156 THE LIGHT OS DAT 



hindrance and delays and disappointments how could 

 character be developed ? Indeed, what a blank, 

 meaningless world this would be if the principles of 

 good and evil were not continually wrestling with 

 each other in it. This is the verdict of the intel- 

 lect and the sesthetic faculties, and this is the fruit 

 of the forbidden tree. We are not to know this, 

 lest our struggle with evil be relaxed. There is no 

 doubt need enough of the preacher to warn us of 

 our dangers and to hold up before us the standard 

 of the absolute good. 



Still Christendom has not yet succeeded in making 

 its heaven attractive ; that is, attractive to the intellect 

 or to the faculties that find their fulfillment in this 

 world. We have, to imagine ourselves differently 

 constituted beings to see any joy in it ; not merely 

 beings of a higher spiritual capacity, but beings fun- 

 damentally different. The gods of the ancient world, 

 the pagan gods, were more or less attractive ; there 

 was much in them that the natural man responded to. 

 But the God of Christendom, the Jehovah of the 

 Jews, or the Almighty Despot of Calvinism, is not 

 attractive ; we do not spontaneously like him ; Jesus 

 as portrayed in the Gospels is attractive or lovable, 

 but as interpreted in the old theology he is not at- 

 tractive. But our good brother says, " You must be 

 changed." Certainly, but this is just what the intel- 

 lect in the natural man does not want to be. He 

 wants to look at and to understand and appreciate 

 these things from the same point of view from which 

 he regards and appreciates nature, life, the visible uni- 



