“See the loving power at the heart of things, Isy!” said James to his wife: “out of evil He has brought good, the best good, and nothing but good!—a good ripened through my sin and selfishness and ambition, bringing upon you as well as me disgrace and suffering! The evil in me had to come out and show itself, before it could be cleared away! Some people nothing but an earthquake will rouse from their dead sleep: I was one of such. God in His mercy brought on the earthquake: it woke me and saved me from death. Ignorant creatures go about asking why God permits evil: _we_ know why! It may be He could with a word cause evil to cease—but would that be to create good? The word might make us good like oxen or harmless sheep, but would that be a goodness worthy of him who was made in the image of God? If a man ceased to be _capable_ of evil, he must cease to be a man! What would the goodness be that could not help being good—that had no choice in the matter, but must be such because it was so made? God chooses to be good, else he would not be God: man must choose to be good, else he cannot be the son of God! Herein we see the grand love of the Father of men—that he gives them a share, and that share as necessary as his own, in the making of themselves! Thus, and thus only, that is, by willing the good, can they become ‘partakers of the divine nature!’ Satan said, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil!’ God says, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, and choosing the good.’ For the sake of this, that we may come to choose the good, all the discipline of the world exists. God is teaching us to know good and evil in some real degree _as they are_, and not as _they seem to the incomplete_; so shall we learn to choose the good and refuse the evil. He would make his children see the two things, good and evil, in some measure as they are, and then say whether they will be good children or not. If they fail, and choose the evil, he will take yet harder measures with them. If at last it should prove possible for a created being to see good and evil as they are, and choose the evil, then, and only then, there would, I presume, be nothing left for God but to set his foot upon him and crush him, as we crush a noxious insect. But God is deeper in us than our own life; yea, God’s life is the very centre and creative cause of that life which we call _ours_; therefore is the Life in us stronger than the Death, in as much as the creating Good is stronger than the created Evil.” THE END