And could anything be more pessimistic than "Resist not evil?" If not the evil, what then shall man resist? Nothing? But he will fall into decay unless he resists the forces that menace his well being. And why was man made a moral agent or created in the "divine" image if he is to let the powers of darkness have their way, instead of girding himself for battle against them? But the decline of man is desired because that is the only way the world may come to an end, and God and his heaven ushered in. Such is the philosophy of Jesus. If God does not wish us to "resist evil," pray what is the devil's pleasure? We have been told that the devil always wants us to do the things which God has forbidden. Does he, then, want us to resist evil? Not to resist the agencies of evil, is not to resist the devil, if there is such a being; and not to resist the devil is to surrender to him, which is just what he would want us to do. The Sermon on the Mount, if complied with, would lead the world to an _impasse_. We must not resist the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, and, according to the same teacher, we must not resist evil either. But unless the Holy Spirit and evil are the same, how can we be as hospitable or as passive toward the one as toward the other? We must stand still and let God work in us his purposes, says the bible, and, according to the same book, we are to be equally passive to the operations of the Evil One. Is such advice intelligible? Could anything be more confusing and bewildering to the moral sense than so contradictory a commandment? If the gospel writers had put in Jesus' mouth the words, "I am the darkness of the world," they would not have been very far wrong. Why resist not evil? If evil is evil, and if we have power to resist it, why may we not do so? What is morality but the exercise of the power of resistance against evil? The idea that by resisting evil we become evil ourselves, as Tolstoi maintains, is as much a conundrum as the text itself. Did not Jesus resist the devil in the wilderness? Did he not drive the evil spirits out of his patients? Did he not denounce the scribes and Pharisees who would not accept his Messiaship? And did he not scourge the money-changers out of the temple court, and overturn their tables by sheer physical force? Why did he resist evil himself? And did such resistance degrade him?