"I would teach a child, in defiance even of reason, that God is the one Power that loves and understands him through thick and thin, that He punishes with anguish and sorrow; that He exults in forgiveness and mercy; that He rejoices in innocent happiness; that He loves courage, and brightness, and kindness, and cheerful self-sacrifice; that things mean and vile and impure and cruel, are things that He does not love to punish, but sad and soiling stains that He beholds with shame and tears. This, is seems to me, is the Gospel teaching about God, impossible only because of the hardness of our hearts. 

 I remember a terrible lecture which I heard as a bewildered boy at school; given by a worthy Evangelical clergyman, with large spectacles, and a hollow voice, and a great relish for spiritual terrors! 

The subject was "the exceeding sinfulness of sin." Arthur Benson.