which admit of controversy, as distinguished from the God they desire to
worship about whom they have no doubt, and therefore never dispute.

In this latter respect, however, the case of the people of Morningquest
was just the reverse of that which obtains in most other places, for in
consequence of the hourly insistence of the chime, their most impressive
monitor, they talked much more of Him whom they should worship than of
various ways to worship him; and the most persistent of all the questions
which occupied their attention arose out of the involuntary but continuous
effort of one generation after another to define with scientific accuracy
and to everybody's satisfaction his exact nature and attributes; in
consequence of which efforts there had come to be several most distinct
but quite contradictory ideas upon the subject. There were some
simple-minded folk to whom the chime typified a God essentially masculine,
and like a man, hugely exaggerated, but somewhat amorphous, because they
could not see exactly in what the exaggeration consisted except in the
size of him. They pictured him sitting alone on a throne of ivory and gold
inlaid with precious stones; and recited the catalogue of those mentioned
in the Book of the Revelation by preference as imparting a fine scriptural
flavor to the dea. And he sat upon the throne day and night, looking down
upon the earth, and never did anything else nor felt it monotonous. Buddha
himself, in Nirvana, could not have attained to a greater perfection of
contemplation than that with which they credited this curious divinity,
who served solely for a finish to their mental range as the sky was to
their visual; a useful point at which to aim their rudimentary faculty of
reverence.

But others, again, of a different order of intelligence, had passed beyond
this stage and saw in him more