night; but the dead are not colder.

And we say it slowly, but without sighing, "Yes, we see it now; there is no
God."

And, we add, growing a little colder yet. "There is no justice. The ox
dies in the yoke, beneath its master's whip; it turns its anguish-filled
eyes on the sunlight, but there is no sign of recompense to be made it.
The black man is shot like a dog, and it goes well with the shooter. The
innocent are accused and the accuser triumphs. If you will take the
trouble to scratch the surface anywhere, you will see under the skin a
sentient being writhing in impotent anguish."

And, we say further, and our heart is as the heart of the dead for
coldness, "There is no order: all things are driven about by a blind
chance."

What a soul drinks in with its mother's milk will not leave it in a day.
From our earliest hour we have been taught that the thought of the heart,
the shaping of the rain-cloud, the amount of wool that grows on a sheep's
back, the length of a drought, and the growing of the corn, depend on
nothing that moves immutable, at the heart of all things; but on the
changeable will of a changeable being, whom our prayers can alter. To us,
from the beginning, nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed
with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not; to go to
church or not; to say his prayers right or not; to travel on a Sunday or
not. Was it possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is--the
flowing vestment of an unchanging reality? When the soul breaks free from
the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves
off in him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out.