Our God of hearty humor is one who would not lie in
wait, nursing His malice against us poor human mites, spy-
ing upon us constantly, and rejoicing in His enormous power
of mischief. Who would not punish the children for the sins
of the fathers. Who would not play favorites and set one
race to destroy another. Who would not have an insatiable
appetite for foolish incense and mumbled praise. Who would
not be a mean God for mean people, preferring those made
in His own image and likeness. Who would hate to see the
spiritual distortions that are now practised before the Other,
in the name of religion. Who would have nothing to do with
an Atonement of cruelty and blood. Who would be a kind



206 PALMS OF PAPYRUS

human God for human beings and not a mythical monster
belonging to a remote age of nightmare and darkness. Who
would get tired sometimes of His majesty up there and come
down and visit with us. Having His laugh with us — ah,then
to be witty would no longer be sinful and sanctified dulness
would lose its crown. Shouldn't we enjoy the humor of God,
especially the immense joke that we quite mistook His char-
acter during ages and ages? — stupendous hoax! Hearing
our complaints with kind indulgence and disproving that old
libel that one may not see God and live. Being, in short, a
hearty God whom a plain man could talk to without the help
of bell, book or candle, and who would care for us, His little
ones, as tenderly as we care for our own. What a re-writing
there would be of the legend of God ! What a discrediting of
the old fables ! What a tearing down of the old hideous
idols before which the world has prostrated itself for a thou-
sand and a thousand years ! — for there should be no lifeless
images of the Living God. What an abandonment of the
churches ! — for this God would meet us naturally anywhere,
at home or abroad in the fields. What a wiping out of the
creeds ! — knowing Him face to face, we should not have to
set down our belief in a book, lest we forget it over night.
