William Morris on Believing or Not Believing in a God

 In his posthumous;y published A Diary (1907), William Allingham (1824-1889), a friend of William Morris, recorded on [Tuesday] 13 June 1882 a discussion he had with Morris: 

Walking with William Morris from the Society of Arts to Bloomsbury last Friday, we talked, among other things, of believing or not believing in a God, and he said:  "It's so unimportant, it seems to me," and he went on to say that all we can get to, do what we will, is a form of words. I think I agree in part, not entirely; but in the street and in a hurry explanation was impossible. 

2023 Sounds a Lot Like 1968

 Only a few specifics might be changed:

The world you were born into is going nuts. Just check around you if you think I’m wrong. People stand and watch while women are knifed to death in the streets; church-going boys from good homes take down rifles and butcher pedestrians en masse; kids call their parent square, and they’re right; parents call their kids dope fiends, and they’re right; wild-eyed bigots run for publish office; the book-burners are back with us; suddenly, getting high on something that twists your chromosomes seems like the only way to make it through the night; cops beat up pregnant women because they plead for peace; the black man hates the white man and the white man hates the black man and the gray man is caught between, riddled from both sides; fear rises up into the air like ugly smoke, permeated with the stench of paranoia and alienation.

This comes from the dust-wrapper blurb, by the inimitable Harlan Ellison, for his collection Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled (New York:  Trident Press, 1968).  The very nice cover art is by Leo and Diane Dillon. The contents of the collection varies from what is found in later editions.