I fear that if the Burman accepted a Personal All-powerful God and then looked at the state of the world, his attitude towards that Personality would not be all admiration and reverence. Indeed, they have often told me so. But before Law, before Necessity. You cannot revolt against the inevitable. Passion is useless. The suffering which would be resented from a Personality is borne with courage as an inevitable result. You may be of good courage and say, "It is my fault, my ignorance; I will learn not to put my hands in the fire and so not be burnt." But if you suppose a God burnt you without telling you why, without giving you a chance, what then? Is this hard to understand? I do not know, but to me it is not so. For I can remember a boy, who was much as these Burmans are, who found authority hard to bear, punishment very difficult to accept; who remembered always that the punishment might have been omitted, who thought it was often mistaken and vindictive. For if you are almost always ill, and find for days and weeks and months that very little mental exertion is as much as you are capable of, how much do you accept the justice of being called "idle," "lazy," "indolent," and being kept in to waste what little mental strength you have left in writing meaningless impositions? There is more. It is a Christian teaching, a lesson that is frequently enforced in children, that all their acts are watched by God. "He sees me now." "God is watching me." How often are not these written in large words on nursery walls? And do you think that there are not some natures who revolt from this? To be watched--always watched. Cannot you imagine the intense oppression, the irritation and revulsion, such a doctrine may occasion? "Cannot I be left alone?" And when he learns that there is another belief--that he is not being watched, that he is not a child in a nursery, but a man acting under laws he can learn--cannot you imagine the endless relief, the joy as of emancipation from a prison? That it is so to many people I know, the feeling that law means freedom, but I also know that to others it is not. "Law, this rigid law," said the French missionary priest with a sigh when we were discussing the matter, "it makes me shudder. It seems to me like an iron chain, like a terrible destiny binding us in. Ah, I never could believe that. But a God who watches over us, who protects us, who is our Father, that is to me true and beautiful. Who will help you if not God? Under Law you must face the world alone. No!" and he shuddered, "let us not think of it. I cannot abide the idea." And how many are like him? Do you think that such feelings can be changed? Do you think that he who thinks Law to be freedom will ever be argued or converted into Theism? It can never be. Such beliefs are innate, they are instincts far beyond reason or discussion, to be understood only by those who have felt them.