former bedecked with barbaric finery and painted
in gaudy hues, the latter, according to the taste of our times, adorned
with more or less art and fantastic splendor, but always a work of our
own minds? I will not speak of those really poor mortals, whom you also
will hardly call blessed or think specially well fitted for their
heavenly kingdom: of those who, under the forms of the Christian faith,
practise the grossest idolatry, the merest image worship. But how do
even the most enlightened, the most intellectual, who take the
scriptural words 'God is a spirit' in the most solemn sense, imagine
this spirit? In their holy zeal, they ascribe to it every quality that
seems worthy of honor and love in themselves or others. And this ideal
being, which they have created in their own image, and only endowed
with the thoughtlessly collected attributes of omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence, this God-man or man-God, they set on a
throne somewhere in space, give him the world for a globe, and the
lightning for a sceptre, and are perfectly convinced that in the
fullest power and majesty, he will guide the stars on their courses,
and decide the destinies of mortals with mercy and justice. And
meantime the sorrows of the world take their course, evil reigns, the
unequal distribution of blessings still exists, and the all-merciful,
omniscient, all-righteous, and omnipotent God, does not move his little
finger to effect a change; his most eager devotees must seize upon very
common place, earthly means to keep the world in its grooves; but where
these are not enough, where the whole cannot sufficiently protect the
individual, then arises the old sardonic consolation: 'Help yourself,
and God will help you.' So we're again thrown back on ourselves. It is
still our strength, our intellect, our good purposes! And yet earnest
men, who have their doubts about the contradictory stories concerning
the government of the world by a God who is just and good according to
human ideas, are blamed if they seek to help themselves through life by
their own efforts, and at the same time try whether they cannot make
things harmonize without nursery tales." He had risen and was pacing up
and down the room in increasing excitement.

"You reject the good with the bad," she replied shaking her head. "Who
denies the imperfection of our ideas of the supreme being? Who asserts
that our human images and comparisons describe his real nature? They
are all