"How incoherently you talk; after all, suppose that there is no
God, for do your best, it is but a sentiment, a belief without
demonstrative proof."

"Oh, Doctor, don't! You are material, and go by lines and angles;
cannot you understand that a God whose existence you would have
to prove is no God at all? that if His works and givings out don't
declare and proclaim him, He is a sham? You cannot see and hear,
Doctor, when you are in one of your material moods. Look up, if you
can see no reflection in the waters below."

"Well, when I look into the revealed heaven, for instance, Bart, I see
it peopled with things of the earth, reflected into it from the earth;
showing that the whole idea is of the earth--earthy."

"Oh, Doctor! like the poor old Galilean; when he thought it was all
up, he went out and dug bait, and started off a-fishing. You attend
to your fishing, and let me dream. If God should attempt to reveal
Himself to you to-night, which I wouldn't do, He would have to
elevate and enlarge and change you to a celestial, so that you could
understand Him; or shrink and shrivel Himself to your capacity, and
address you on your level, as I do, using the language and imagery of
this earth, and you would answer Him as you do me--'It is all of the
earth--earthy.' I want to sleep."

The Doctor pondered as if there was a matter for thought in what
he had heard, and a little ripple of under-talk ran on about the
subjects, the everlasting old, old and eternally new problems that
men have dreamed and stumbled over, and always will--which Bart had
dreamily spoken of as if they were very familiar to his thoughts, and