“There was room for them all on earth,” answered Geoffrey.  “The universe is wide.  It does not dismay me.  There are mysteries in our nature, the nature we think we know—­shall there be none in that which we know not?  Worlds die, to live again when, after millions of ages, the conditions become once more favourable to life, and why should not a man?  We are creatures of the world, we reflect its every light and shadow, we rejoice in its rejoicing, its every feature has a tiny parallel in us.  Why should not our fate be as its fate, and its fate is so far as we know eternal.  It may change from gas to chaos, from chaos to active life, from active life to seeming death.  Then it may once more pass into its elements, and from those elements back again to concrete being, and so on for ever, always changing, but always the same.  So much for nature’s allegory.  It is not a perfect analogy, for Man is a thing apart from all things else; it may be only a hint or a type, but it is something.

“Now to come to the question of our religion.  I confess I draw quite a different conclusion from your facts.  You say that you trace the same superstitions in all religions, and that the same spiritual myths are in some shape present in almost all.  Well, does not this suggest that the same great truth underlies them all, taking from time to time the shape which is best suited to the spiritual development of those professing each.  Every great new religion is better than the last.  You cannot compare Osirianism with Buddhism, or Buddhism with Christianity, or Mahomedanism with the Arabian idol worship.  Take the old illustration—­take a cut crystal and hold it in the sun, and you will see many different coloured rays come from its facets.  They look different, but they are all born of the same great light; they are all the same light.  May it not be so with religion?  Let your altar be to the ‘Unknown God,’ if you like—­for who can give an unaltering likeness to the Power above us?—­but do not knock your altar down.

“Depend upon it, Miss Granger, all indications to the contrary notwithstanding, there is a watching Providence without the will of which we cannot live, and if we deliberately reject that Providence, setting up our intelligence in its place, sorrow will come of it, even here; for it is wiser than we.  I wish that you would try and look at the question from another point of view—­from a higher point of view.  I think you will find that it will bear a great deal of examination, and that you will come to the conclusion that the dictum of the wise-acre who says there is nothing because he can see nothing, is not necessarily a true one.  There, that is all I have to say, and I wish that I could say it better.”

“Thank you,” said Beatrice, “I will.  Why here we are at home; I must go and put Effie to bed.”