God then laid down the moral law, not because He was a tyrant demanding obedience, but because He is a lover longing for our happiness. He hates sin, not because it annoys Him, but because it destroys us! If you will examine, for example, the Ten Commandments, you will find that men were saying them long before God wrote them! It was Abel who exclaimed with his last breath to Cain "Thou shalt do no murder": it was the first husband whose wife betrayed him who cried "thou shalt not commit adultery"!

In other words, our desire for happiness inevitably leads us to forbid the actions which obviously threaten it. Morality is not an end in itself, but the means to the supreme end of life, happiness. The great condemnation of sin is, not that it breaks a law but that it destroys peace of mind and security. The moral law is the custodian of our happiness, and consequently since God seeks our happiness He stands firmly behind the Law which alone can procure it. Neither God nor man has any particular liking for Law as an end in itself. That sort of attitude produces the self-righteous Pharisee who delights in laying burdens upon men's backs instead of sharing them!

God also knew, what on the whole men deny, that it makes all the difference to a man's life what he thinks about God. The man who thinks there is no God is faced with the 'unyielding despair' of Bertrand Russell, the philosopher: the man who is a practising Buddhist or Hindu or Roman Catholic is afraid of Death or Purgatory: the man who believes in a spirit world is afraid of life, and spends his days trying to placate his unseen enemies. It is only the man who believes that God is Love who can face life with peace, and death with joy! The fool says that it doesn't matter what a man's religion is; one is as good as another. The man who uses his eyes sees that it makes all the difference