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.