But others seem to think that God is too kind, not to say good-natured, to allow his children to suffer for their sins.  This is part of a creed, unconsciously very widely held to-day, that comfort, not character, is the chief end of life.  Now if God is too kind to allow his children to suffer some of the natural consequences of sin, he is not a really kind and loving father, he is spoiling his children.  Salvation is soundness, sanity, health; just as holiness is wholeness, escape from the disease, and not merely from the consequences of sin.  A physician, unless a quack, never promises relief from a deep-seated disease without any pain or discomfort.  And if the disease is the result of indulgence, he warns us that relapse into indulgence will bring a worse recurrence of the pain.  Perhaps, after all, Socrates was not so far from right when he maintained that if a man had sinned the best and only thing for him is to suffer for it.  “God the Lord will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints:  but let them not turn again to folly.”  And our Lord says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.  For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  If we would be great in the kingdom of heaven we must do and teach the commandments.  One of the best lessons that the clergy can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the past.  They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew.

But if God is a person striving to communicate with man, and if man is a person intended to conform to environment by becoming like God, what is more probable from the scientific stand-point than that God should seek and find some means of making himself clearly known to man in some personal way?  I do not see how any scientific man who believes in a personal God can avoid asking this question.  And is there any more natural solution of the question than that given in the Bible?  “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”  “God, who spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son.”  Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us.”  Jesus saith unto him, “Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou shew us the Father?  Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself:  but the Father abiding in me doeth his works.”

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”