honors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source.

_Evil._ I am a creator,--but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I give
life, and I can destroy life.

_Good._ Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only creator. Evil is not
conscious or conscientious Mind; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is
not spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only source
is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,--Life, Truth,
Love,--evil can never take away.

_Evil._ I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its own
innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and
matter reproduces God. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my
honor, that God is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud to
be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself as
evil, and for my varying manifestations.

_Good._ You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority and law. Neither is
He the author of the material changes, the _phantasma_, a belief in which
leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in
church:--

Chance and change are busy ever,
Man decays and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never,--
God is wisdom, God is love.

Now if it be true that God's power _never waneth_, how can it be also true
that _chance_ and _change_ are universal factors,--that _man decays_? Many