Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

92 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
a bit of childish mythology, but a clew which was
seized upon by Aristotle
as the most promising of
all philosophical clews. We now inquire a little
further as to the nature of God's work and rest.
For there are many phases of the creation problem,
and skeptical inquirers, from Job to Jbnathan
Edwards, have insisted on knowing the relation of
creation to redemption. Did God create evil?
Could he make man without accepting the blame for
man's sin? Is man really free? How could God
make matter out of nothing? How can there, indeed,
be a first cause of things, when every cause
In turn requires explanation?
problems of theology.
Such are the ancient
They are not unimportant. They are not im-
They are not puzzles of the lecture room
They are the problems confronted
practical.
and the study.
and seriously reckoned with by Job, by Isaiah, by
Plato, by the Buddha—by every man possessed of
deep feeling.
Isaiah actually cuts the gordian knot
in one place when he makes Jehovah cry:
"I create
evil—/ am Jehovah!" And yet the Jehovah of
Isaiah hates evil as profoundly as It Is possible to
hate it.
But these very Important antitheses have never
been solved except to and by the will. They are
solved by doing. There Is such a thing as a calculus