Providence, indeed, belongs also to certain pagan
philosophers, who observed the great purposes of nature which the single
creature and the species are both to serve. The Stoics in particular made
a study of teleology, the system of purposive ends in nature. Philo
adopted much from them in his treatise on Providence. Later the popular
philosophic group among the Mohammedans, the so-called "Brothers of
Purity," based their doctrines of God and His relation to the world on a
teleological view of nature. In fact, the Jewish philosopher and moralist
Bahya ben Pakudah has embodied many of their ideas in his "Duties of the
Heart."(520)

Jewish folklore--preserved in rabbinic literature--has also attempted a
popular explanation of the obscure ways of Providence, in strange events
of nature as well as the great enigmas of human destiny. Thus the flight
of David from Saul affords the lesson of the good purpose which may be
served by so insignificant a thing as a spider, or by so dreadful a state
as insanity.(521) Vast numbers of the Jewish legends and fables deal with
adversities which are turned into ultimate good by the working of an
all-wise Providence.(522)

Chapter XXIX. God and the Existence of Evil

1. A leading objection to the belief in divine Providence is the existence
in this world of physical and moral evil. All living creatures are exposed
to the influence of evil, according to their physical or moral
constitutions and the peculiar conditions of their existence. Heathenism
accounts for the powers of darkness, pain and death by assuming the
existence of forces hostile to the heavenly powers of light and life, or
of a primitive principle of evil, the counterpart of the divine beings.
But to those who believe in an almighty and all-benign Creator and Ruler
of the universe, the question remains: Why do life and the love of life
encounter so many hindrances? Why does God's world contain so much pain
and bitterness, so much passion and sin? Should not Providence have
averted such things? The answer of Judaism has already been stated here,
but we need further elaboration of the theme that there is no evil before
God, since a good purpose is served even by that which appears bad. In the
life of the human body pleasure and pain, the impetus to life and its
restraint and inhibition form a necessary contrast, making for health; so,
in the moral order of the universe, each being who battles with evil
receives new stre