EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



fathers struggled over the problem of the ways of 

 God to man. As soon as they put themselves in his 

 place, they felt the need of some grounds upon which 

 to justify his dealings with the beings He had cre- 

 ated. But they searched, and their descendants still 

 search, in vain. If we see God as a man, no matter 

 how mighty, He is still guilty of what few finite men 

 would be guilty. What men would be guilty of per- 

 mitting the sin and misery that fill the world at this, 

 or any other, time? 



The Nature God neither sends calamities nor 

 wills them — they are an inevitable part of the 

 growth and development of things; they are eddies 

 in the stream of forces. What we call evil is evil only 

 from our point of view; evil is a human word and 

 not the word of the Infinite. If the world were some- 

 thing made by a Maker external to it, then it were 

 pertinent to ask, Why not make it a better world? 

 Why not leave out pain and sin and all other phases 

 of evil? But the world is not something made, and it 

 did not have a Maker, as we use those words. The 

 universe is, and always has been, "from everlasting 

 to everlasting," and man is a part of it, and his life 

 is subject to the same vicissitudes as the rest of cre- 

 ation. Man has come into this sense of right and 

 wrong, of justice and mercy, of truth and false- 

 hood, of good and evil, as necessary conditions of 

 his development, but those things are not abso- 

 lute; they pertain to him alone. The physical forces 



47 



