A
post at Panda's Thumb points out Wells's book
God the Invisible King (the
Project Gutenberg version has no pop-ups), written in 1917, where Wells lays out what he calls "modern religion," the core of which is "a profound belief in a personal and intimate God," and says, "Without God, the 'Service of Man' is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the undisciplined prison of the mortal life." Not having read it before, I was surprised; I had thought Wells an atheist, too. He certainly is almost universally considered to be one, perhaps because his
The Outline of History had such an influence on so many freethinkers in the English-speaking world. Apparently the matter is more complicated than it is commonly made out to be. Shame on me for presuming in this case; I should know better.
UPDATE:
Ralph Luker left a helpful comment, which I'll put here so that it doesn't eventually get deleted when HaloScan gets rid of it:
Right. H. G. Wells went through some changes. God the Invisible King represents the high tide of his theism and its emergence can be tracked in the work immediately preceding it. I suspect that the theism, which is neither identifiable with Christianity nor particularly hostile to it, had something to do with the spiritual crisis felt by many western intellectuals in the World War I era. In Wells's case, that theism began to ebb soon thereafter and he participates fully in, becomes a major spokesman for, the secularism of the inter-war years.
