come--that's why I have put it off.
It hasn't yet come. Sometimes--twice, I think--I have seen it all
plainly. Just for a second--in a sort of flash. And then it dropped
back into this confusion.

I won't insult you by attempting to discount your difficulties. You
have worked out for yourself a calculation made, at one time or
another, by many more people than you would imagine. And your answer
is wrong. I know that. You know it too. When you say that you are
afraid of what may come after, you admit that what you intend to do is
impossible. If you were not convinced of something after, you would go
on and do what you propose. Which shows that there is an error in your
mathematics. Do you at all know what I mean?

I must make you understand. I can see why you find the prospect
unendurable. You don't look far enough, that is all. Why do people
shut themselves up in the air-tight box of a possible three score years
and ten, and call it life? How can you, who are so alive, do so? It
seems that you have fallen into the strangely popular error of thinking
that clocks measure life. That is not what they are for. A clock is
the contrivance of springs and wheels whereby the ambitious, early of a
summer's day when sane people are asleep or hunting flowers on the
hill-side, keep tally of the sun. Those early on the hill-side see the
gray lighten and watch it flush to rose--the advent of the
day-spring--and go on picking flowers. They of the clocks are one day
older--these have seen a sunrise. There is the difference.

If you really thought that all there is to life is that part of it we
have here in this world--if you believed that--then what you
contemplate doing would be nothing worse than unsportsmanlike. But you
do not believe that. You are afraid of what might come--after. You
came to me--or you came to the rector--in the hope of being assured
that your fear was groundless. You had a human desire for the advice
of a "professional." You still wish that assurance--that is why you
promised to wait for this letter. You told me your case; you wanted
expert testimony. Here it is: You need not be afraid. God will not be
angry--God will not punish you. You said that you did not know much
about God. Surely you know this much--anger can never be one of His
attributes. God is never angry. Men would be angry if they were
treated as they treat Him--that is all. In mathematics, certain
letters represent