I Q agreement with nature; the special are false because they vio- 

 late nature. . . . There is no local heaven, there is no local 

 hell; nor are there beings apart from nature itself, presiding 

 over such places . . . These things are priestly dogmas . . . 

 Everything in nature is but in some form or other, force . . . 

 You are; but you are that form of it that partakes so fully of 

 the nature of God as properly enough to be called an immortal 

 being . . . The whole awful universe, the Grand Whole is a 

 thinking Monon ... As for praying to Him, prayer is only 

 of use subjectively . . . We should pray because it makes us 

 better; but you should never expect an answer when the 

 answer would be in violation of the known laws of nature. 

 Such an answer would be God contradicting himself; for God 

 and nature are one and the same. Hoping you will continue 

 searching after truth . . . 



Your affectionate friend and old teacher 



The junior at Washington and Jefferson could lay this com- 

 munication beside such as the following from his father: 



I hope you got my letter from Detroit enclosing money order 

 for $10.00. Did you ever get back the ten you loaned to 



G ? We are having very hard times here and money is so 



hard to collect I sometimes hardly know what to do. I shall 

 try to send you ten more before I go east. 



We have been having a series of Entertainments in Chicago 

 quite recently. First of all came Bob Ingersoll with his annual 

 tirade against Christianity, the Sonship & Divinity of Christ, 

 the Miracles & the stupid preachers and doctors of divinity 

 who believe such things. . . . But then it pays to lecture at 

 $500.00 a night. He told us this last time about the loveliness 

 of home — he really had a Christian home in mind — and then 

 went on to say that a woman should not be obliged to live with 

 a man as wife if she did not wish to, and so of the man. He did 

 not tell us how that arrangement could result in beautiful & 

 lovely homes. He presented once more the exploded theories 

 of infidels and agnostics as to miracles . . . and so on ad 

 nauseam. 



Such men, however, do immense harm by unsettling un- 

 stable and uneducated minds in the fundamentals of Faith and 

 Morals. In a materialistic age like this, when many men are 



