way on the parlor table with the album and go out early Monday
morning to carry the apples to market all deaconed on top. By George! we
were the same old lot. And worse, for we'd had our look through the
peep-hole into eternities, and now we said, 'It makes my eyes ache. I'm
going to wear a shade.' No, son, I don't mean Leagues of Nations and
Internationalism or any of the quack remedies. I mean just God. We'd
been badly scared--Nan said so to-day--and we got down on our knees and
howled to the Highest and offered Him tribute.

"Now you may say that even if the whole world had forgotten God, if I'd
seen Him why couldn't I still remember Him? Why couldn't I consider the
millions of years that go to the making of man and do my little bit and
wait on His will? Because my temptation came on me. I was tempted in the
wilderness of my own credulity and conceit. For I looked back over time
past and I said like Solomon--I don't know whether he ever said it, but
he's the most blase Johnnie I remember--'All is vanity.' As it was in
the beginning, so it ever shall be. We are not made in the image of God.
We are made rather grotesquely out of dust, and to dust we shall return,
all our hopes, all our aspirations, all the pretty plans we form for
defeating death and time. And who made us and put us on this dark planet
where it is next to impossible to see a step before us? God. Who is
responsible for us? God. Can we find out His will? Never. Can we hope
for any alleviation of misery on our dark planet? Never: for if we seek
out many inventions to down disease and poverty, we shall unloose as
many by-products of discovery and bring new plagues upon us. And so I
had to turn away from God. Do you see? I didn't deny He exists. I didn't
accuse Him of bad faith to us. How can He show either good faith or bad
when He has made us no promises? He has merely set us on the dark planet
and forced us to whirl with it on the wheel of time. And so, do you see,
having turned away from God--and I had to, I had to in mere honesty--I
simply lost Him. And having lost Him, there is nothing left to lose.
Also, having once seen Him and then lost Him, I can't take up the puzzle
again. I can't play the game. If I hadn't what we New Englanders call
common sense, I suppose I should put an end to myself. What would be the
good? He would simply catch me, like a rabbit out of a cage, and chuck
me back again on the dark planet. Don't think I blame Him. He wouldn't
d