cal, and
religious. His talk was often of infinity--the forces of creation--and
it was likely to be satire of the orthodox conceptions, intermingled with
heresies of his own devising.

Once, after a period of general silence, he said:

"No one who thinks can imagine the universe made by chance. It is too
nicely assembled and regulated. There is, of course, a great Master
Mind, but it cares nothing for our happiness or our unhappiness."

It was objected, by one of those present, that as the Infinite Mind
suggested perfect harmony, sorrow and suffering were defects which that
Mind must feel and eventually regulate.

"Yes," he said, "not a sparrow falls but He is noticing, if that is what
you mean; but the human conception of it is that God is sitting up nights
worrying over the individuals of this infinitesimal race."

Then he recalled a fancy which I have since found among his memoranda. In
this note he had written:

The suns & planets that form the constellations of a billion billion
solar systems & go pouring, a tossing flood of shining globes,
through the viewless arteries of space are the blood-corpuscles in
the veins of God; & the nations are the microbes that swarm and
wiggle & brag in each, & think God can tell them apart at that
distance & has nothing better to do than try. This--the
entertainment of an eternity. Who so poor in his ambitions as to
consent to be God on those terms? Blasphemy? No, it is not
blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, He is above blasphemy; if He
is as little as that, He is beneath it.

"The Bible," he said, "reveals the character of its God with minute
exactness. It is a portrait of a man, if one can imagine a man with evil
impulses far beyond the human limit. In the Old Testament He is pictured
as unjust, ungenerous, pitiless, and revengeful, punishing innocent
children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending people
for the sins of their rulers, even descending to bloody vengeance upon
harmless calves and sheep as punishment for puny trespasses committed by
their proprietors. It is the most damnatory biography that ever found
its way into print. Its beginning is merely childish. Adam is forbidden
to eat the fruit of a certain tree, and gravely informed that if he
disobeys he shall die. How could that impress Adam? He could have no
idea of what death meant. He had never seen a dead thing. He had never
heard of one. If he ha