For my part, I simply refuse to worry about God. If there is a God, I hope that I may in time find favor in His sight and obtain my share of the spiritual loot; there is nothing that I can do about it. And if there is no God, there is nothing I can do about that, either. I profess neither knowledge nor theory about the Supreme Being and the heavenly wonders; knowing nothing, I believe nothing, and believing nothing, I am prepared to believe anything, asking only reasonably correct information and authentic signs. These I fail to find in selfish prayers, constant squabbling over the wishes of the Lord and the building of magnificent temples within sight and hearing of the ramshackle tenements of the poor. I do not believe that I shall ever find them, for
“Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know,
Nor where life springs, nor whither life doth go.”
Without religion I thoroughly enjoy the business of living. I am oppressed by no dreadful taboos, and I am without fear; I set myself no standards save those of ordinary self-respect, decent consideration of the rights and privileges of others, and the observance of the laws of the land except Prohibition. To my own satisfaction, at least, I have proved that religion and the Church are not at all necessary to a full and happy life. And if I am thus a sinner and my chance of ultimate salvation forfeit, then the fault lies at the door of those fanatics whose method of teaching religion to a child was, and is, to hammer it into his head by constant threats of terrible punishment, by drawing torturing word pictures of Hell, by describing God as a vicious, vindictive old man, by scolding and tormenting and laying down taboos until the poor child’s brain whirls in an agony of fright and misery. I know of no better way to salute them than to refer them to certain words of their own Savior, to be found in the thirty-fourth verse of the twenty-third chapter of the Book of St. Luke.
If I ever have a son, which now seems unlikely, his boyhood will be quite different from my own. For him Sunday shall be a day of rest and pleasure; there shall be no taboos, and no attendance upon church and Sunday school unless their performances are more interesting than other available entertainment. They now rank just below the moving pictures, and are therefore last. I shall bring my son in contact with the sacred books of the Christians, the Jews, the Buddhists and of all the other religions as rapidly as he is able to comprehend them, and he shall be permitted to choose his own religion if he decides that a religion is necessary to his happiness and peace of mind. But if he shows any signs of becoming a preacher, priest or rabbi, or even a Brother, I shall whale hell out of him. I am that intolerant.
THE END
A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN
WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET
This book is composed on the Linotype in Bodoni, so-called after its designer, Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) a celebrated Italian scholar and printer. Bodoni planned his type especially for use on the more smoothly finished papers that came into vogue late in the eighteenth century and drew his letters with a mechanical regularity that is readily apparent on comparison with the less formal old style. Other characteristics that will be noted are the square serifs without fillet and the marked contrast between the light and heavy strokes.
