Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/111

Letter 9 it could be preached as a war against physical as well as moral harm. Such a crusade would call out and enlist on the right side all the combative faculty in us; it would inspire in us a passionate allegiance towards Christ, as our Leader, desiring, asking, yes, and we may almost say, needing our help in a real conflict in which His honour as well as our happiness and highest interests are at stake; it would attract the co-operation of all faculties in the individual, of all classes in the country. In other words the theory would work; and so far as a religious theory works, so far have we evidence, present and, intelligible to all, that it contains truth.

I have recently heard views similar to mine controverted by an able theologian, who contended that, although they professed to be illogical, they went beyond the bounds even of the illogicality permissible in this subject. But the controverter's solution of the problem was this: "Evil is a part of God's intention. We have to fight, with God, against something which we recognise to be His work." Is not this a "hard saying"? Is it not harder than the saying of Christ, "An enemy hath done this"? I say nothing about its being illogical and absurd: but does it not raise up a new stumbling-block in the path of those who are striving to follow Christ?

It may be urged that the belief in Satan has been tested by the experience of centuries and has been found to be productive of superstition, insanity, and immorality; but these evils appear to me to have sprung, not from the belief in Satan, but from a superstitious, disorderly and materialistic form of Christianity, which has perverted Christ's doctrine about the Adversary into a recognition of a licensed Trafficker in Souls. The same materialistic and immoral tendency has perverted Christ's sacrifice into a bribe. But, just as we should not reject the spiritual doctrine of Christ's Atonement, so neither should we