In his Notebooks, Samuel Butler tells a story of Herbert Clarke’s 10-year-old son:

His mother had put him to bed and, as he was supposed to have a cold, he was to say his prayers in bed. He said them, yawned and said, ‘The real question is whether there is a God or no,’ on which he instantly fell into a sweet and profound sleep which forbade all further discussion.

Elsewhere Butler wrote, “What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, ‘I bet that my Redeemer liveth.'”