It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: “Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me.” If I were to start as a god or a prophet, I think I should take the line:
“Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a god. Thou shalt worship any damned thing thou likest except me.” This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it. [333]
Faith and Reason
The instinct towards brushing faith aside and being strictly reasonable is strong and natural; so also is the instinct towards brushing logic and consistency on one side if they become troublesome, in other words—so is the instinct towards basing action on a faith which is beyond reason. It is because both instincts are so natural that so many accept and so many reject Catholicism. The two go along for some time as very good friends and then fight; sometimes one beats and sometimes the other, but they always make it up again and jog along as before, for they have a great respect for one another.
God and the Devil
God’s merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion. The faults are, indeed, on such a scale that, when looked at without relation to the merits with which they are interwoven, they become so appalling that people shrink from ascribing them to the Deity and have invented the Devil, without seeing that there would be more excuse for God’s killing the Devil, and so getting rid of evil, than there can be for his failing to be everything that he would like to be.
For God is not so white as he is painted, and he gets on better with the Devil than people think. The Devil is too useful for him to wish him ill and, in like manner, half the Devil’s trade would be at an end should any great mishap bring God well down in the world. For all the mouths they make at one another they play into each other’s hands and have got on so well as partners, playing Spenlow and Jorkins to one another, for so many years that there seems no reason why they should cease to do so. The conception of them as the one absolutely void of evil and the other of good is a vulgar notion taken from science whose priests have ever sought to get every idea and every substance pure of all alloy.
God and the Devil are about as four to three. There is enough preponderance of God to make it far safer to be on his side than on the Devil’s, but the excess is not so great as his professional claqueurs pretend it is. It is like gambling at Monte Carlo; if you play long enough you are sure to lose, but now and again you may win a great deal of excellent money if you will only cease playing the moment you have won it.