world it must have been always the enemy of a supreme development of Goodness, whether in the antecedent experience of God Himself or in the cosmos He was bringing into being. Better than anyone He must know the cost of righteousness. Better than anyone He must understand the pain and struggle of His creatures. For He has already engaged in the conflict and shared in the pain. It is only reasonable to suppose that He has brought into being a host of intelligences to co-operate with Him in the work of His worlds. So that at every new development the "morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Every suggestion of common sense and of analogy compels us to recognise our own subordination and comparative insignificance in the scheme of Nature. Far up in the scale of being, there must certainly be intelligences possessing a range of life yet denied to us. On the great cosmic staircase there are ever messengers ascending or descending. There is nothing incredible in supposing that some of these intelligent beings, seduced from their proper allegiance, have become rebels to the supreme Will. Here they are cold and indifferent; there, openly defiant. The Entrance of Why then has He not destroyed the creatures called into existence by His own power and lending themselves to the common foe ? As in the child's question, Why Evil. does not God kill the devil? But if there be original and persistent Evil abroad in the universe, to destroy it in one place would not prevent its manifestations in others. Evil known and localised is easier to treat than elusive and ranging at large. And so we hear of restraints, of chains and of prisons, of shutting up in hells. The Nature of Evil. It is necessary to define the character of Evil before we can discuss the discovery of its source. Is it true that Evil is only the shadow of Goodness, a vacuum created by the absence of moral activity, a condition incident to development ? Is it an interruption of sunlight, or a projection of darkness? If it be implied in all progress, then we must argue that a possible fall attaches to every daring climb. Or can we pack it away into a formula, and claim that Evil is simply selfishness, the desire of the individual to benefit himself at the expense of the community? There is a certain truth in this theory. The beginnings of Evil, gray and indistinct before they deepen into blackness, favour it. In warfare an advancing army may find that its road is barred by an enemy which has thrown itself along the line of progression. But no general will be deceived by such obstructive tactics. He is well aware that if his own advance be discontinued his opponent will follow the retiring forces, occupying the ground surrendered, and pushing home a counter attack. Incidentally, we admit Evil to be a denial of Goodness; but human experience knows full well that it is much more than a mere negation. There are aspects in which |