RELIGION 



to have two gods, a good God and a bad God, or 

 else to give up all notions of a man-made personal 

 God, — the awful maker and ruler of the universe, 

 whom our fathers worshiped, and whose wrath we 

 seek to shun or propitiate by our good deeds, — 

 either this or else the identification of God with 

 universal Nature in all her multiform beneficent 

 and malevolent aspects. 



We seek to evade the issue by saying that God 

 cannot be the author of evil; man himself is the 

 author of evil; he is a free moral agent and can 

 choose the evil from the good. But who made man? 

 Who gave him the capacity to choose between good 

 and evil? By whose laws is the distinction made? 

 If he burn his neighbor's barn or covet his neigh- 

 bor's wife or steal his neighbor's goods, does he 

 create out of himself some new force or employ 

 some new agent? Does his will have anything to 

 do with his instincts, his temperament, his disposi- 

 tion, the color of his hair, the quality of his brain, 

 his stature, his weight, his mental or spiritual en- 

 dowment? Are not these things all of God, or from 

 sources outside the sphere of man's voluntary activ- 

 ities? Hedge or qualify as we will, man is a part of 

 Nature. His conscious opposition to Nature is also 

 a part of Nature. Whence comes his capacity to use 

 Nature, to improve upon her, to pit her forces against 

 each other, but from Nature herself? Can there be 

 anything in the universe that is not of the universe? 

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