Again, some of my friends have been pointing out that, while the New Theology regards all mankind as "Being of one substance with the Father," our consciousness of that being is our own. I freely admit this while maintaining that there is no substance but consciousness. What other kind of substance can there be? Therefore I hold that when our finite consciousness ceases to be finite there will be no distinction whatever between ours and God's. The distinction between finite and infinite is not eternal. The being of God is a complex unity, containing within itself and harmonising every form of self-consciousness that can possibly exist. No one need be afraid that in believing this he is assenting to the final obliteration of his own personality; if such obliteration were possible, our present personality could possess no permanent value even for God. No form of self-consciousness can ever perish. It completes itself in becoming infinite, but it cannot be destroyed.
+The problem not insoluble.+--Before going on to say more about human personality, especially the personality of Jesus, it is requisite that we should determine our attitude toward a great question which in manifold forms has beset the human intellect ever since the dawn of history, namely, the problem of evil. It is still the fashion to declare this problem insoluble, but I have the audacity to believe that it is not so; mystery there may be, but it is not chiefly mystery. I will even go so far as to assert that the problem had been solved in human thought before Christianity began. What I have to say about it now is ancient thinking confirmed by present-day experience.
Evil is a negative, not a positive term. It denotes the absence rather than the presence of something. It is the perceived privation of good, the shadow where the light ought to be. "The devil is a vacuum," as a friend of mine once remarked to the no small bewilderment of a group of listeners in whose imagination the devil was anything but a vacuum. Evil is not an intruder in an otherwise perfect universe; finiteness presumes it. A thing is only seen to be evil when the capacity for good is present and unsatisfied. Evil is not a principle at war with good. Good is being and evil is not-being. When consciousness of being seeks further expression and finds itself hindered by its limitations, it becomes aware of evil.