But Good only can create; and if Evil were ever so much the stronger, the duty of men would remain the same—to hold by the Living one, and defy power to its worse—like Prometheus on his rock, defying Jove, and forever dying—thus forever foiling the Evil.
It was never because Jesus was clothed in the weakness of the flesh that he was fit to be trusted, but because he was strong with a strength able to take the weakness of the flesh for the garment wherein it could best work its work: that strength was now shining out with its own light...
When a man’s evil is burned away, that is when the man yields his self and returns to his lord and God; and that is when that which, before, he was aware of only as burning, he will feel as love, comfort, strength—an eternal, ever-growing life in him.
The fire of God, which is his essential being, his love, is a fire unlike its earthy symbol in this, that it is only at a distance it burns—that the farther from him, it burns the worse, and that when we turn and begin to approach him, the burning begins to change to comfort...
God must be terrible to those that are far from him; they must prefer a devil, because of his supreme selfishness, to a God who will die for his creatures, and insists upon giving himself to them, insists upon their being unselfish and blessed like himself...
