It makes one wonder, for instance, why man is so jealous of himself. The Supreme Power is immeasurable, he tells himself. It has no such a thing as limitation. Heaven, no matter in what form he may conceive it, is utterly boundless. Yet he is jealous of it. He does not want to concede that any other life will form a part of it but that of his own breed. He has tried, through unnumbered centuries, to fool himself into the belief that he is the one and only thing in all creation upon which the Ruling Power of the universe has its guardian eye. He has tried to make himself believe that he is the one toad in the huge puddle of life. He has not conceded that an all-powerful but tender God might love flowers and birds and trees and many other living things as well as he loves man. And as I sit here under my spruce trees again, it seems to me that, just because he has been so near-sighted, man has not yet found a faith which is all-comforting and of which he is utterly sure. I seem to see a very clear reason for this. In this age, though still fettered by his egoism, man is not utterly blind to his own deformities. As “civilization” progresses, he sees more and more what a monster he has been in the past, and what a monster in many ways he is to-day. He sees his breed committing every crime known to the ages, from petty larceny to world-slaughters that devastate nations. He sees everywhere the strong taking advantage of the weak. He sees millions go hungry and cold that a few may profit. In great convention-halls, he sees the “statesmen” that rule the destiny of a mighty nation cutting capers and acting generally like a lot of silly little children. He sees every man in a great game fighting to see who can accumulate the most dollars, no matter at what cost to the others. He sees sickening and disgusting fads come and go. He looks on a world-brothel of iniquity, of discontent, of avarice and greed and butchery among men. Nowhere does he see the stability, the dignity, and the mighty forces of good that should walk hand in hand with “the chosen of God.” He is beginning to see himself, at last, as a contemptible specimen of life--in spite of his brain and his inventions. He is beginning to understand that the most perfect airship his brain will ever conceive cannot take him to heaven. He is beginning to realize that there is a thing greater than brain, greater than mechanical progress. And as he comes to understand more and more how imperfect a thing he is, the more unstable his faith becomes; and the sacrilegious thought comes to him, unconsciously but with terrific force: “If I am the chosen handiwork of God, then I can have no very great faith in the judgment and workmanship of God.”