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Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"
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Samuel Clemens
"A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;
Who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one;
Who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
Who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it;
Who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body;
Who mouths justice, and invented hell—mouths mercy, and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell;
Who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself;
Who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all;
Who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle
the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites
his poor abused slave to worship him!"
—Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916
