and seducing men, in the world; there may easily be unseen devils. There
is hell on earth, and I don't doubt but that there's the awfulest,
longest depth of the same kind of hell beyond. There's heaven on earth,
and all the love and pain of love we have tell us there's heaven beyond,
unspeakable and eternal; but, sir, when you come to limit God--to say,
here the responsibility of the faithful God stops, here man's
self-destruction begins--I can't believe that. He must be responsible,
not only for starting us with freedom, but responsible for the use we
make of it and for all the consequence. When you say of the infinite God
that hell and the devils are something outside of Him--I can't think
that. The devils must live and move and have their being in Him. When
you say the holy God ever said to spirit He had created, 'Depart from
Me' (except in a parable meaning that as long as a spirit chose evil it
would not be conscious of God's nearness), I tell you, sir, by all He
has taught me out of the Bible you gave me, I don't believe it. We've
studied the Bible so much now that we know that holiness is just
love--the sort of love that holds holy hatred and every other good
feeling within itself. We know that love can't fail and cast out the
thing it loves. When we know a law, we know the way it must work. If the
Bible seems to say the big law it teaches doesn't work out true, it must
be like what is said of the six days of creation, something that came as
near as it could to what people would understand, but that needs a new
explanation."

The young preacher had withdrawn his encircling arm. He sat looking very
stern and sad.

"When you begin to doubt God's word, you will soon doubt that He is, and
that He is the rewarder of them that seek Him."