e very much alone. Something of that
setting and its influence is conveyed in a letter to the Reverend
Theodore Sedgwick, a life-long friend, which discloses Mr. Nelson in a
reflective mood:

Sept. 6, 1928

Dear Ted:

Many, many thanks for your intensely interesting letter, and its
review of Julian Huxley's book. Such a view of life and religion
does make one stop and think--and hesitate. It is the terribly
earnest spiritual problem that we face today in the ministry. It
is the sort of thing I had in mind, in suggesting the subject of
"God" for the next Swansea Conference. For we have got to face
the issue with eyes open, minds familiar with the biologist's
point of view. The old affirmations of formal theology are not
adequate to meet the issue. And yet in those affirmations I am
sure lies the truth--that God lives, God our Father--conscious of
Himself and of us--a person in a very real sense--from Whom we
derive personality--from Whom we came--and to Whom we go. If
mankind loses that, "his arms _do_ clasp the air" and he drowns
in the infinity of time and space and his own nothingness. We
have from Christ the truth and somehow we must learn it with a
new understanding--or rather with _the_ new understanding that
modern science and modern reverent scientific thought have given
us. I am sitting at my desk in my cabin at sunset. The day has
been cool and grey--a heavy curtain of cloud over the sky--But
now--that curtain is thinning and through the break in the
west--the whole glory of the sun has colored sky and sea with a
golden light beyond description for exquisite beauty. The gulls
are winging their way across the sea to a distant island where
they rest and go back to each night. As I sit and look, my whole
spirit is moved by the beauty and the evening quiet. There is
infinity here--of space and imagination. Yet--the gulls--I think,
are unconscious of all that--but I am moved by it and keenly
conscious of it. It is not just biology--or I would be as the
gulls--and I am not. And men are not. They want God--behind the
glory--God clothed with the glory--adequate to the glory--that
their own imagination and hunger and aspiration may be
justified--That is what Christ has given us to preach and it is
the truth. Now the gold has turned to a flaming red--thrilling
almost to the point of pain. One must believe--and then face the
chill grey of th