But how do I know what is truth, you ask 1
I don't. But I know particularly well what
isn't. And surely that is something to have
gained. It isn't true that the great central
Mind that planned all things is capable of
jealousy or of revenge, or of cruelty or of
injustice. These are human attributes ; and
the book which ascribes them to the Infinite
must be human also. It isn't true that the
laws of Nature have been capriciously dis-
turbed, that snakes have talked, that women
have been turned to salt, that rods have
brought water out of rocks. You must in
honesty confess that if these things were
presented to us when we were adults for the
first time, we should smile at them. It isn't
true that the Fountain of aU common sense
should punish a race for a venial oflFence
committed by a person long since dead, and
then should add to the crass injustice by
heaping the whole retribution upon a single
iimocent scapegoat. Can you not see all the
want of justice and logic, to say nothing of the
want of mercy, involved in such a conception ?



44 THE STARK MTJNRO LETTERS.
