SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THE PROBLEM OF SIN. ‘•Behold, the man has become aa one of us, to know good and evil.” —Gen. 111. 22. (By Rev. A. H. Collins. New Plymouth.) Great as the problem of Providence is, and great as the problem of pain ie, there is a greater, the problem of sin. The question of the origin of evil brings us face to face with the darkest mystery that clouds human existence. Could we give complete account of it, we should have reached the superhuman state suggested by the Tempter: “Ye shall gods knowing good and evil.” No such complete solution of the problem is possible to us, and it is wise to confess it in deep humility. This does not mean that we should recoil from it in hopeless bewilderment, with no attempt to learn what others have thought and said on the subject, for even though we cannot solve it the effort is not fruitless. EVIL DEFINED. Perhaps the starting point is this: What is evil ? and the simplest answer is to sav that evil is the negation of good. tn the abstract, evil is want of conformity to the will of the All-Wise, the All-Good, the AU-Holy. AS Augustine says: “Nothing in Nature is in itself evil, and the name of evil means tne falling short of what is good.” Or to quote a greater authority than Augustine: "Sin is the transgression of law." Now. evil may be physical or moral. Physical evil means that which is opposed to good, in the sense of happiness—that is pain, suffering, disease, and death. Moral evil means that which is opposed to good in the - sense of uprightness. virtue and goodness. In the case of physical evil, if we cannot find a complete solution, we can find some mitigating circumstances, as I tried to show last week. The suffering and death caused by a colliery accident, or a shipping disaster, may in the end lead to the saving of life.

It is better that the human race should learn by experience rather than that the Creator should pet and spoil man by interfering at every turn to save him from the consequences of rashness and folly. But it is of moral evil I am thinking just now. What can we say of that dark problem? Three solutions have been attempted—that of the Dualists, that of the Pantheists, and that of the Christian; and I can give a mere sketch of the first and second.

The teaching of Dualism is that there are two equally Eternal Powers, good and evil, light and darkness. God and the Devil. This is the most ancient and common theory, and it is, to a.l intents and purposes, held by many Christian people. According to this idea, good and evil are absolutely distinct powers, each contending for the mastery of the world. The teaching of Parseeism is that the universe is the creation of these rival powers; Hormuz the Lord of Light, and Ahirman the Lord of Darkness. This is the philosophy of China and ancient Greece. Matter is the eternal principle of evil, and is in antagonism with mind, reason, God. This, with some modifications, made up “he teaching of the Gnostics, which produced so great a crop of curious heresies in the early Church, the traces of which are seen in the New Testament Letters. MAN’S POWER TO CHOOSE. Paniheism teaches that good and evil ore simply different manifestations of God. In its grossest form, this is the religion of Hindooism, but the idea prevails in the refined speculations of modem writers in England and Germany. To state it is to condemn it, for if good and evil are manifestations of God, why condemn the one and commend the other? The teaching obliterates the distinction between right and wrong, the saint and the sinner are alike doing the will of the Almighty! The Christian position is this: God is sole Ruler of the universe. Sin is abhorrent to Him. Sin is the fruit of man’s transgression. Man, in order to be man, must be intelligent and free. There can be no such thing as virtue without the power to choose, for without the power of choice man would be simply a machine; but the power to choose means the power to choose right or wrong, and this opens the order to sin. We cannot conceive of beings capable of the highest good, who are not at the same time capable of abusing their freedom and casting their crowns in the dust God had to take that risk. Either th? Creator must let it be possible for such evil as floods the world to come in. or He must refrain from making such a creature as man.

But if, because of possible evil, God had refrained from creating man, evil would have gained an eternal victory! This. then, is the Christian conception. God is not the author of sin. Sin is the fruit of man’s wrong choice. But the evil that exists will finally be overthrown. and out of the present disorder, the Redeeming God will evolve a higher good for the human race, and in the consumation of all things it will be seen that the presence of moral evil is not inconsistent with the noblest purposes of a holy God. THE GENESIS STORY. And now, in the light of this, let us turn to this Genesis story, and see how far it agrees with the Christian interpretation, only take care how you read the story. Is it history, or poetry, or allegory? If you strip it of poetry, and read it as cold and passionless prose, you will make it look very unscientific and even absurd. If you interpret it in a literal and wooden way. a way no one would read a Greek tragedy, or an English idyll, you can make the chapters teach doctrine at variance with modern science and hidpously repulsive to our moral sense. When I am told that, because of Adam's transgression, all mankind, and even babes unborn, are exposed to the pitiless wrath of God. my mind and heart revolt and demand to know if this is the doctrine of God or the doctrine of devils. The fact is, as Dr. Forsythe said, we 1 need to be delivered from man’s Bible, to God’s. Book, or as Browning has it:

“Correct the portrait by the living face, Man's God by God's God in the mind of man.”

Instead of idolising the Bible we should reverence it. The greatest fo?< of the Bible are not those who would reduce “the fall’’ to a fable and “the flood” to a myth, but those who would reduce the whole Bible to a dumb idol which must be carried, or make of the piercing words a theologian’s lathen sword. We must distinguish between facts and opinions. We must beware of the Pope that lives in all men’s hearts. We must not claim infallibility for our theory, which only belongs to God’s

truth. How shall we real this Genesis story? Is it literal? Was there a garden walled around? Was there actually a tree whose fruit held the secret of immortality? Did a snake walk erectto Eve, as Matthew Henry says, and talk to her in Hebrew? Did our simple mother stretch out her hand and pluck an apple? Did the Almighty take the guilty pair to the orchard gate and drive them out ?

FACTS ENCASED IN ALLEGORY. I am almost ashamed to put such questions, but for the fact that people will persist in reading the Bible in this unimaginative way. Scoffers do the same thing, and then make merry over the supposed “mistakes of Moses.” There was no fruit garden. The serpent lias never walked, but always crawled. Thorns and death were in the world before man appeared on the earth. Truth to tell, we have been reading this story through John Milton’s spectacles. Our notions have been derived from “Paradise Lost,” and Milton's Satan is rather grandiose and stagey, with little in the Bible to justify it. Milton is fine as poetry, but it is poor philosophy, and worse theology, and he is not to blame for the misuse made of his poetic effort. We are not shut up to reading this Genesis story as literally true or of rejecting it altogether. It is more true than any prose could make it. Truth may be dramatised as in the Book of Job and the Book of Revelation. Truth may be expressed in poetic form, as in the Psalms and the Song of Solomon. When I read that “the fields clapped their hands.” that “the mountains skipped like rams.” and that the trees by the river of life bore twelve manner of fruits, and "the leaves were for the healing of the nations.” I do not* chill that into prose. I do not suppose rhe meadows literally applauded, that the mountains were frisky, and the leaves were used as court plaster! In the same way it is no disloyalty to the Holy Book to read this Eden story as a tremendous fact encased in allegory, as truth cast in dramatic form. The garden, the forbidden fruit, the serpent, “that running brook of horror,” as Ruskin calls it, are dramatic representations of trenmendous truth; truth confirmed by closest observation and by modern science. What is the essential truth of the story ? SIN NEVER STANDS ALONE. First of all this, that something has disturbed man’s relation with his Maker. Man is like a broken and desecrated temple, with lingering traces of a departed glory. Man shuns his Maker and hates his brother- There must be some reason. Why are we burdened with this sense of alienation and guilt? How did the fine gold become dim ? Who plucked the crown from our brow ? What is it that has sown discord between man and man? Whence come wars and hate and selfishness? Why don’t we love and trust and serve, as we should, but are mean and proud and unforgiving? The Book calls it “sin.” Do you know a better word? But sin never stands alone. Other lives share in the calamity. “The solidarity of the race” is a fact. The Genesis story anticipates the truth of heredity. Man transmits to his offspring physical likeness, mental peculiarities, and moral tendencies.’ whether good or bad. Like produces like. What is all this but the Bible story stated in terms of modern science? We are all involved in the consequences of others’ sin. “T’was but a little drop of sin We saw this morning enter in, And lo! at eventide the world was drowned.” So little can we calculate or control the consequences of our personal acts. Further, the conscience of the world lends its weight to this third fact, that every transgression leads to expulsion from some Eden, for 'Eden is a state and not a place. Wherever the spirit of man dwells in harmony with his Maker, that is Edeti. The first man, Adam, dwelt in the Eden of Innocence, and the first act of transgression drove him out of that The dews of God were brushed from his soul. Isn’t that true to experience? Youth is an Eden, purity is an Eden, honour is an Eden, and for all of us these are lost Edens. INNOCENCE AND VIRTUE. Finally, and here I ask you to mark what I say, innocence is one thing and virtue is another and a greater thing. For innocence is negative and virtue is positive. A child a span long is innocent but that child is not virtuous. Youth is not innocent, but it may be virtuous. Innocence is the absence of temptation and the absence of sin. Virtue is the presence, and conquest, of temptation and sin. Adam could be innocent until the Tempter came, but he could not be- virtuous without the presence of temptation and the power to yield to it, but freedom means freedom and power to choose right or wrong. To use a figure, innocence is a clean, new flag on which has never passed a whiff of gunpowder or a stain of blood. Virtue is the same flag, carried into life’s battle, round which the battle has raged and bursting shell has hurtled and screamed, torn,* stained, almost lost, yet brought back in safety, to be hung up in the sanctuary of life, the sign of conflict, but the proof of victory. Adam’s

“fall” was in one sense a “fall up,” as Beecher put it. He fell from innocence, but in so doing a nobler state opened to him, a state of virtue, which is the presence of right and wrong, with freedom to choose either. Had sin never entered the world there might have been a race of innocents, but with sin present and possible, yet met and mastered. Goo is “bringing many sons to glory”. The problem of sin is the problem of freedom; it means risk, struggle, possible loss, but it means manhood, and it moans Redemption. Eden is not the final chapter; there is Gethsemane and the Paradise of the saved. The dark mystery of sin is eolipsed by the great mystery of Redemption. “Praise- is the holiest in the height And in the depth be praise. In all His works most wonderful Mast sure in all His ways. 0 wisest love! that flesh and blood Whieh did in Adam fail Should strive afresh against the foe, Should strive and should prevail.” “Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.”