That theology cleared for faith an open road,made of faith a reasonable thing,yet did not rob it of a sense of high adventure;cleansed it of the taints of thrift and selfish concern.In this reaffirmation of vitalism there might be a future,yes,an individual future,yet it was far from the smug conception of salvation.Here was a faith conferred by the freedom of truth;a faith that lost and regained itself in life;it was dynamic in its operation;for,as Lessing said,the searching after truth,and not its possession,gives happiness to man.In the words of an American scientist,taken from his book on Heredity,"The evolutionary idea has forced man to consider the probable future of his own race on earth and to take measures to control that future,a matter he had previously left largely to fate."Here indeed was another sign of the times,to find in a strictly scientific work a sentence truly religious!As I continued to read these works,I found them suffused with religion,religion of a kind and quality I had not imagined.The birthright of the spirit of man was freedom,freedom to experiment,to determine,to create--to create himself,to create society in the image of God!Spiritual creation the function of cooperative man through the coming ages,the task that was to make him divine.Here indeed was the germ of a new sanction,of a new motive,of a new religion that strangely harmonized with the concepts of the old--once the dynamic power of these was revealed.
I had been thinking of my family--of my family in terms of Matthew--and yet with a growing yearning that embraced them all.I had not informed Maude of my illness,and I had managed to warn Tom Peters not to do so.
I had simply written her that after the campaign I had gone for a rest to California;yet in her letters to me,after this information had reached her,I detected a restrained anxiety and affection that troubled me.
Sequences of words curiously convey meanings and implications that transcend their literal sense,true thoughts and feelings are difficult to disguise even in written speech.Could it be possible after all that had happened that Maude still loved me?I continually put the thought away from me,but continually it returned to haunt me.Suppose Maude could not help loving me,in spite of my weaknesses and faults,even as Iloved Nancy in spite of hers?Love is no logical thing.