It is of no more
authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason or
Hercules, not one particle.
Let us now turn, then, to what we know, from the history of man and the
scientific study of the universe, to be something approaching the
reality of things. People have always been talking about the origin of
evil. It is not the origin of evil that we have to face or deal with or
explain at all. Let me ask you to consider for a moment the condition
of the world when man first appeared on this planet. Here among the
lower animals were what? All the vices and all the crimes that we can
conceive of, only they were not vices nor crimes at all. There were all
the external actions and all the internal feelings and passions; but
they were not vices, and they were not crimes. Why? Because there was
no moral sense which recognized anything better, no moral standard in
the light of which they might be judged.
Here, for example, in this lower world, were all hatreds, jealousies,
envies, cruelties, thefts, greeds, murders, every kind of action that
we speak of as evil in man. And yet I said there was no evil there, no
moral evil there, because there was no consciousness, no recognition,
of the distinction between the lower and the higher. This was a part of
the natural and intended order of the development of life, not an
accident, not an invasion from the outside, not a thwarting of the will
of God, not an interference with his purpose, all of this a part of the
working out of his purpose.
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