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Poets of all shades of thought have clothed the mystery of evil with their imagery.
The haunting cadences of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the tragic verses of
Browning's "Saul", the light and shade of Tennyson's "In Memoriam", the many lines
which the reader may recall from Shakespeare, indicate how deeply this problem enters
into the very stuff of life. The reader would probably not wish for pages of quotations on
this point, and we will therefore be content with two only before we pass on to the
positive teaching of the Scriptures. Here is one of the many aspects of the subject from
Shakespeare's pen:
"For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied.
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
(Romeo and Juliet 2: 111)."
The underlying thought here is that the "good" or "evil" resides not so much in the
thing itself, but in the use or abuse that is made of it--an aspect that we shall understand
more clearly when we have considered the teaching of Gen. 1:-3:
Our second quotation is from the writings of Sir Richard Burton, a master of Oriental
languages. He gives expression here to something of the Oriental attitude towards good
and evil.
"There is no good, there is no bad, these are the whims of mortal will:
What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill.
They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of time,
Each vice has worn a virtuous crown, all good been banned as sin and crime."
There is indeed a mixture here of good and evil, and it is certainly wrong to affirm that
"good" and "evil" are but the "whims of mortal will". The second line of the quotation:
"What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill."
we shall find to be the very essence of the temptation of our first parents, and an
indication of the real nature of "evil". This, however, we shall see more clearly when
studying the Scriptures concerned.
While Burton may not have meant what we mean by "dispensational truth", his third
line does express what we have all seen, namely, that what was "good" for Israel under
the law may be "evil" for a believer under grace. These things, if they do nothing else,
will, we trust, help us to appreciate the many-sidedness of this great theme, and in view
of its complexity and the extreme diversity of teaching and opinion with regard to it, any
contribution which we may offer towards the problem of the nature of evil, must be
offered with genuine humility, and based upon the facts that cannot be denied.