XXI
Our ancient Hebrew predecessors understood God in their own way. We understand Him in the same way, but with the clarification wrought by the intervening years of progress. In other words, they bequeath us a treasure which we are free to enrich with our own discoveries.
Among our own discoveries is a clearer comprehension of pain as resulting from wrong methods, and of God's detachment from pain. More and more, punishment becomes a concept we reject. Even in our penal institutions, which have been for so many centuries a barbarous token of our incompetence, we begin to substitute for punishment something more nearly akin to cure. If we find mere vengeance unworthy of ourselves we must find it unworthy of the Universal Father. If we concede to the criminal the right to a further chance we concede it to ourselves. If we recognise the fact that the sinner on earth may redeem himself, working from error towards righteousness, the same principle should rule in the whole range of existence. There is nothing about the earth-life to make it the only phase of effort and probation. Effort and probation are probably conditions of eternity. They will be in our next experience as they have been in this, leading us on from strength to strength.