blood on man and beast, reducing all to abject terror; until arose some hero, who, by conquering the common enemy, has earned immortal fame, and lived a demigod or the locust-swarms will sweep through a land, like “the garden of Eden before them," and nought but a "desolate wilderness behind them,' and earn title to the symbol of destruction,' and a quasi-deification through the terror they inspire. No wonder that all these opposing influences, enemies to man's well-being, should be classed by him as evils.

2

But man has more than food and raiment to seek, more than his own life to protect and prolong. He has social and domestic ties: the family, the clan, the tribe and the race cling together for mutual support and protection, not only in face of natural obstacles, but also of other men, engaged, like themselves, in the restless struggle for existence. Amongst themselves, a standard of social and domestic good is formed, assented to, and enforced by the majority, and probably handed down from generation to generation as a rule of life, departure from which is evil. Each set of rules, so framed, grows and is modified from time to time to meet the needs of the community for which it was framed. Similar sets are framed for other communities: but

1 The Scythians were spoken of as a cloud of locusts.—Joel ii. 3. 2 "Abaddon," locusts, is given as a synonym of " Apollyon" and the angel of the bottomless pit.-Rev. ix. 11.

these all by degrees diverge in meeting the varied wants and circumstances of each, until in time they become so opposite, that what is good according to one standard, may be downright evil according to another. Hence the pride of race, and the prejudice of caste artificial standards of good, cause artificial evil; as society becomes more complex, the former becomes more stringent and the latter more heinous and that which in all good faith was instituted for a good purpose, becomes the vehicle of evil; that which was intended for life brings death. A law is made to obviate an evil, the law is glossed and overladen with tradition, and the original good of the law is far outweighed by the evil it has brought about. Such are the laws of race and caste: the Brahman who dare not give a drink of water to the dying Pariah, lest he should become defiled, and be put back in the scale of rising life: the Hebrews enjoined to put away their Gentile wives and children, on pain of excommunication : the white American, who to this day, while shedding his life-blood in the cause of negro emancipation, and preaching the universal brotherhood of man, dreads the most distant family alliance with a man of colour, for fear of social degradation.

1 "The commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death."-Rom. vii. 10.

2

One hundred and thirteen wives, many with families, are recorded as put away by command.-See Ezra x. and Neh. xiii. 25.

All these are subjected to social and domestic laws, once made no doubt for good, but which have long been producing more evils than they remedied.

As families and races became blended into national communities, and the relations between man and man became more complex still, fresh standards had to be created of national and political good. In forming such standards, the majority of power in the State enforced its views on the minority. It was possible that the rule for the whole family might not coincide with the views of some individuals of it, and that the rule for the clan or tribe might involve a still greater mass of difference of opinion: but when a code of laws had to be framed for a whole nation, it is certain that individual opinions would be more divided still. A man might honestly follow the dictates of his conscience, and thus conform to his individual standard of good; he might fulfil all his social and domestic duties, and thus live up to the standard of the family and race; and still be banned as a criminal, exiled as an outlaw, or shot down as a traitor, for disobedience to his nation's laws, and for nonconformity to the standard of good, artificially created for the general welfare and safety of the nation It is not difficult to understand that it may be quite right for a man to fight in the army of the nation to which he belongs, and that it should be a crime punishable with death for him to pass over to the

opposing army, and fight with them against his own countrymen; but this crime could only exist for political reasons, and might be the result of a mere accidental circumstance:-whether the man were born on this or that side of a little stream:-the Alsatian who fought against France in 1870, was a traitor to his country; the inhabitant of Alsace who should now fight with France against Germany, would be as much a traitor as the other: although perhaps, in each case, a true and blameless man in every other relation of life.

There is however one field, which has been more fruitful than all others put together, in the creation of evil, by the erection of standards of good; and that is the wide, far-stretching field of Theology and Superstition. In the primitive states of society of every epoch, in which men have been banded together in only small communities, where they have found themselves face to face with such physical difficulties, that their main business has been to sustain life, without any attempt to refine existence by culture, a Theology can hardly be said to exist at all; and the religious sentiment is satisfied by a superstitious dread of the unseen beings who are believed to exercise a baneful influence over Nature, and an unreasoning faith in those who profess a power to influence those beings. In such a stage of society, a sense of moral right and wrong in relation to the

unseen world, is not developed : it is purely a question of power: the deity is to be feared and propitiated, because he is more powerful than I am, and will favour me more than my neighbour or my enemy, if I am more assiduous than he is. Where there is, by chance, a beneficent deity, in the pantheon of a nation, it by no means follows that he is as powerful as the malevolent one: and thus it happens that as amongst these men, so with their gods, might is right : Good is what each wishes to have and enjoy, and Evil everything that bars the way and prevents its attainment.

This is and has been the basis of the religion, or rather superstition, of the great mass of the savage population of the world, which has no written history, and next to no traditions, and whose religion, like its language, is as unstable as shifting sands ;-after a few years so changed as to be hardly recognizable. A large proportion of the human race must always have been in this condition, all too uncertain to fix with definite ideas of good or evil.

Other communities which have emerged from the savage state, and entered that of barbarism, have generally had some fixed notions as to good and evil, beyond the mere dictates of the individual fancy. They have some runic poetry, or national songs; some ritual, or incantation; something formulated and handed down from generation to