, he had been trained to believe that an
irate Deity of unstable nerves presided over the universe; that He had
created the world and beast and man in a series of experiments which
had come off well, until it reached the last one, man; that man had
gone bad in the making, and must be pursued and thrashed for all
eternity on that account, unless he made an umbrella out of his
acknowledged vices, and sat down underneath it and sang hymns to a harp
accompaniment. Else, he was grilled eternally. But the gist of the
whole matter was that man had gone bad in the making, and that his
Maker was angry at him to the end of time. And that same blundering and
angry Maker was the God one had to love and honour. Naturally, being
constituted as he is, Brenton, once he had cut his wisdom teeth, turned
balky, refused to see why he should love a God who behaved like a
bad-tempered child that spites the toy he has broken and beats the wall
where he has bumped his head. Meanwhile--"

"Do I--" Opdyke was beginning.

Whittenden waved aside the interruption.

"No; you don't come in yet. Be patient. As I was going to say,
meanwhile he went into his first laboratory and made the prompt
discovery that nothing ever happens, that causes are set in motion ages
and ages before they ever materialize into effects. That set him to
thinking, set him to wondering why the thing that he was trained to
call revealed religion should be the only lawless thing in all the
universe. Why the same Deity should have created law, and then set
Himself up in opposition to it, should have started the wheels to
running, and then, every now and then, stuck a mighty finger in, to pry
them apart and make them slip a cog, in deference to some later
modification of His original plan. It was just about then that I found
him. He was floundering in a perfect mire, composed of the dust of
conflict mingled with penitential tears. Really, he was knee-deep in
the muck; and I put in a good share of my vacation in trying to haul
him back to solid ground."

Opdyke nodded.

"He has told me."

"His side, only. Mine was a degree less serious, Reed. Sorry for him as
I was, I couldn't help a certain amusement at seeing him get himself
into such a mess over nothing. How any person with a fair share of
common sense can--Well, I toiled over him, all summer. Talk about
mines! I mined in him. I sank new shafts and I dug out new veins, and I
presented samples of ore for his inspection. B