or perish.  The truth is the precise opposite.  The divine voice says to every man:  “Hampered and sore hindered as you are, you are yet My dearly beloved son and child; only turn to Me, only open your heart to Me, only struggle, however faintly, to be what you can desire to be, and I will guide and lead you to Myself; all that is needed is that your heart should be on My side in the battle.  Even your sins matter little, provided that you can say sincerely, ’If it were mine to choose and ordain, I would never willingly do evil again.’  I know, better even than you yourself know, your difficulties, your temptations, your weaknesses; the sorrow they bring upon you is no dreary and vindictive punishment, it is the loving correction of My hand, and will bring you into peace yet, if only you will trust Me, and not despair.”

The world is full of dreadful things, pains and sorrow and miseries, but the worst of all are the dreary wretchednesses of our own devising.  The old detestable doctrine of Hell, the idea that the stubborn and perverse spirit can defy God, and make its black choice, is simply an attempt to glorify the strength of the human spirit and to belittle the Love of God.  It denies the truth that God, if He chose, could show the darkest soul the beauty of holiness in so constraining a way that the frail nature must yield to the appeal.  To deny this, is to deny the omnipotence of the Creator.  No man would deliberately reject peace and joy, if he could see how to find them, in favour of feverish evil and ceaseless suffering.  If we believe that God is perfect love, it is inconceivable that He should make a creature capable of defying His utmost tenderness, unless He had said to Himself, “I will make a poor wretch who shall defy Me, and he shall suffer endlessly and mercilessly in consequence.”  The truth is that God’s Omnipotence is limited by His Omnipotence; He could not, for instance, abolish Himself, nor create a power that should be greater than He.  But if He indeed can give to evil such vitality that it can defy Him for ever, then He is creating a power that is stronger than Himself.

While the mystery of evil is unexplained, we must all be content to know that we do not know; for the thing is insoluble by human thought.  If God be all-pervading, all-in-all, it is impossible to conceive anything coming into being alien to Himself, within Himself.  If He created spirits able to choose evil, He must have created the evil for them to choose, for a man could not choose what did not exist; if man can defy God, God must have given him the thought of defiance, for no thought can enter the mind of man not permitted by God.