Let us now consider the real God, the genuine God, the great God, the sublime and supreme God, the authentic Creator of the real Ⓐtextual note universe, whose remotenesses are visited by comets only—comets unto which incredibly distant Neptune is merely an outpost, a Sandy Hook to homeward bound spectres of the deeps of space that have not glimpsed it before for generations—a universe not made with hands and suited to an astronomical nursery, but spread abroad through the illimitable reaches of space by the fiat of the real God just mentioned; that God of unthinkable grandeurⒶtextual note and majesty, by comparison with whom all the other gods whose myriads infest the feebleⒶtextual note imaginations of men are as a swarm of gnats scattered and lost in the infinitudes of the empty sky.

When we think of such a God as this, we cannot associate with Him anything trivial, anything lacking dignity, anything lacking grandeur. We cannot conceive of His passing by Sirius to choose our potato for a footstoolⒶtextual note. We cannot conceive of His interesting Himself in the affairs of the microscopic human race and enjoying its Sunday flatteries, and experiencing pangs of jealousy when the flatteries grow lax or fail, any more than we can conceive of the Emperor of China being interested in a bottle of microbes and pathetically anxious to stand well with them and harvest their impertinent complimentsⒶtextual note. If we could conceive of the Emperor of China taking an intemperate interest in his bottle of microbes, we should have to draw the line there; weⒶtextual note could not, by any stretch of imagination, conceive of his selecting from these innumerable millions a quarter of a thimbleful of Jew microbes—the least attractive of the whole swarm—and making pets of them and nominating them as hisⒶtextual note chosen germs, and carrying his infatuation for them so far as to resolve to keep and coddleⒶtextual note them alone, and damn all the rest.

When we examine the myriad wonders and glories and charms and perfections of this infinite universe (as we know the universe now), and perceive that there is not a detail of it—from the blade of grass to the giant trees of California, nor from the obscure mountain rivulet to the measureless ocean; nor from the ebb and flow of the tides to the statelyⒶtextual note motions of the planets—that is not the slave of a system of exact and inflexible law, we seem to know—not suppose nor conjecture, but know—that the God that brought this stupendous fabric into being with a flash of thought and framed its laws with another flash of thought, is endowed with limitless power. We seem to know that whatever thing He wishes to do, He can do that thing without anybody’s assistance. We also seem to know that when He flashed the universe into being He foresaw everything that would happen in it from that moment until the end of time.

Do we also know that He is a moral being, according to our standard of morals? No. If we know anything at all about it, we know that He is destitute of morals—at least of the human pattern. Do we know that He is just, charitable, kindly, gentle, merciful, compassionate? No. There is no evidence that he is any of these things,—whereas each and every day, as it passes, furnishes us a thousand volumes of evidence, and indeed proof, that he possesses none of these qualities.

When we pray, when we beg, when we implore, does He listen? Does He answer? There is not a single authentic instance of it in human history. Does He silently refuse to listen—refuse to answer? There is nothing resembling proof that He has ever done anything else. From the beginning of time, priests, who have imagined themselves to be His appointed and salaried servants, have gathered together their full numerical strength and simultaneouslyⒶtextual note prayed for rain, and never once got it, when it was not due according to the eternal laws of Nature. Whenever they got it, if they had had a competent Weather Bureau they could have saved themselves the trouble of praying for that rain, because the Bureau could have told them it was coming, anyhow, within twenty-four hours, whether they prayed or saved their sacred wind.

From the beginning of time, whenever a king has lain dangerously ill, the priesthood and some part of the nation have prayed in unison that the king be spared to his grieving and anxious people (in case they were grieving and anxious, which was not usually the rule) and in no instance was their prayer ever answered. When Mr. Garfield lay near to death, the physicians and surgeons knew that nothing could save him, yet at an appointed signalⒶtextual note all the pulpits in the United States broke forth with one simultaneous and supplicating appealⒶtextual note for the President’s restoration to health. They did this with the same old innocent confidence with which the primeval savage had prayed to his imaginary devils to spare his perishing chief—for that day will never come when facts and experience can teach a pulpit anything useful. Of course the President died, just the sameⒺexplanatory note.

Great Britain has a population of forty-one millions. She has eighty thousand pulpits. The Boer population was a hundred and fifty thousand, with a battery of two hundred and ten pulpits. In the beginning of the Boer war, at a signal from the Primate of all England, the eighty thousand English pulpits thunderedⒶtextual note forth a titanic simultaneous [begin page 138] supplication to their God to give the embattled English in South Africa the victory. The little Boer battery of two hundred and ten guns replied with a simultaneous supplication to the same God to give the Boers the victory. If the eighty thousand English clergy had left their prayers unshedⒶtextual note and gone to the field, they would have got it—whereas the victory went the other way, and the English forces suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Boers. The English pulpit kept discreetly quiet about the result of its effort, but the indiscreet Boer pulpit proclaimed with a loud and exultant voice that it was its prayers that had conferred the victory upon the Boers.

The British Government had more confidence in soldiers than in prayer—therefore instead of doubling and trebling the numerical strength of the clergy, it doubled and trebled the strength of its forces in the field. Then the thing happened that always happensⒶtextual note—the English whipped the fight, a rather plain indication that the Lord had not listened toⒶtextual note either side, and was as indifferent as to who should win as He had always been, from the day that He was evolvedⒶtextual note, down to the present time—there being no instance on record where He has shown any interest at all in any human squabble, nor whether the good cause won out or lost.

Has this experience taught the pulpit anything? It has not.Ⓐtextual note When the Boer prayers achieved victory—as the Boers believed—the Boers were confirmed once more in their trustⒶtextual note in the power of prayer. When a crushing finality of defeat overwhelmed them, later, in the face of their confident supplicationsⒶtextual note, their attitude was not altered, nor their confidence in the righteousness and intelligence of God impairedⒺexplanatory note.

Often we see a mother who has been despoiled, little by little, of everything she held dear in life but a sole remaining dying child; weⒶtextual note have seen her, I say, kneeling by its bed and pouring out from a breaking heartⒶtextual note beseechings to God for mercy that would get glad and instant answer from any man who had the power to save that child,—yet no such prayer has ever moved a God to pity. Has that mother been convinced? Sometimes—but only for a little while. She was merely a human being, and like the rest—ready to pray again in the next emergency; ready to believe again that she would be heard.

We know that the real God, the Supreme God, the actual Maker of the universe, made everything that is in it. We know that He made all the creatures, from the microbe and the brontosaur down to man and the monkey, and that he knew what would happen to each and every one of them, from the beginning of time to the end of it. In the case of each creature, big or little, He made it an unchanging law that that creature should suffer wantonⒶtextual note and unnecessary pains and miseries every day of its life—that by that law these pains and miseries could not be avoided by any diplomacy exercisable by the creature; that its way, from birth to death, should be beset by traps, pitfalls, and gins, ingeniously planned and ingeniously concealed; and that by another law every transgression of a law of Nature, either ignorantly or wittingly committed, should in every instance be visited by a punishment ten-thousandfold out of proportion to the transgression. We stand astonished at the all-comprehensive malice which could patiently descend to the contriving of elaborate tortures forⒶtextual note the meanest and pitifulest of the countless kinds of creatures that were to inhabit the earth. The spider was so contrived that she would [begin page 139] not eat grass, but must catch flies, and such things, and inflict a slow and horrible death upon them, unaware that her turn would come next. The wasp was so contrived that he also would decline grass and stab the spider, not conferring upon her a swift and merciful death, but merely half paralysingⒶtextual note her, then ramming her down into the wasp den, there to live and suffer for days, while the wasp babies should chew her legs off at their leisureⒺexplanatory note. In turn, there was a murderer provided for the wasp, and another murderer for the wasp’s murderer, and so on throughout the whole scheme of living creatures in the earth. There isn’t one of them that was not designed and appointed to inflictⒶtextual note miseryⒶtextual note and murder on some fellow creature and suffer the same, in turn, from some other murderous fellow creature. In flying into the web the fly isⒶtextual note merely guilty of an indiscretion—not a breach of any law—yet the fly’s punishment is ten-thousandfold out of proportion to that little indiscretion.

The ten-thousandfold law of punishment is rigorously enforced against every creature, man included. The debt, whether made innocently or guiltily, is promptly collected by Nature—and in this world, without waiting for the ten-billionfold additional penalty appointed—in the case of man—Ⓐtextual notefor collection in the next.

This system of atrocious punishments for somethings and nothings begins upon the helpless baby on its first day in the world, and never ceases until its last one. Is there a father who would persecute his baby with unearned colics andⒶtextual note the unearned miseries of teething,Ⓐtextual note and follow these with mumps, measles, scarlet feverⒶtextual note, and the hundred other persecutions appointed for the unoffendingⒶtextual note creature? And then follow these, from youth to the grave, with a multitude ofⒶtextual note ten-thousandfold punishments for laws broken either by intention or indiscretion?Ⓐtextual note With a fine sarcasm, we ennoble God with the title of Father—yet we know quite well that we should hang His style of father wherever we might catch him.

The pulpit’s explanation of, and apology for, these crimes, is patheticallyⒶtextual note destitute of ingenuity. It says they are committed for the benefit of the sufferer. They are to discipline him, purify him, elevate him, train him for the society of the DeityⒶtextual note and the angels—send him up sanctified with cancers, tumors, smallpox, and the rest of the educational plant; whereas the pulpit knows that it is stultifying itself, if it knows anything at all. It knows that if this kind of discipline is wise and salutary, we are insane not to adopt it ourselves and apply it to our children.Ⓐtextual note

Does the pulpit really believe that we can improveⒶtextual note a purifying and elevating breed of culture invented by the Almighty? It seems to me that if the pulpit honestly believed what it is preaching, in this regard, it would recommend every father to imitateⒶtextual note the Almighty’s methods.Ⓐtextual note

When the pulpit has succeeded in persuadingⒶtextual note its congregation that this system has been really wisely and mercifully contrived by the Almighty to discipline and purify and elevate His children whom He so loves, the pulpit judiciously closes its mouth. It doesn’t venture further, and explain why these same crimes and cruelties are inflicted upon the higher animals—Ⓐtextual notethe alligators, the tigers, and the rest. It even proclaims that the beasts perish—meaning that their sorrowful life begins and ends here; that they go [begin page 140] no further; that there is no heavenⒶtextual note for them; that neither God nor the angels, nor the redeemed, desire their society on the other side. It puts the pulpit in a comical situation, because in spite of all itsⒶtextual note ingenuities of explanation and apologyⒶtextual note it convicts its God of being a wanton and pitiless tyrantⒶtextual note in the case of the unoffending beasts. At any rate, and beyond cavil or argument, by its silence it condemnsⒶtextual note Him irrevocably as a malignant master,Ⓐtextual note after having persuaded the congregation that He is constructed entirely out of compassion, righteousness,Ⓐtextual note and all-pervading love. The pulpit doesn’t know how to reconcile these grotesque contradictions, and it doesn’t try.Ⓐtextual note

In His destitution of one and all of the qualities which could grace a God and invite respect for Him, and reverence, and worship, the real God, the genuine God, the Maker of the mighty universe, is just like all the other gods in the list. He proves, every day, that He takes no interest in man, nor inⒶtextual note the other animals, further than to torture them, slay them, and get out of this pastime such entertainment as itⒶtextual note may afford—and do what HeⒶtextual note can not to get weary of the eternal and changeless monotony of it.