“If God is wiser that we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.”

“What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.”

“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”

“The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall to God by surprise and upset His plan, or else – more ridiculous still – that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebulae. The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces.”

“Thomas Aquinas said of suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself; but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances. That is to say, if evil is present, pain at recognition of the evil, being a kind of knowledge, is relatively good.”

“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

“Lead us, Evolution, lead usUp the future's endless stair;Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.For stagnation is despair:Groping, guessing, yet progressing,Lead us nobody knows where.Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,In the present what are theywhile there's always jam-tomorrow,While we tread the onward way?Never knowing where we're going,We can never go astray.To whatever variationOur posterity may turnHairy, squashy, or crustacean,Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,Towards that unknown god we yearn.Ask not if it's god or devil,Brethren, lest your words implyStatic norms of good and evil(As in Plato) throned on high;Such scholastic, inelastic,Abstract yardsticks we deny.Far too long have sages vainlyGlossed great Nature's simple text;He who runs can read it plainly,'Goodness = what comes next.'By evolving, Life is solvingAll the questions we perplexed.Oh then! Value means survival-Value. If our progenySpreads and spawns and licks each rival,That will prove its deity(Far from pleasant, by our present,Standards, though it may well be).”