The futility of a life apart from Jesus Christ is illustrated in the life of Bertrand Russell. Russell was an English Voltaire, Cambridge educated, child of privilege, renowned philosopher and mathematician, and famous for his diamond-sharp intellect.. . .Russell's powers of analysis were so formidable that one friend called him "The Day of Judgment." Russell once wrote, "I feel myself so rugged and ruthless, and somewhat removed from the whole aesthetic side of life, a sort of logic machine warranted to destroy any idea that is not very robust."

But this was not the whole story of Russell's life. His life was anything but a logic machine in the way he lived. He was orphaned at the age of three by the death of his parents, and orphaned philosophically at the age of sixteen by his atheism. His life was a search for a home, for love, and for children of his own. All his life he was torn between his atheism, his four wives, and many mistresses. This man who thought of himself as a logic machine wrote:

The root of the whole thing is loneliness. I have a kind of physical loneliness, which almost anybody can more or less relieve, but which would be only fully relieved by a wife and children. Beyond that, I have a very internal and terrible spiritual loneliness.. . .I have dreamed of a combination of spiritual and physical companionship, and if I had the good fortune to find it, I could have become something better than I shall ever be.