ring, needy or afflicted do
not get help and sympathy from men, women and children they get none
from the gods and angels.

While on the one hand the great majority of scientists, scientific
philosophers and educated people generally doubt that any god ever
answered a prayer or exercised a providence, on the other, no one doubts
that men, women and children answer millions of prayers daily and that
every person's career is wholly different from what it would have been
but for human providence; that, indeed, life would be impossible without
the providence which all people exercise in the hearing and answering of
prayers.

Representatives of many of the interpretations of religion strewed every
battle-field of the European war. The celestial saviours did not care
for one of their devotees. The terrestrial saviours (doctors and nurses)
did everything for the desperately wounded and saved millions who would
have miserably perished but for them. These were the real christs and
angels of whom the celestial ones are but symbols. The celestials always
have passed by on the other side. The terrestrials are the Good
Samaritans when there are any.

Sceptics infer from this negligence that the gods and angels have no
real objective existence. Believers contend that they really exist
objectively and excuse the neglect on account of preoccupation. For
example, the God of traditional Christianity is supposed to spend much
time counting hairs on the heads of His people and watching sparrows
fall to the ground. Sceptics are reverently but earnestly asking: Why
does He not keep the sparrows from falling? Why does He not let the
hairs remain unnumbered, until He has put a stop to wars and promoted
good will among men to a degree which will render it impossible that
the world should any longer be cursed by them?

If believers say that we have no knowledge of the ways of God, sceptics
reply: Since all which is known about any objective reality is
concerning the ways thereof, what the action is under given
circumstances, how do you know that your God has anything to do with
either sparrows or men, or even that He exists?

As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
of the universe, socialists of the school of Marx, are almost to a man
materialists; but, as to their philosophy concerning life, they are as
generally idealists. There is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my
thinking and living now as there was i