Let us take an example of a miracle-germ in our own time. When Horace Traubel, faithful and simple-minded disciple of Walt Whitman, died in September, 1919, his body was taken to the Community Church, at Park Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, New York, for the funeral service. But when the body reached the church, the little company of mourners could not enter; the building had suddenly caught fire. Imagine this episode handed down through generations of simple people by word of mouth. The intimate disciple of a great poet, both of them impatient of the genteel religions, is borne dead to a sacred edifice. It bursts into flame. Would that not be taken as some authentic Pentecost, and at the very least as a proof of Walt’s divinity? Yet we know well enough that the event was no miracle, but rather what Hobbes called “an extraordinary felicity.” There is one more Biblical passage I should like to refer to, one that has often been considered a knotty saying. It is the parable of the talents and the unprofitable servant. I like to conceive Deity in the guise of that hard master who wanted his own with usury. “Well,” I can imagine God saying to the newly dead, “what did you think of that world I gave you?” “Not so bad, on the whole,” replies the embarrassed soul. “What!” cries God. “Simpleton, do you mean to say you took it as you found it, accepted it, swallowed it down without question? Depart from me, unprofitable servant! You were supposed to remould it nearer to your heart’s desire, to create out of my materials a new world of your own.”