God's disappearance in the nineteenth century seems to be sparked by new avenues of thought and explanation.  The industrialization of the world contributed to everything changing "from its natural state into something useful or meaningful to man" (741).  Because man has a new, scientific way to explain why things are the way they are, the old avenues of explanation seem too mystical to be believed.

I do not think that the literature of this period can be said to discuss the disappearance of God because there is still a desire in the writers to find a use for God.  If God had totally disappeared, I think the writers would be more likely celebrating man's intelligence in proving that there is no need for a God and that we know enough to say for sure that there isn't one.  The writers instead are trying to hold onto what has been believed for so long by trying to understand why we find God a less convincing power, and what his utility is for those who can almost explain away his existence.  At the point in history when we changed "from the closed world to the infinite universe" (741) we became aware of many ways of explaining things for which we previously had only one explanation.  If the new (scientific) explanations were right, then the old (divine) explanations must have been wrong.  This puzzled writers, who questioned whether humanity was wrong in abandoning theories that had been believed for so long.

I like Kierkegaard's Repetition where he cynically asks for who ever is in charge to please present himself so that he may ask him a question.  When he says "...if I am compelled to take part in [reality], where is the director?  I should like to make a remark to him.  Is there no director?  Whither shall I turn with my complaint?" (743), Kierkegaard is also saying that if there is no being to which he has to answer, why does reality exist?  Hopkins asks a similar question in the "terrible sonnets" when he says "Comforter, where is your comforting? / Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?" (748).  God's omnipotence is no longer a security blanket for those who know scientific theory.

Ruskin's "Grand Chartreuse" places the blame more on the scientists.  He does not say "what do I do now that I know all of this information?" like the other writers, he instead says "damn those scientists for creating this doubt in the collective mind!"  Ruskin says "My melancholy, scoilists say, / Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme-- / As if the world had ever had / A faith, or sciolists been sad" (757).  In other words, the scientific minds of Ruskin's day tell him that there is no reason to lament the great body of knowledge that they are uncovering, but Ruskin does not believe in this dismissal of all that he has been taught.  He will not forget his faith so soon.

The disappearance of God was really more of a questioning of faith for the artists at the time.  Rather than say that God has ceased to exist, they want to know why God seems less powerful with this new fountain of information.