But to take the other horn of the dilemma, that God _created_ the devil first an angel in heaven, who afterwards led a rebellion in heaven and had to be cast out, and that hell was then created as a place in which to put him, but where it proved afterwards that he could not be kept, but got out and robbed God of the noblest product of his creative genius at the very threshold of creation, corrupting the very fountain of human life itself, whereby he became the ultimate possessor of nine-tenths of all the race forever, is only to make the matter still worse than before. He certainly was not Omniscient, and therefore able to foreknow what this newly created angel would ultimately do, else He would not have made him; nor was He Omnipotent, else He would have prevented it. But if it still be insisted--and unfortunately it is by far the greater part of Christianity--that God is, nevertheless and notwithstanding, Infinite, Omniscient and Omnipotent, and either deliberately planned or supinely sat by and permitted these things to take place, _then He is not_ a God of goodness, love, justice, truth, mercy and benevolence, but an unthinkable monster, more diabolical and cruel than the wildest savage ever known to the earth, or the most ferocious beast of prey in the jungle. I might naturally fear such a God, but never love or respect, but eternally hate him. I have already given my views of the story of Eden and the fall of man; that man never fell, but is still incomplete, but progressing onward and upward forever; that he was never, on the general average, higher or better than now; and as the years and ages go on he will continue thus to grow better and nobler, making his own heaven as he goes along, and destroying his own hell by learning his lessons of suffering for wrong doing, and leaving it behind him. No, God did not make man in his own image, implant in his very nature that eternal aspiration upward that is possessed by every normal human being, and then make a devil to tempt and ruin him, and a hell in which to eternally torment him. I quote again from Omar Khayyam: "Oh, Thou who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin. ... "Ne'er a peevish boy Would break the bowl from which he drank in joy; And he that with his hand the vessel made Will not in after wrath destroy." _REDEMPTION AND ATONEMENT_