I make ye an offer,
   Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
   The scheme will not hurt you,
   If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue. 
   Though I am your creature,
   And child of your nature,
   I have pride still unbended,
   And blood undescended,
   Some free independence,
   And my own descendants. 
   I cannot toil blindly,
   Though ye behave kindly,
   And I swear by the rood,
   I’ll be slave to no God. 
   If ye will deal plainly,
   I will strive mainly,
   If ye will discover,
   Great plans to your lover,
   And give him a sphere
   Somewhat larger than here.

“Verily, my angels!  I was abashed on account of my servant, who had no Providence but me; therefore did I pardon him.”—­The Gulistan of Sadi.

Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut and dried,—­very dry, I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks,—­which they set up between you and them in the shortest intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown off.  They do not walk without their bed.  Some, to me, seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial things and relations, are for them everlastingly settled,—­as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like.  These are like the everlasting hills to them.  But in all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things.  They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate.  The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens.  It is clear sky.  If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.  To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme!  What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my understanding you, to your understanding me!  You did not invent it; it was imposed on you.  Examine your authority.  Even Christ, we fear, had his scheme, his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his teaching.  He had not swallowed all formulas.  He preached some mere doctrines.  As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtilest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.  Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.  The perfect God in his revelations of himself has never got to the length of one such proposition as you, his prophets, state.  Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three?  Do you know the number of God’s family?  Can you put mysteries into words?  Do you presume to fable of the ineffable?  Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven’s topography?  Whose friend are you that speak of God’s personality?