Part 39 (1/2)

'In what sense, now, is that a possession? Do you possess the sun because you see it? Did Herschel create Ura.n.u.s by discovering it; or even increase, by an atom, its attraction on one particle of his own body?”

'Whither is all this tending?'

'Hither. Tregarva does not possess his Father and his Lord; he is possessed by them.'

'But he would say--and I should believe him--that he has seen and known them, not with his bodily eyes, but with his soul, heart, imagination--call it what you will. All I know is, that between him and me there is a great gulf fixed.'

'What! seen and known them utterly? comprehended them? Are they not infinite, incomprehensible? Can the less comprehend the greater?'

'He knows, at least, enough of them to make him what I am not.'

'That is, he knows something of them. And may not you know something of them also?--enough to make you what he is not?'

Lancelot shook his head in silence.

'Suppose that you had met and spoken with your father, and loved him when you saw him, and yet were not aware of the relation in which you stood to him, still you would know him?'

'Not the most important thing of all--that he was my father.'

'Is that the most important thing? Is it not more important that he should know that you were his son? That he should support, guide, educate you, even though unseen? Do you not know that some one has been doing that?'

'That I have been supported, guided, educated, I know full well; but by whom I know not. And I know, too, that I have been punished.

And therefore--therefore I cannot free the thought of a Him--of a Person--only of a Destiny, of Laws and Powers, which have no faces wherewith to frown awful wrath upon me! If it be a Person who has been leading me, I must go mad, or know that He has forgiven!'

'I conceive that it is He, and not punishment which you fear?'

Lancelot was silent a moment. . . . 'Yes. He, and not h.e.l.l at all, is what I fear. He can inflict no punishment on me worse than the inner h.e.l.l which I have felt already, many and many a time.'

'Bona verba! That is an awful thing to say: but better this extreme than the other. . . . And you would--what?'

'Be pardoned.'

'If He loves you, He has pardoned you already.'

'How do I know that He loves me?'

'How does Tregarva?'

'He is a righteous man, and I--'

'Am a sinner. He would, and rightly, call himself the same.'

'But he knows that G.o.d loves him--that he is G.o.d's child.'

'So, then, G.o.d did not love him till he caused G.o.d to love him, by knowing that He loved him? He was not G.o.d's child till he made himself one, by believing that he was one when as yet he was not? I appeal to common sense and logic . . . It was revealed to Tregarva that G.o.d had been loving him while he was yet a bad man. If He loved him, in spite of his sin, why should He not have loved you?'

'If He had loved me, would He have left me in ignorance of Himself?

For if He be, to know Him is the highest good.'

'Had he left Tregarva in ignorance of Himself?'