She has, however, made a gloss upon her original
faith to the effect 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, &c.
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