ess of a single
being. I think of the "humble, quiet lives," and it appears to me
within a few words, and that in what they call a "quiet, lowly life,"
there are immense expectations and waitings and weariness.

I understand why they want to believe in God, and consequently why they
do believe in Him, since faith comes at will.

I remember, while I lean on this wall and listen, that one day in the
past not far from here, a lowly woman raised her voice and said, "That
woman does not believe in God! It's because she has no children, or
else because they've never been ill."

And I remember, too, without being able to picture them to myself, all
the voices I have heard saying, "It would be too unjust, if there were
no God!"

There is no other proof of God's existence than the need we have of
Him. God is not God--He is the name of all that we lack. He is our
dream, carried to the sky. God is a prayer, He is not some one.

They put all His kind actions into the eternal future, they hide them
in the unknown. Their agonizing dues they drown in distances which
outdistance them; they cancel His contradictions in inaccessible
uncertainty. No matter; they believe in the idol made of a word.

And I? I have awaked out of religion, since it was a dream. It had to
be that one morning my eyes would end by opening and seeing nothing
more of it.

I do not see God, but I see the church and I see the priests. Another
ceremony is unfolding just now, in another direction--up at the castle,
a Mass of St. Hubert. Leaning on my elbows the spectacle absorbs me.

These ministers of the cult, blessing this pack of hounds, these guns
and hunting knives, officiating in lace and pomp side by side with
these wealthy people got up as warlike sportsmen, women and men alike,
on the great steps of a castle and facing a crowd kept aloof by
ropes,--this spectacle defines, more glaringly than any words whatever
can, the distance which separates the churches of to-day from Christ's
teaching, and points to all the gilded putridity which has accumulated
on those pure defaced beginnings. And what is here is everywhere; what
is little is great.

The parsons, the powerful--all always joined together. Ah, certainty
is rising to the heart of my conscience. Religions destroy themselves
spiritually because they are many. They destroy whatever leans upon
their fables. But their directors, they who are the strength of the
idol, impose it. They