words, "Hate evil," would be a command from God to hate one of His own works and productions,—which is absurd. Thus, it is plain that God was not and could not have been the creator of evil, in the simple sense of those words. Yet, in one sense, He may be said to be the author of evil—namely, in the sense that He is the author of all power and all life. The force with which the murderer strikes the death-blow, is the gift of God, as is also the life and strength by which he exists and is enabled to stand on his feet: and were not such life and strength communicated from God every moment, man would not be able to do any deed either evil or good. And in this sense, God may be said to be the author of evil, because no evil could be done by man, without such power given from God. Yet God is not truly the author of the evil in the deed—He is only the source of the power: the evil consists in the wrong use of the power,—and for this, man alone is responsible. That power God gives and intends for good; but man, abusing his faculty of moral freedom (necessary to him as man), perverts the power and exercises it for evil: and thus man is, in fact, the author of evil.
The great truth intended to be conveyed in the above passage of Isaiah, is, that God is the one Creator of all things—that there is no distinct creator and source of evil, such as has been imagined in the Oriental theologies. Now, the value of this truth will be seen to be very great, if we consider the age in which it was announced. At the time this prophecy of Isaiah was written, and long after, a very different doctrine prevailed throughout the Eastern world. The famous system of Zoroaster, for instance, which
