"The true God comes to life in your own consciousness, if you will clear
it of the blasphemous preconceptions imposed by Christianity," answered
Bernal so seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him. "Of
course we can never personify God save as a higher power of self. Moses
did no more; Jesus did no more. And if we could stop with this--be
content with saying 'God is better than the best man'--we should have a
formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits it to us. God has
been more generous to us than the Church has been to Him. While it has
limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew,
He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him
morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable
malignity.

"You see the world has demonstrated facts that disprove the Godship of
your God and your Saviour. We have come, indeed, into a sense of such
certain brotherhood that we know your hell is a falsity. We know--a
knowledge of even the rudiments of psychology proves--_that there will
be a hell for all as long as one of us is there_. Our human nature is
such that one soul in hell would put every other soul there. Daily this
becomes more apparent. We grow constantly more sensitive to the pain of
others. This is the distinctive feature of modern growth--our increasing
tendency to find the sufferings of others intolerable to ourselves. A
disaster now is felt around the world--we burn or starve or freeze or
drown with our remote brothers--and we do what we can to relieve them
because we suffer with them. It seems to me the existence of the
S.P.C.A. proves that hell is either for all of us or for none of
us--because of our oneness. If the suffering of a stray cat becomes our
suffering, do you imagine that the minority of the race which
Christianity saves could be happy knowing that the great majority lay in
torment?