EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



Satan. Their conception of God would not allow 

 them to saddle all the evil and misery of the world 

 upon him; they had to look for a scapegoat, and 

 they found him in the Devil. One is just as necessary 

 to a consistent cosmogony as the other. If we must 

 have an all-wise, all-merciful, all-powerful, all-loving 

 God — the author of all good and the contemner 

 of all evil — we must also have a god of the oppo- 

 site type, the great mischief-maker and enemy of 

 human happiness — the author of war, pestilence, 

 famine, disease, and of all that hinders and defeats 

 the reign of the perfect good. Without the concep- 

 tion of the Devil, we are forced to the conclusion, 

 either that God is not omnipotent, or that he is re- 

 sponsible for all the sin and suffering in the world. 

 If you make man this Devil, then who made 

 man? 



Wrestle with the problem as we may, we are im- 

 paled on one or the other horn of the dilemma. 

 Our traditional God is more cruel and more indiffer- 

 ent to human suffering than any tyrant that ever 

 gloated over human blood and agony, or else he is 

 fearfully limited in his power for good. 



With a Devil at our disposal to whom we can im- 

 pute the evils of life, the situation clears up, and 

 God emerges, shorn of his omnipotence, it is true, 

 but still the symbol of goodness and love. 



In our day the Devil has lost his prestige and is 

 much discredited. As a power in men's minds his 



39 



