The present text is based upon a manuscript, DV9, the only phase under Mark Twain's control. The paper is from a “Pratt's Greater New York Tablet.” The date of composition is probably 1905, for Mark Twain's script follows the long dimension of the leaves (see description of Supplement A7). The present title is Mark Twain's; DeVoto invented the title for the only previous publication (LE, pp. 220–222), “The Intelligence of God.” In pencil an unknown hand, probably DeVoto, inscribed brackets around the sixth sentence of the first paragraph. The sentence does not appear in LE. Mark Twain inserted “Daily” (107.8) but left “We” in upper case; the word is now in lower case. A period has been supplied after “exceptions” (108.35).
[1905]
He made all things. There is not in the universe a thing, great or small, which He did not make. He pronounced His work “good.” The word covers the whole of it; it puts the seal of His approval upon each detail of it, it praises each detail of it. We also approve and praise—with our mouths. With our mouths we praise and approve the whole work. We do it loudly, we do it fervently —also judiciously. Judiciously. For we do not enter into particulars. Daily we pour out freshets of disapproval, dispraise, censure, passionate resentment, upon a considerable portion of the work—but not with our mouths. No it is our acts that betray us, not our words. Our words are all compliments, and they deceive Him. Without a doubt they do. They make Him think we approve of all of His works.
That is the way we argue. For ages we have taught ourselves to believe that when we hide a disapproving fact, burying it under a mountain of complimentary lies, He is not aware of it, does not notice it, perceives only the compliments, and is deceived. But is it really so? Among ourselves we concede that acts speak louder than words, but we have persuaded ourselves that in His case it is different; we imagine that all He cares for is words—noise; that if we make the words pretty enough they will blind Him to the acts that give them the lie.
But seriously, does any one really believe that? Is it not a [begin page 108] daring affront to the Supreme Intelligence to believe such a thing? Does any of us inordinately praise a mother's whole family to her face, indiscriminately, and in that same moment slap one of her children? Would not that act turn our inflamed eulogy into nonsense? Would the mother be deceived? Would she not be offended—and properly?
But see what we do in His case. We approve all His works, we praise all His works, with a fervent enthusiasm—of words; and in the same moment we kill a fly, which is as much one of His works as is any other, and has been included and complimented in our sweeping eulogy. We not only kill the fly, but we do it in a spirit of measureless disapproval—even a spirit of hatred, exasperation, vindictiveness; and we regard that creature with disgust and loathing—which is the essence of contempt—and yet we have just been praising it, approving it, glorifying it. We have been praising it to its Maker, and now our act insults its Maker. The praise was dishonest, the act is honest; the one was wordy hypocrisy, the other is compact candor.
We hunt the fly remorselessly; also the flea, the rat, the snake, the disease-germ and a thousand other creatures which He pronounced good, and was satisfied with, and which we loudly praise and approve—with our mouths—and then harry and chase and malignantly destroy, by wholesale.
Manifestly this is not well, not wise, not right. It breeds falsehood and sham. Would He be offended if we should change it and appear before Him with the truth in our mouths as well as in our acts? May we not, trustingly and without fear, change our words and say—
“O Source of Truth, we have lied, and we repent. Hear us confess that which we have felt from the beginning of time, but have weakly tried to conceal from Thee: humbly we praise and glorify many of Thy works, and are grateful for their presence in our earth, Thy footstool, but not all of them.”
That would be sufficient. It would not be necessary to name the exceptions.