At least in the western tradition nothing so affects our attitude to God as our recognition of evil and suffering. An important factor in the modern bourgeois indifference to God has been a cultivated exclusion of evil from our consciousness. It is not long since English moral philosophers searching for an example of moral evil could only come up with promise breaking; the liberal imagination shied away from real sin, just as commercial advertising shies away from suffering. It is a commonplace that prisons and hospitals are not only institutions for dealing with crime and sickness but also for hiding them.