Among the manifold mysteries of religion is this one: What did Rudyard Kipling believe? He described himself in 1908 (i.e. at age 42) as “A God-fearing Christian atheist.” That is confusing enough; but there are half a dozen similar statements just as baffling. (I am working here from Andrew Lycett’s biography, which has the above remark on p. 383.)
Kipling seems to have agreed with one of his characters (in Egypt of the Magicians), who says: “All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells.” What does that mean? (Lycett notes by the way that it is “a crib from the 17th-century Earl of Saftesbury, refracted through Disraeli’s Endymion.”)