II. "THE EVIL" CAUSED BY YIELDING TO THE 'EVIL ONE" THE RESULT OF SIN. "brought death into the "By sin came death." Temptation yielded to world and all our woe." Whatever might otherwise have been the lot of man, death as we know it, with all its circumstances of sickness, pain, infirmity, dread, anguish, and mourning, is the penalty included in the threatening, “In the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die." The very ground was cursed by triumphant temptation. Sorrow and anxiety were superadded to toil. We are not dependent on ancient records for proof that sin causes suffering. Physical laws of health are expressions of the Divine will; and ignorance of them, arising from carelessness and indolence, is culpable, and entails various and heavy penalties. How many of the plagues that have decimated crowded cities have been caused by the wilful blindness, the selfish apathy or greed which have neglected the first essentials of health-pure water, fresh air, and cleanliness! How many diseases are brought on by excessive indulgence of the appetites, how many accidents by recklessness! Where the sufferer himself is not blameworthy, how many pay the penalty of the faults of others; and in the case of inherited and constitutional disorders, how often in the physical world the solemn word uttered on Sinai is illustrated, and the sins of the father are visited on the children "to the third and fourth generation"! Who can estimate the amount of evil caused to others by sensual excess? Take the one case of intemperance. Think of the tens of thousands of drunkards who bring disgrace upon their families, ruin on their homes, brokenness of heart on parents, wives, children. By prodigality, pride, improvidence, indolence, multitudes are beggared; by avarice and hoarding, multitudes more are left to suffer or perish, not because there is not enough and to spare, but because the stewards have yielded to the temptation of regarding what was entrusted to them as their own. Think of all the sorrows caused by an ungoverned temper, angry words, cherished hatred and revenge; evils abiding and still extending like undulations in water, long after the first provocation. Think of the national disasters resulting from ambition whether of princes or peoples, the cruel wars of contending factions and rival dynasties, the woes of millions the fruit of the caprice or pride of one; the miseries entailed by cruel superstitions, blind prejudices, imperious customs, false principles of legislation, oppressive governments! If we clearly see so much of the undoubted and immediate consequences of sin, how enormous must be the totality of " the evil" which, whether we see the connection or not, has been caused by yielding to the temptation into which we pray not to be brought; by serving rather than resisting "the Evil One"! The word of God teaches us to regard all such sufferings as in themselves evil. The Stoicism which affects to treat them with indifference or to think them good, is contrary to human nature and the whole testimony of history. Men in all ages and countries have uttered one cry of distress because of abounding evil, and in various forms have united in one earnest prayer for deliverance. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Christianity encourages resignation by teaching us that God is above all the evil, that He is our Father, that His name is Love, that we are to hallow that name by trusting Him to comfort us in sorrow, to help us in difficulty, to overrule all things for our welfare; but it nowhere teaches us to regard evil itself as good. Our Father takes the weapons aimed to hurt us and turns them into instruments to help us; but that which forged and aimed them is evil nevertheless. He converts what the devil intended for poison into heavenly medicine; but it was originally distilled from sin, and but for sin would not be needed as medicine. Poverty may be overruled to increase our spiritual store and sickness, to promote our soul's health, but poverty and sickness are evil and not good. The light afflictions that "work out a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," are afflictions nevertheless; and though afterward they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness," yet "they are not joyous but grievous." They are mercifully utilized for the purifying of our faith, "which is much more precious than gold that perisheth,” because at present there is a "need be " for the process; but were there no inducements luring us to sin, there would be no necessity to be "in heaviness through manifold temptations." It was a mistaken heroism that induced some of the early Christians to provoke persecution, that they might win the martyr's crown; and it would be foolish sentimentalism to regret that we did not live in times when such distinction could be gained. Let us not envy the martyrs as though such sufferings are essential to victory ; "Nor think who to that bliss aspire Must win their way through blood and fire: Are fiercer than a foeman's dart." -KEBLE. But both the bleeding body and the wounded spirit, although giving occasion for the exercise of faith and the winning of reward, are in themselves evils which we may lawfully shun and deprecate as not of God. We might well despair if our religion required us to feel the evils in the world to be good. Christ did not so teach. He regarded them as the work of the devil whom He came to vanquish. He unloosed the cords with which He said Satan had bound the cripple (Luke xiii. 16). "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." He set Himself against them. He did not submit to them as a necessity, nor bid us sit down under them in indolent despair or fatalistic apathy. He combated the evil of hunger, and fed the multitude; the evil of disease, and cured the sick; the evil of infirmity, and healed the lame and the blind. He rebuked the winds and waves that threatened shipwreck; He cast out the demons that possessed the insane; He vanquished death and the grave. Throughout the Old Testament men were taught to expect deliverance from temporal evils as a Divine reward, and Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. He Himself suffered as our High Priest, but those sufferings were in themselves evil. The cup which He, as our Substitute for sin, drank in Gethsemane, was in itself not sweet but bitter, and as our Example He prayed to be spared the drinking of it. His murder was the greatest atrocity the world ever committed; and though overruled for man's salvation, was the culminating curse of the nation that perpetrated it, the evil of evils. Our Lord willingly suffered, but never regarded the sufferings themselves as good; and we therefore may be comforted in all our troubles by the permission to think of them as arising not from our Father's original design, but, although He will overrule them for our good, evils to which He is opposed and from which He will deliver. No! evil cannot be good; it arises from sin; it is not the normal condition of the world, but a frightful disorder which is to be corrected, against which we are to contend together with God, for universal deliverance from which we are to pray. In our present state of discipline we dare not ask to be kept from all suffering, which may be needed for our spiritual welfare, but that we may be delivered from |