“Not especially. What about the stars?” I asked.
“Did you ever imagine you were God, away above all the suns and worlds, looking down now and then at the earth? It would be an awful small place, the earth now, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would,” I agreed.
The boy was silent for several minutes. Then he continued:
“If some of those stars are suns—like I read in a book a while back—and each sun has its worlds revolving about it too, the earth’s only an awful small speck in a great big space, isn’t it, Billy? It can’t be anything else!”
“Well, and what if it is?”
“If the earth’s only an awful small speck in a great big space, think how much smaller we livin’ people must show up—down here on it. I don’t mean in size, Billy, I mean importance. Well, then, if you were God, away off up in the heavens, what would one little earth like this amount to, anyhow? Still less, what would any one person or persons amount to—you and me, for instance? If you or I wanted to go to the devil, be just as bad as we pleased, do anything we wanted, what really big difference would it make? Do you know, Billy, I don’t believe God gives any single person half so much attention, or cares half so much what becomes of him, as a lot of grown folks try to make out. It’s just conceit. That’s the word, Billy; conceit! Men like my father, for instance! They get the idea that God’s a whole lot like themselves. They think he’s got the time and patience to go sneakin’ around watching for folks doing things they’ve been told not to do. But somehow, when I lie out in a boat like this and think about the stars, I sort of see things different. Myself, for instance. And the minute I go back home and listen to Pa, I get my proportion all twisted. My sins are all big and important again.”
“But the Bible says the hairs of our heads have all got numbers on ’em,” I defended. “And no one goes out and shoots an English sparrow but what God sees it when it starts kicking.”
“I don’t believe it, Billy! Because if God did know the numbers of the hairs on everybody’s heads, what good would it do Him? And what if He does know when some one shoots a few birds? What’s the use of Him losing sleep over tiny, foolish things like those when it’s lots more important to keep that frail, pretty evening star hung up there in space? Seems to me there’s too many folks want to make God a cranky old man, always finding fault with people because they don’t do things His way—or a bookkeeper like old Joe Nevins at the knitting mills who almost wrecks the place if he finds two cents off in his balance.”
“And what kind of a person do you think God is? You believe there is a God, don’t you?”