NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
The reader may be interested in knowing the author's own impression of these "Thoughts" when reading them in the first edition of this booklet, published a considerable time after its contents were written. In a private letter, dated 6th September 1900, he says: "I have just read 'Thoughts on God.' There is in them that which is good, and I was moved in reading. But their publication is premature. They should have been published after my death (not distant). Otherwise, it is fearful to live with such a life-programme.—These were my first thoughts on reading; and then I was ashamed of myself. If one lives not before men but before God, is not the publication of one's beliefs immaterial? To live before men is very troublesome; to satisfy everyone, earn everyone's good opinion, conceal one's foulness—is very difficult. But how peaceful and easy to live before God, Before Him one need not trouble to dissimulate or pose. He knows which one is, and what one is worth. This alone is one—and a great—advantage of serving God and not men.
"Also, whilst reading, I recalled to mind that which lately I have been thinking—that one cannot say, God is Love, or God is Logos, Reason. Through Love and Reason we indeed apprehend God; but these ideas not only do not cover the idea of God—they differ from it as much as the idea of an eye or of sight differs from the light itself.
"Almost the same thing is said in the booklet."
