and terrible antagonist in
the contest for omnipotence.

Take the other horn of the dilemma. Then angels and the devil are
created beings, creatures of God, and not eternal. Then God must have
made the devil. If He created him a holy angel, yea, an archangel, as
is claimed, God certainly knew in advance that this archangel would
sometime lead a rebellion in heaven and lead one-third of the angels
into the conspiracy! Would an all-wise, a just and good God create
such beings, knowing in advance what they would do and what the
consequences of it would be? This forced God to create a hell in which
to put and punish these rebellious angels whom He knew before He
created them would rebel against him and thus have to be punished. If
God needed angels to glorify him was it not just as easy to create good
ones, that would not rebel against him! He created some that way, why
not all? And if rebellious angels had to be punished why not do it by
annihilation instead of making this burning hell for them? If
annihilation be considered too merciful and this hell the only adequate
punishment, all very well for rebellious and sinful angels; but why
should this yawning gulf of eternal woe open its throat to receive the
future being to be made in God's own image and called man?

We are told that hell was not created for man, but for the devil and
his angels. Nevertheless, if the story of Eden and the doctrines of
modern orthodoxy be true, it is now and will ultimately become the
eternal abode of about ninety-eight per cent of the entire human race.
I could never again reconcile the old views of hell with any rational
conception of a just and merciful God. The story of Eden itself I took
up for analysis. Man was alleged to have been framed up out of dust,
yet made "in the image and likeness" of God,--and consequently perfect.
At least this is the universal teaching. He was alone. A companion
was made for him from a rib. They are happy in a garden. God walks
and talks with them like a man. Everything is going smoothly until one
day God comes in and points out a certain tree, hitherto unnoticed and
unknown, and informs Adam that he must not eat of the fruit of this
particular tree on penalty of death. Then comes the serpent, talking
like a man, and tells the woman that what God said was not true; but if
they would eat of the fruit of that tree they would "be as Gods,
knowing good and evil." "And when the woman saw that