midnight
David expressed some such opinions which rather scandalized his father who had grown up in the conventional school of unbounded , unreasoning reverence for the Hebrew , Greek and Keltic classics . From that they passed to the great problems , the undeterminable problems of the Universe ; the awful littleness of men -- mere lice , perhaps , on the scurfy body of a shrinking , dying planet of a fifth-rate sun , one of a billion other suns . The Revd . Howel like most of the Christian clergy of all times of course never looked at the midnight sky or gave any thought to the terrors and mysteries of astronomy , a science so modern , in fact , that it only came into real existence two or three hundred years ago ; and is even now only taken seriously by about ten thousand people in Europe and America . Where , in this measureless universe -- which indeed might only be one of several universes -- was God to be found ? A God that had been upset by the dietary of a small desert tribe , who fussed over burnt sacrifices and the fat of rams at one time ; at another objected to censuses ; at another and a later date wanted a human sacrifice to placate his wrath ; or who had washed out the world 's fauna and flora in a flood which had left no geological evidence to attest its having taken place . `` Did you ever think about the Dinosaurs , father ? ''