me what I
should think if she were to tell me that my God, whose nature and
attributes I had been explaining to her, was but the expression for man's
highest conception of goodness, wisdom, and power; that in order to
generate a more vivid conception of so great and glorious a thought, man
had personified it and called it by a name; that it was an unworthy
conception of the Deity to hold Him personal, inasmuch as escape from
human contingencies became thus impossible; that the real thing men
should worship was the Divine, whereinsoever they could find it; that
"God" was but man's way of expressing his sense of the Divine; that as
justice, hope, wisdom, &c., were all parts of goodness, so God was the
expression which embraced all goodness and all good power; that people
would no more cease to love God on ceasing to believe in His objective
personality, than they had ceased to love justice on discovering that she
was not really personal; nay, that they would never truly love Him till
they saw Him thus.

She said all this in her artless way, and with none of the coherence with
which I have here written it; her face kindled, and she felt sure that
she had convinced me that I was wrong, and that justice was a living
person. Indeed I did wince a little; but I recovered myself immediately,
and pointed out to her that we had books whose genuineness was beyond all
possibility of doubt, as they were certainly none of them less than 1800
years old; that in these there were the most authentic accounts of men
who had been spoken to by the Deity Himself, and of one prophet who had
been allowed to see the back parts of God through the hand that was laid
over his face.

This was conclusive; and I spoke with such solemnity that she was a
little frightened, and only answered that they too had their books, in
which their ancestors had seen the gods; on which I saw that further
argument was not at all likely to convince her; and fearing that she
might tell her mother what I had been saying, and that I might lose the
hold upon her affections which I was beginning to feel pretty sure that I
was obtaining, I began to let her have her own way, and to convince me;
neither till after we were safely married did I show the cloven hoof
again.

Nevertheless, her remarks have haunted me, and I have since met with many
very godly people who have had a great knowledge of divinity, but no
sense of the divine: and again, I have seen a radiance upon t