is an Englishman and was brought up a Presbyterian--but he seen the
light."
"And no longer thinks there is any God?"
"Nope."
"And these books prove the same thing?"
"Yep."
So I bought one of them, thinking it wonderful that proof of so
momentous a conclusion could be had for so small a sum.
This Henry Moore could fling arguments like thunderbolts; he could
marshall his authorities like an army; he could talk against the roar of
the city and keep his restless audience about him; and if he did not
believe in God he had complete faith in Haeckel and Jacques Loeb, and
took at face value the lightest utterances of John Stuart Mill.
I enjoyed listening to Henry Moore. I enjoyed looking into the faces all
around me--mostly keen foreign or half-foreign faces, and young faces,
and idle faces, and curious faces, and faces that drank in, and faces
that disdainfully rejected.
After a time, however, I grew unaccountably weary of the vehemence of
Henry Moore and of the adroit helper who hawked his books. And suddenly
I looked up into the clear noon blue of the ancient sky. A pigeon was
flying across the wide open spaces of the square, the sunlight glinting
on its wings. I saw the quiet green tops of the trees in the park, and
the statue of Roscoe Conkling, turning a nonchalant shoulder toward the
heated speaker who said there was no God. How many strange ideas,
contradictory arguments, curious logic, have fallen, this last quarter
century, upon the stony ears of Roscoe Conkling! Far above me the
Metropolitan tower, that wonder work of men, lifted itself grandly to
the heavens, and all about I suddenly heard and felt the roar and surge
of the mighty city, the mighty, careless, busy city, thousands of people
stirring about me, souls full of hot hopes and mad desires, unsatisfied
longings, unrealized ideals. And I stepped out of the group who were
gathered around the man who said there was no God....
But I still drifted in the eddy, thinking how wonderful and strange all
these things were, and came thus to another group, close gathered at
the curb. It was much smaller than the other, and at the centre stood a
patriarchal man with a white beard, and with him two women. He was
leaning against the iron railing of the park, and several of the
free-thinker's audience, freshly stuffed with arguments, had engaged him
hotly. Just as I approached he drew from his pocket a worn,
leather-covered Bible, and said, tapping it wit
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