our feet in accepting the explanation and interpre-
tation which any of the formal religious systems,
old or new, place upon it? I think not.

In the presence of the midnight skies, of the crea-
tive and destructive cosmic processes constantly
going on in the awful depths of the sidereal space,
of suns and systems coming in and going out like
blooming and fading flowers, in the presence of the
geological and biological histories of the globe, or of
the histories of the different nations and races of the
globe, does not most of our Christian mythology
seem utterly childish?

How strange that we should crave a creed or a be-
lief that goes outside of our experimental knowledge;
that is independent of it, not subject to its tests and
limitations; something afar off and irrational and
inexplicable, and beyond the reach of time and
change! Who is the philosopher who said that we
are guided by our common sense in everything but
our religious beliefs?

We can taste and see and touch and smell and eat
and drink and measure and accumulate and organ-
ize and assimilate scientific knowledge; it gives us a
place whereon to stand our Archimedean lever with
which we can move the world and the whole sidereal
system of worlds. But with our so-called theological
knowledge, and with much of our metaphysical
knowledge, it is like trying to move with a lever the
mountain upon which one stands.

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