David.
Yet they do save some very awkward words,
That limp to make apology for God,
And, while they justify Him, half confess
The adverse verdict of appearances.
I am ashamed that in this Christian age
The pious throng still hug the fallacy
That this dear world of ours was not ordained
The theater of evil; for no law
Declared of God from all eternity
Can live a moment save by lease of pain.
Law cannot live, e'en in God's inmost thought,
Save by the side of evil. What were law
But a weak jest without its penalty?
Never a law was born that did not fly
Forth from the bosom of Omnipotence
Matched, wing-and-wing, with evil and with good,
Avenger and rewarder—both of God.
Ruth.
I face your thought and give it audience;
But I cannot embrace it till it come
With some of truth's credentials in its hands—
The fruits of gracious ministries.
David.
Does he
Who, driven to labor by the threatening weeds,
And forced to give his acres light and air
And traps for dew and reservoirs for rain,
Till, in the smoky light of harvest time,
The ragged husks reveal the golden corn,
Ask truth's credentials of the weeds? Does he
Who prunes the orchard boughs, or tills the field,
Or fells the forests, or pursues their prey,
Until the gnarly muscles of his limbs
And the free blood that thrills in all his veins
Betray the health that toil alone secures,
Ask truth's credentials at the hand of toil?
Do you ask truth's credentials of the storm
Which, while we entertain communion here,
Makes better music for our huddling hearts
Than choirs of stars can sing in fairest nights?
Yet weeds are evils—evils toil and storm.
We may suspect the fair, smooth face of good;
But evil, that assails us undisguised,
Bears evermore God's warrant in its hands.
Israel.
I fear these silver sophistries of yours.
If my poor judgment gives them honest weight,
Far less than thirty will betray your Lord.
You call that evil which is good, and good
That which is evil. You apologize
For that which God must hate, and justify
The life and perpetuity of that
Which sets itself against His holiness,
And sends its discords through the universe.
David.
I sorrow if I shock you, for I seek
To comfort and inspire. I see around
A silent company of doubtful souls;
But I may challenge any one of them
To quote the meanest blessing of its life,
And prove that evil did not make the gift,
Or bear it from the giver to its hands.
The great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ—
That sank an Adam to reveal a God—
Had never come, but at the call of sin.
No risen Lord could eat the feast of love
Here on the earth, or yonder in the sky,
Had He not lain within the sepulcher.
'Tis not the lightly laden heart of man
That loves the best the hand that blesses all;
But that which, groaning with its weight of sin,
Meets with the mercy that forgiveth much.
God never fails in an experiment,
Nor tries experiment upon a race
But to educe its highest style of life,
And sublimate its issues. Thus to me
Evil is not a mystery, but a means
Selected from the infinite resource
To make the most of me.