My mind instinctively felt what I had discretion not to say: "I should despise a God who had no more ethical sense than that. God should be harder on my brother than on them." Much of my philosophy and theology was worked out during my seminary course; but there were gaps that I could not fill. So I next went to Yale to study philosophy. In postgraduate work, through the guidance of professors, I expected to find the "wise men" for whom I had waited so long. However, these "wise men" are not readily understood in a few weeks. They have a poor faculty for making connection with all the ideas that still linger in the mind of callow youth. At any rate it soon dawned upon me that there was no such God as I was looking for or else these men were unable to give Him to me. When this conviction came to me I went out from a recitation one night into the dark and once more fought the old battle. Standing on the New Haven Green and looking up into the pelting sleet I said: "Now I have met the 'wise men,' and still I do not know whether there is an inspired Bible, or a heaven, or a God." But I exclaimed, "O God, if you are, and if I should ever meet you anywhere in eternity, I would run to you as a little child runs to a father. I would tell you how weak and sinful and ignorant I am, and I know you would love me." That night on the old Green, while in the dark and pelted with sleet, I went out onto the last crag where any human soul can go, and cried into the infinite depths, "O God, if you are there, some day I shall know you and love you." In that act I passed beyond all men and all institutions, and took my stand with the final reality, whatever it might be, and at least I was free and not afraid. Though thoroughly agnostic still, yet I could quietly work and wait. Returning to my studies and resolving to appropriate whatever I could understand, I was surprised to find how much of the teaching ministered to my needs. Before long I came to see that God did not have a central nucleus, or ghost form in heaven; neither did He resemble a refined substance like ether. Spirit was something quite different from what I had supposed. My mind was hitting the trail. Then I understood that God had not revealed Himself to the world according to my demand, because no such God existed in heaven or earth. So one day in class I asked a professor, who is now dead, if he thought we should see God in heaven as we see men and trees here. At the same time I assured him that I did not. His answer was, "I think your position would be a very dangerous doctrine to teach." But my own conviction was that it was becoming a very dangerous doctrine not to teach. Time has proved that I was right. Millions of people are suffering to-day from false images of God or from no image of God. Not long ago when I related this class incident to a Yale man, he remarked, "Well, Professor ---- made great growth before he died."