Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/165

24 created, that it arose out of nothing, and that there is a God-Creator.

In reality we have no ground for imagining a God-Creator, nor any necessity. The Chinese and Indians have no such conception, and moreover a Creator, a Providence, is incompatible with the Christian God-Father, God-Spirit. The God who is Love, a particle of whom lives in me, constitutes my life; and the manifestation and avocation of this particle constitutes the meaning of my life.

God the Creator is indifferent, and allows suffering and evil. God the Spirit delivers from suffering and evil, and is always perfect welfare. A God-Creator there is not. There is myself acknowledging the universe through the faculties given me; and inwardly recognising my Father-God. He is the origin of my spiritual self — the external world is only my limit.

People often speak of the evil which God causes to men (for instance when they are overcome with grief at the loss of one they love), and while so saying and thinking, they imagine that they believe in God, and they pray to Him.

God does evil! And, if God does evil. He is not good, not Love ; and, if He is not good, then He does not exist.