第30章 THE FIFTH - THE FIRST VISION(5)

This he knew quite clearly was the place of God.

He was unable to disentangle thoughts from words.He seemed to be speaking in his mind.

"I have been very foolish and confused and perplexed.I have been like a creature caught among thorns.""You served the purpose of God among those thorns." It seemed to him at first that the answer also was among his thoughts.

"I seemed so silly and so little.My wits were clay.""Clay full of desires."

"Such desires!"

"Blind desires.That will presently come to the light.""Shall we come to the light?"

"But here it is, and you see it!"

(8)

It became clearer in the mind of the bishop that a figure sat beside him, a figure of great strength and beauty, with a smiling face and kindly eyes.A strange thought and a strange courage came to the bishop.

"Tell me," he whispered, "are you God?"

"I am the Angel of God."

The bishop thought over that for some moments.

"I want," he said, "to know about God.

"I want," he said, with a deepening passion of the soul, "to know about God.Slowly through four long years I have been awakening to the need of God.Body and soul I am sick for the want of God and the knowledge of God.I did not know what was the matter with me, why my life had become so disordered and confused that my very appetites and habits are all astray.But I am perishing for God as a waterless man upon a raft perishes for drink, and there is nothing but madness if I touch the seas about me.Not only in my thoughts but in my under thoughts and in my nerves and bones and arteries I have need of God.You see I grew up in the delusion that I knew God, I did not know that I was unprovisioned and unprovided against the tests and strains and hardships of life.I thought that I was secure and safe.I was told that we men--who were apes not a quarter of a million years ago, who still have hair upon our arms and ape's teeth in our jaws--had come to the full and perfect knowledge of God.It was all put into a creed.Not a word of it was to be altered, not a sentence was to be doubted any more.They made me a teacher of this creed.They seemed to explain it to me.And when I came to look into it, when my need came and I turned to my creed, it was old and shrivelled up, it was the patched-up speculations of vanished Greeks and Egyptians, it was a mummy of ancient disputes, old and dry, that fell to dust as I unwrapped it.And Iwas dressed up in the dress of old dead times and put before an altar of forgotten sacrifices, and I went through ceremonies as old as the first seedtime; and suddenly I knew clearly that God was not there, God was not in my Creed, not in my cathedral, not in my ceremonies, nowhere in my life.And at the same time Iknew, I knew as I had never known before, that certainly there was God."He paused."Tell me," said the friend at his side; "tell me.""It was as if a child running beside its mother, looked up and saw that he had never seen her face before, that she was not his mother, and that the words he had seemed to understand were--now that he listened--words in an unknown tongue.

"You see, I am but a common sort of man, dear God; I have neither lived nor thought in any way greatly, I have gone from one day to the next day without looking very much farther than the end of the day, I have gone on as life has befallen; if no great trouble had come into my life, so I should have lived to the end of my days.But life which began for me easily and safely has become constantly more difficult and strange.I could have held my services and given my benedictions, I could have believed I believed in what I thought I believed....But now I am lost and astray--crying out for God...."(9)

"Let us talk a little about your troubles," said the Angel.

"Let us talk about God and this creed that worries you and this church of yours.""I feel as though I had been struggling to this talk through all the years--since my doubts began.""The story your Creed is trying to tell is much the same story that all religions try to tell.In your heart there is God, beyond the stars there is God.Is it the same God?""I don't know," said the bishop.

"Does any one know?"

"I thought I knew."

"Your creed is full of Levantine phrases and images, full of the patched contradictions of the human intelligence utterly puzzled.It is about those two Gods, the God beyond the stars and the God in your heart.It says that they are the same God, but different.It says that they have existed together for all time, and that one is the Son of the other.It has added a third Person --but we won't go into that."The bishop was reminded suddenly of the dispute at Mrs.