Waiting
conscious as he grew older of “the great cosmic chill.” For years he had watched the tremendous processes of nature going on entirely independent of man, often seemingly contemptuous of him; he had come to realize that he was not shut in by any protecting walls, but that he was naked in the universe and that he had to “take his chance and warm himself as best he could.”
He had never had that vivid realization of hell which was part and parcel of his father’s religion, and had never had the slightest belief in the devil. He refused to speculate about the Trinity, which seemed to him just a puzzle which men had set up for their own confusion. Evil, he thought, was merely a phase of good, and seemed evil only because of man’s limited and imperfect understanding.
“I have never accepted the creed of any church,” he adds. “I have given my heart to Nature instead of to God, but that has never cast a shadow over my mind or conscience. I believe God is Nature. I also believe that there is some sort of omnipotent intelligence underlying the manifestations of power and the orderliness that we see in the universe. Personal immortality has never seemed to me probable, though I can’t say that it is impossible. What Nature’s ends are, or God’s ends, I often have but a faint idea. Most of our preachers seem much too sure; but however much I differ with
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