Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the
existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and
nowhere law. It is, under such circumstances, by far the most
easy of explanations, for it is in accordance with the
appearances of things: men adopted it just as naturally as they
adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the stars as
lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun
behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the
earth, or flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a
wicked world, or allows evil spirits to control thunder,
lightning, and storm, and to cause diseases of body and mind, or
opens the "windows of heaven" to let down "the waters that be
above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the earth.
A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and
perfection--moral, intellectual, and physical--from which men
for some fault fell, is perfectly in accordance with what we
should expect.
Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view
taking shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods,
and of a fall of man; both of which seemed necessary to explain
the existence of evil.
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