sorry for me.

"How could we?" she asked, fairly enough. "We have no punishments in
life, you see, so we don't imagine them after death."

"Have you NO punishments? Neither for children nor criminals--such mild
criminals as you have?" I urged.

"Do you punish a person for a broken leg or a fever? We have preventive
measures, and cures; sometimes we have to 'send the patient to bed,' as
it were; but that's not a punishment--it's only part of the treatment,"
she explained.

Then studying my point of view more closely, she added: "You see, we
recognize, in our human motherhood, a great tender limitless uplifting
force--patience and wisdom and all subtlety of delicate method. We
credit God--our idea of God--with all that and more. Our mothers are not
angry with us--why should God be?"

"Does God mean a person to you?"

This she thought over a little. "Why--in trying to get close to it in
our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do
not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a
Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us
that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?" she asked innocently.

"Why--yes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling
Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a
Man--with whiskers."

"Whiskers? Oh yes--because you have them! Or do you wear them because He
does?"

"On the contrary, we shave them off--because it seems cleaner and more
comfortable."

"Does He wear clothes--in your idea, I mean?"

I was thinking over the pictures of God I had seen--rash advances of the
devout mind of man, representing his Omnipotent Deity as an old man in
a flowing robe, flowing hair, flowing beard, and in the light of her
perfectly frank and innocent questions this concept seemed rather
unsatisfying.

I explained that the God of the Christian world was really the ancient
Hebrew God, and that we had simply taken over the patriarchal idea--that
ancient one which quite inevitably clothed its thought of God with the
attributes of the patriarchal ruler, the grandfather.

"I see," she said eagerly, after I had explained the genesis and
development of our religious ideals. "They lived in separate groups,
with a male head, and he was probably a little--domineering?"

"No doubt of that," I agreed.

"And we live together without any 'head,' in that sense--just our chosen
leaders--that DOES make a differ