The carnal mind is enmity with God, not subject to His laws; but the carnal mind is in competition with a _human_ nature, wherein are found emotions and sentiments that are far from being all sinful: sympathy, tenderness, benevolence, paternal and filial love, sex-love, and honesty. Again, we rarely find environment as an unmixed evil. Notwithstanding these hindrances the press almost daily has details and delineations of crimes so fearful and shocking that no trace of the human appears. Frequently we hear of a man, who has committed some dreadful outrage, personified as "beast," "fiend," "inhuman," etc. A young man in his teens, wishing to marry, but being under age and without sufficient means, decided that if he could dispose of his father, mother, brother, and sister--the farm and property would all be his, then, unmolested, could consummate his matrimonial plans. Whereupon, armed with an axe, at the midnight hour, he executes his "fiendish" plot. Another man, with a young and beautiful wife, and the father of two bright children, becomes infatuated with a young woman in a distant state; he woos and wins her affections; he returns home to arrange "some business matters" on the day preceding the wedding. This business matter was to dispose of his wife and children, which he did; on the following night, led to the marriage altar an innocent, unsuspecting girl. A young minister commits double murder, and on the following day enters his pulpit and preaches from the text: "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord." These cases are actual occurrences, mentioned for emphasis only, that the problem of evil may be studied from life. These examples prove conclusively that the problem goes deeper than human depravity or free agency; both are accessories--conditions, binding cords, as it were, but the jarring stroke comes from a mightier hand. The unregenerated heart has been called a "playground," and a "coaling station" for the headmaster of all villainies. It was more than wounded pride and vanity that propagated the scheme of Haman, whereby a whole nation was to be destroyed at a single stroke. Vengeance and hate are terrible passions, but only as they are fanned by the breath of an inhabitant of the Inferno can they go to such extremes. It was more than a desire to crush out heresy that could instigate a "St. Bartholomew's Day," then sing the Te Deum after the bloody deed was accomplished. We shall endeavour in the subsequent pages to throw a few rays of light, in obscure corners, on the problem of evil through its multiform phases and ramifications. II THE ORIGIN OF EVIL "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."--_Revelation xii. 9._