His calm and gentle tone was like an anchor in a ferocious sea, keeping me from drifting into a current of heartache.

Meg,_ he whispered. __t wouldn__ be real love if there weren__ the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn__ choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That__ why there__ evil in this world, because there__ free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other.

Progress in evil was quick and easy; Apollyon was not a chap who hid himself and he gave every assistance in his power. The growth in goodness was so slow, at times so flat, so dull, and like the White Queen one had to run so fast to stay where one was, let alone progress; and there were few men who dared to say they had found God. It was easy to be a clever sinner, for the race to an earthly visible goal was short to run, so impossibly hard to be a wise saint, with the goal set at so vast a distance from this world and clouded with such uncertainty.

All good things come from love; God used the cross a symbol of His love, to paralyze and defeat all forces of evil. God is love. John 3:16

I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.

Do not be devilish.