of a "professional." You still wish that assurance--that is why you
promised to wait for this letter. You told me your case; you wanted
expert testimony. Here it is: You need not be afraid. God will not be
angry--God will not punish you. You said that you did not know much
about God. Surely you know this much--anger can never be one of His
attributes. God is never angry. Men would be angry if they were
treated as they treat Him--that is all. In mathematics, certain
letters represent certain unknown quantities. So words are only the
symbols for imperfectly realized ideas. If by "hell" you understand
what that word means to me--the endlessness of life with nothing in it
that makes life worth while--then, if you still want my opinion, I
think that you will most certainly go there. God will not be angry.
God will not send you there, you will have sent yourself--it will not
be God's punishment laid on you, it will be your punishment laid by you
on yourself. But it is not in you to let that come to pass.

All of the "philosophies of life," as they are called, are, I think,
varieties of two. I suppose Materialism and Idealism cover them.
Those who hold with the first are in the air-tight box of years and
call it life. The others are in the box, too, but they call it time.
And they know that, after all, the box is really not air-tight; each of
them remembers the day when he first discovered that there were cracks
in the box, and the day he learned that one could best see through
those narrow openings by coming up resolutely to the hard necessary
walls that hold one in. Then came the astounding enlightenment that
only a shred of reality was within the cramped prison of the box--just
a darkened, dusty bit--that all the beautiful rest of it lay outside.
These are the ones who, pressing up against the rough walls of the box,
see, through their chinks, the splendor of what lies outside--see it
and know that, one day, they shall have it.