"Just so with free-will; we know by our reason that the thing is
impossible; we act as though it were a prevailing possibility."

His position with regard to Christianity was shortly as follows;
it is settled by an extract from his diary:

"I have often puzzled over this: Why in the Gospels did Christ say
nothing about the whole fabric of nature which in His capacity as
Creator ('through whom He made all things') He must have had the
moulding of? All His teaching was personal and individual, dealing
with man alone, an infinitesimal part of His creation ... for compare
the shred, the span of being which man's existence represents with
the countless æons of animal and vegetable life which have
preceded, and surround, and will in all probability succeed it—and
not a word of all this from the Being who gave and supported their
life, calling it out of the abyss for inscrutable and useless
ends—to minister, as the theologians tell us, to the wants and
animal cravings of pitiful mankind.

"Why is it that He there takes no cognizance of the whole frame of
things of which I am a part, but only deals with human feelings and
emotions as if they were the end of all these gigantic works—the
Milky Way, the blazing sun, the teeming earth—only to raise thoughts
of reverence in the heart of this pitiful being, and failing too, so
hopelessly, so constantly to do so?...

"'I will accept Christ,' said Herbert, 'as my superior, yes! as my
master, yes! but not as my God.'" One sees, I think, where the
difficulty lies; it must be felt by any man whose idea of God is