that her baby and I are the only human beings exempt from the vengeance of the
deities for not believing in their personality. She is quite clear that we are
exempted. She should never have so strong a conviction of it otherwise. How it
has come about she does not know, neither does she wish to know; there are
things which it is better not to know and this is one of them; but when I tell
her that I believe in her deities as much as she does - and that it is a
difference about words, not things, she becomes silent with a slight emphasis.
    I own that she very nearly conquered me once; for she asked me what I should
think if she were to tell me that my God, whose nature and attributes I had been
explaining to her, was but the expression for man's highest conception of
goodness, wisdom, and power; that in order to generate a more vivid conception
of so great and glorious a thought, man had personified it and called it by a
name; that it was an unworthy conception of the Deity to hold Him personal,
inasmuch as escape from human contingencies became thus impossible; that the
real thing men should worship was the Divine, whereinsoever they could find it;
that God was but man's way of expressing his sense of the Divine; that as
justice, hope, wisdom, etc., were all parts of goodness, so God was the
expression which embraced all goodness and all good power; that people would no
more cease to love God on ceasing to believe in His objective personality, than
they had ceased to love justice on discovering that she was not really personal;
nay, that they would never truly love Him till they saw Him thus.
    She said all this in her artless way, and with none of the coherence with
which I have here written it; her face kindled, and she felt sure that she had
convinced me that I was wrong, and that justice was a living person. Indeed I
did wince a little; but I recovered myself immediately, and pointed out to her
that we had books whose genuineness was beyond all possibility of doubt, as they
were certainly none of them less than 1800 years old; that in these there were
the most authentic accounts of men who had been spoken to by the Deity Himself,
and of one prophet who had been allowed to see the back parts of God through the
hand that was laid over his face.
    This was conclusive; and I spoke with such solemnity that she was a little
frightened, and only answered that they too