When he expresses himself in this way, my sympathies go very far with the man of science, if only he could remember that he is protesting, not against Christ’s teaching about God, but against some other quite different theory. Though God is called “Almighty” in the New Testament, we must remember that it is always assumed that there is an opposing Evil, an Adversary or Satan, who will ultimately be subdued but is meantime working against the will of God. The origin of this Evil the followers of Christ do not profess to understand but we believe that it was not originated by God and that it is not obedient to Him. We cannot therefore, strictly speaking, say that God is the Almighty ruler of “the Universe _as it is_.” God is King _de jure_, but not at present _de facto_ (metaphors again! but metaphors expressive of distinct realities). His kingdom is “to come:” He will be hereafter recognized as Almighty; He cannot be so recognized at present.
I know very well that I can give no logical or consistent account of this mysterious resistance to the Supreme God. But I am led to recognize it, first, by the facts of the visible world; secondly, by the plain teaching of Christ Himself. Surely the authority of Christ must count for something with Christians in their theorizing about the origin of evil. Would not even an agnostic admit that as, in poetry, I should be right in following the lead of a poet, so in matters of spiritual belief (if I am to have any spiritual belief at all) I am right in deferring to Christ? It is a marvel to me how some Christians who find the recognition of miracles inextricably involved in the life and even in the teaching of Christ, nevertheless fail to see, or at all events are most unwilling to confess, that the recognition of an evil one, or Satan, is an axiom that underlies all His doctrine. In the view of Jesus, it is Satan that causes some forms of disease and insanity; Satan is the author of temptation, the destroyer of the good seed, the sower of tares, the “evil one”—so at least the text of the Revisers tells us—from whom we must daily pray to be delivered. The same belief pervades the writings of St. Paul. Yet if you preach nowadays this plain teaching of our Lord, the heterodox shrug their shoulders and cry “Antediluvian!” while the orthodox think to dispose of the whole matter in a phrase, “Flat Manichæism!” But to the heterodox I might reply that Stuart Mill (no very antiquated or credulous philosopher) deliberately stated that it was more easy to believe in the existence of an Evil as well as a Good, than in the existence of one good and all-powerful God; and the orthodox must, upon reflection, admit that in this doctrine about Satan Christ’s own teaching is faithfully followed.