She
had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been
obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of
life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the
night was at hand.
For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no
mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown
light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the
Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this
little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great
Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the
clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had
schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature,
working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much
grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures.
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