Naturally, Sauron’s dread had been that his enemies – whom he knew had found it – would turn it against him. But they did not. Instead, they destroyed the ring. True strength manifested itself not in the exercise of power, but in the willingness to give it up. So Tolkien, as a Christian, believed. It was why, in the last year of the war against Hitler, he had lamented it as an ultimately evil job.
