"GOD IS IN LOVE AND IN HATRED"

　"How can a God of love be also in hatred, one of the lowest passions of a man's heart?" asked a puzzled Spiritualist, after reading a reference by Silver Birch to God being in everything. When the question was put to the guide, he replied:

　"They still cling to their ideas of a God fashioned in human likeness. But God is the Law. The Law sustains and upholds and is expressed in every facet of life. The Law does not operate through love alone, it embraces hatred also. The Law controls sunshine and storm. The Law operates through health and sickness. Do they wish to praise God for the sun-shine and not to praise Him for the rain? In olden days they invented the Devil because they wanted their God to be the sum of goodness as they understood it. They could see in the flash of the lightning, in the roar of the thunder, something which they would not attribute to the God they had fashioned in their imaginations.

　"The Great Spirit is the Law, the Law that controls all life. Nothing can exist outside that Law. I have always taught that. What you call hatred is but the expression of an un-developed soul. That soul is within the Law, but for the time the individual has taken the wrong turning and so he expresses the lowest form of a quality which, if rightly used, would be love. Love and hatred go hand in hand, for the same quality that enables you to express love is the quality which you use to express hatred. Life functions through comparison.

　"If you dwelt for ever in the sunshine, the sunshine would not be valued by you. It is because you often live in the shadows that you appreciate the sunshine. So it is with all life. Happiness you understand because you have tasted bitterness. Health you enjoy when you have known what it is to suffer disease. Yet the same quality which makes you ill makes you well. The same quality which makes you love makes you hate. Nothing can be expressed outside the Law, which governs every phase of life.'

　A sitter suggested that for people to hate evil it was neces-sary that they should have the quality of hatred in them. It seemed the thing to do was to learn what they should hate.

　"I would not put it that way,” said Silver Birch. “I would say you must fight evil because you know that evil is a force which has been misapplied. People whom you say are evil are undeveloped, but the same power which they are express-ing can be used for betterment and for improvement.

　"There are very seldom people who say, 'I will be evil; I will be selfish; I will grasp all, no matter what happens.' In reality, ‘evil' people are children in the growth of the spirit, who do not understand, who think that the material and physical world is the be-all of life, and therefore they can only express themselves as individuals by having all that the physical world offers them. Selfishness is altruism that has taken the wrong turning. People must try to get rid of the idea that the Great Spirit is only expressed in goodness, in holiness, in love, in wisdom, in beauty, and all that they consider is the bright side of life.

　"Once you limit the expression of the Great Spirit, the Great Spirit is no longer the Great Spirit. It is a qualified spirit, it is a restricted spirit; for the essence of the Great Spirit is that it shall be infinite, omnipotent, immutable, never-changing, always ceaselessly at work through the operation of divine laws. They must abolish the idea of God as a great king, on a throne, with the Nazarene sitting at the right hand, and to whom petitions can be presented. Those were the crude ideas of a past generation. The Law is supreme through-out the universe, in every aspect of its multitudinous life. And the Great Spirit is the Law."

　The publication of these answers led to some criticism, and Silver Birch was asked at a later sitting whether he would care to comment on the letters received.

　"What am I to do?" asked the guide. "They have been taught for so long that God is only in goodness, simply because they have pictured the Great Spirit as a magnified human being, and then they do not want Him to possess any attributes that they consider are not good, not kind, not wise. The Great Spirit is not human. The Great Spirit is the Law, which controls all life. Without the Law there is no life. The Law is the spirit; the spirit is the Law. You cannot change that. That creates problems for those who cannot understand it, but with growth understanding will come. It is no use saying the Great Spirit gives you the good things and the Devil gives you the bad ones, for you are once again in the old dilemma of who invented the Devil.”

　"The Devil was invented by the Churches, wasn't he?" asked a sitter.

　"Yes, they had to invent him to explain away that which they considered was evil," said the guide. "It is all part of the process of evolution, the process of reformation, of growth, of the upward urge, rising, rising, rising. Evil and pain, as you call them, are parts of the plan of evolution. No pain, no warnings that health requires attention; no darkness, no light; no evil, no goodness. How could you judge standards of goodness unless there were evil in your world? If there were no wrongs to remedy, no injustices to fight, how could the human spirit grow?"

　"Will there always be injustices, from the point of view of our evolution at that time?" Silver Birch was asked.

　"Yes, because the higher you rise in the scale of evolution, the more you are conscious of the things that are to be

remedied,” he replied. “That is why we speak of infinity of progress and know that the universe is timeless, without beginning and without end. The road of progress does not stop; it continues. And each mile-stone represents a victory of the higher over the lower. But unless there were the lower, there could not be the higher. Life cannot be one monotone; there must be light and shade, sunshine and storm, joy and tears, love and hatred, beauty and ugliness, good and evil—for only through contrast can life be understood. Only through struggle, only through striving, only by triumph over disaster can the human spirit which is divine grow and allow its latent possibilities to unfold. That is the Law. I did not make the Law. I have only learned its application and strive to teach it to others.

　"There is no personal God apart from the one that human beings have created; there is no personal Devil apart from the one that human beings have created. There is no golden heaven, no fiery hell. These are the imaginings of those whose views are limited. The Great Spirit is the Law. Know that, and you have learned life's greatest secret, for once you realize the world is governed by unchangeable, unbreakable, im-mutable, omnipotent Law, you know that justice is done and none can be forgotten in the great scheme of creation.

　That is why all is known. That is why nothing can be omitted. That is why every facet of life finds its place in the universal scheme. That is why nothing can be overlooked, for the Law embraces every aspect of life, no matter how tiny, no matter how large, for all is Law. Nothing exists except the Law which makes its existence possible. The Law reigns supreme. Man's free will creates confusion and obscures the working of the Law in his mind, but the Law exists just the same and must operate. I know that theology has been a great curse to your world, but its day is practically done."