" We feel them; they are very real. But
we try to lay our hands about and feel that other thing we felt before. In
the dark night in the fuel-room we cry to our Beautiful dream-god: "Oh,
let us come near you, and lay our head against your feet. Now in our hour
of need be near us." But He is not there; He is gone away. The old
questioning devil is there.
We must have been awakened sooner or later. The imagination cannot always
triumph over reality, the desire over truth. We must have been awakened.
If it was done a little sharply, what matter? It was done thoroughly, and
it had to be done.
VII.
And a new life begins for us--a new time, a life as cold as that of a man
who sits on the pinnacle of an iceberg and sees the glittering crystals all
about him. The old looks indeed like a long hot delirium, peopled with
phantasies. The new is cold enough.
Now we have no God. We have had two: the old God that our fathers handed
down to us, that we hated, and never liked: the new one that we made for
ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see
what he was made of--the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned.
Now we have no God.
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." It may be so. Most
things said or written have been the work of fools.
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