the
imminency of death, and never allows you to know at what moment you
must go, and gives you no hint of the beyond--or whether there is a
beyond.

In France they do not tell the man who is to be guillotined till a
few moments before the fatal hour. He is sleeping on his couch. He
is dreaming of pleasant fields, of running streams, of boyhood's
days, of to-morrows that shall be better--a heavy hand is laid on
his shoulder--he starts up in bed--the gray light of early morning
is filtering in through the barred window of his cell--stern-faced
men are standing before him--they say, "Your hour is come; follow
us."

It is terrific.

But this is the case of every human being.

No one can tell when the summons may come--or where.

A man was sitting in his room at close of day. It had been (so he
said) the best day of his life. He had said to his wife that he
never loved her more than he did then (and they had been married
many years), never did he feel more content that they had chosen to
walk together through life than then. He was full of plans for
himself and for her (saying with great earnestness that their last
days should be their best days). She answered back that she was glad
with a great gladness that it was so. She turned away for a moment
to glance in another direction, still speaking to him. When she
looked back he was gone--gone while the love words and the hope
words were still on his lips--the finger of death had touched his
heart--a voice had whispered in his ear, "Come." There was only a
lifeless bit of clay where a moment before had been a body pulsing
with life, with love, with hope.

It is terrific--doomed--and not knowing how soon the bolt will
strike. What sort of a God is this who laces your body with a
network of laws, the breaking of the slightest of which--all unknown
to you--may send you forth upon a path of diseased and tortured
existence--in which the body from whence you cannot escape shall be
to you as a chamber of horrors--a place of the thumbscrew, the rack
and the fagot. What kind of a God is that who allows the aged to
linger out in a miserable prolongation of wretched days, a burden to
themselves, a burden to others, and takes away the widow's only son
--her only support? Who is the God who creates one man with all the
equipment for life, and another man with all the lack of it? What
kind of a God is this who looks down out of the heaven of day and
the heavens of night, and sees