The origin of evil—­that is, its birth—­is a term true and clear:  original evil—­that is, giving it no birth but an antedate to all created things, suffering it to run parallel with God and good from all eternity—­this is a term false and misty.  The probability that good would be warped, and grow deteriorate; that wisdom would be dwindled down into less and less wisdom, or foolishness; and power degenerated more and more towards imbecility; must arise, directly a creature should spring out of the Creator; and that, let astronomy or geology name any date they will:  Adam is a definite date; perhaps also the first day’s—­or period’s—­work:  but the Beginning of Creation is undated.  It would then, under this impression of the necessary defalcation of the creature from the strict straight line, be rational to look for deviations:  it would be rational to presuppose that God—­just, and good, and pure, and wise—­should righteously be able to “charge his angels with folly,” should verily declare that “the heavens are not pure in his sight.”

Further; it would be a possible chance (which considerations soon succeeding would render even probable) that for a wise humiliation of the reasoning creature, and a just exaltation of the only Source of life and light and all things, one or more of such first created beings, or angels, should be suffered to fall, possibly from the vastest height, and at first by the slenderest beginnings, lower and lower into folly, impurity, and all other derelictions from the excellence of God.  The lines, once unparalleled, would, without a check, go further apart for all eternity; albeit, the primal deviation arose in time.  The aerolite, dropping slowly at first, increases in swiftness as it multiplies the fathoms of descent:  and if the abyss be really bottomless, how impossible a check or a return.

Some such terrible example would amount to a reasonable likelihood, if only for a lesson and a warning:  to all intelligent hierarchs, be not high-minded, but fear; to all responsible beings, keep righteousness and reverence, and tempt not God; to all the Virtues, Dominations, Obediences, and due Subordinations of unknown glorious worlds, a loud and living exhortation to exercise, and not to let grow dim their spiritual energies, in efforts after goodness, wisdom, and purity.  A creature state, to be happy, must be a progressive state:  the capability of progression argues lack, or a tendency from good:  and progression itself needs a spur, lest indolence relapse towards evil.

Additionally:  we must remember that a creature’s excellence before God is the reasonable service which he freely renders:  freedom, dangerous prerogative, involves choice:  and choice necessitates the possibility of error.  The command to a rational intelligence would be, do this, and live; do it not, and die:  if thou doest, it is well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast mounted by thine own heaven-blest exertions to a higher approach towards infinite perfection;