Now, if this is all, if there is for us only the physical might of
nature and the world is only what it seems to be; if there is no other
God except such as can be found within this sort of cosmic process,
then human life is a sardonic mockery, and self-respect a silly
farce, and all the heroism of the heart and the valor of the mind the
unmeaning activities of an insignificant atom. The very men who will
naturally enter your churches are the ones who have always found that
theory of life intolerable. It doesn't take in all the facts. They
could not live by it and the soul of the race, looking out upon this
universe of immeasurable material bulk, has challenged it and dared to
assert its own superiority.
So by this road these men come back to the transcendent God without
whom they cannot guard that integrity of personality which we are all
set to keep. For here there is no way of believing in oneself, no
way of enduring this world or our place in it and no tolerable way of
understanding it except we look beneath this cosmic hostility and
find our self-respect and a satisfying cosmic meaning in perceiving
spiritual force, a conscious ethical purpose, which interpenetrates
the thunder and the lightning, which lies behind the stars as they
move in their perpetual courses. "Through it the most ancient heavens
are fresh and strong.
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