Another office which evil performs is this. The contention with it helps to bring out the difference between man and man. If any members of the family of my parable had possessed the germs of a strong character, they could hardly have brought fruit to perfection: the conditions of their innocent life tended to uniformity. But as soon as temptations came, latent differences would forthwith appear; the strong would grow stronger and the bad worse. Now there is need of strong men for human progress. They form the steps in the stairway by which the race mounts. If life were smooth and easy, men would, as it were, advance in line, and the stronger men would not so surely come in front of the rest. It is in times of trouble that men are most apt to recognise worth and capacity, and make much of them. So that the trials and difficulties of human life which come of evil, have this good effect among others, they help to pick out the men who are fitted to be the leaders of human movements and of human thought. It may have struck us as strange that Christ does not deal directly with these perplexing questions which trouble so many minds. We shall see, later on, that His not doing so is quite consistent with the uniform “tenour of His way.” But though our Lord does not lay down dogmas on these points, yet His own actions and expressions would, of course, accord with what He knew: if, then, when we hit upon some view of this “riddle of the painful earth,” which commends itself to our minds, we find that it clashes with what our Lord does or says, then we may throw it aside at once: and, on the other hand, if we arrive at a way of looking at the matter which seems to harmonise with what falls from Him; then, we may hope, not indeed that we have found a solution of the riddle, but that our hypothesis will not mislead us, so long as we own it to be an hypothesis, and nothing more. We may be supposed then to have arrived at this position. We assume the existence of a mighty Divine being, in whom all goodness dwells. We suppose that this world is an arena in which a struggle is to be carried on between good and evil by the agency of free intelligent beings; that by means of this struggle the better natures will be strengthened and developed, and come more and more into action; we suppose also that God whispers counsel and comfort on the side of good. Further than this we need not now go. As regards the presence of evil in the world, there are several sayings of our Lord which might be noted. I must confine myself to one or two of the most important. First let us consider the following passage from St John’s Gospel:(8) “And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”