Mr. Delmer was talking about the worst form of unwisdom--Atheism; a terrible subject to him, and one he approached with diffidence but resolution, in the face of the unusual pew-full just below him. "It is an extraordinary thing," he was saying, "that there are those who actually deny the existence of God. We have, surely, only to think of the immeasurable spaces of the universe--the distance He has set between one thing and another.... It is reported of the Emperor Napoleon that, looking up at the stars one night, he remarked...." Ivy, who had heard this remark of the Emperor Napoleon's before, let her attention wander again to the hats of Mrs. Peterson and others. When she listened once more, the vicar had left Napoleon, though he was still dealing with the heavenly bodies. "If an express train, performing sixty miles an hour, were to start off from this planet--were such a thing possible to imagine, which of course it is not--towards the moon, and continue its journey without stops until it arrived, it would reach its destination, according to the calculations of scientists, in exactly 1 year, 8 months, 26 days." (Ivy, who had left school lately enough to remember the distance set by the creator between the earth and the moon, began to work this out in her head; she did not think that her father had got it quite right.) "And, in the face of this, there are those who say that God does not exist. A further thought, yet more wonderful. If the same train, travelling at the same rapid rate, were to leave this earth again, this time for the sun, the time it would take over this journey would be--I ask you, if you can, to imagine it, my friends--no less than 175 years, 1 week, and 6 days...." (Ivy gave it up; it was too difficult without pencil and paper.) "Is it possible that, knowing this, there are still those who doubt God? Yet once more. Imagine, if you can, this train again starting forth, this time bound for the planet Jupiter. Scientists tell us, and we must believe it" (All right, thought Ivy, with relief, if he'd got it out of a book), "that such a journey would take, if performed when Jupiter was at its furthest, 1097 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 10 hours, and a fraction. Can it really be that, confronted with the dizzy thought of these well-nigh incredibly lengthy journeys from one heavenly body to another, there are yet men and women who attribute the universe to the blind workings of what they are pleased to call the Forces of Nature? I ask you to consider earnestly, could any force but God have conceived and executed such great distances? And Jupiter, my friends, is comparatively near at hand. Take instead one of those little (but only apparently little) nameless stars twinkling in the firmament. Imagine our train starting off into space once more...."