第43章 THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION(3)

The world is full of conflict and confusion and the spirit of war.It is dark and dreadful now with suffering and bloodshed.Iwant to serve God who could save it, and I do not know how."It seemed to the bishop that now he could distinguish dimly but surely the form and features of the great Angel to whom he talked.For a little while there was silence, and then the Angel spoke.

"It was necessary first," said the Angel, "that you should apprehend God and desire him.That was the purport of your first vision.Now, since you require it, I will tell you and show you certain things about him, things that it seems you need to know, things that all men need to know.Know then first that the time is at hand when God will come into the world and rule it, and when men will know what is required of them.This time is close at hand.In a little while God will be made manifest throughout the earth.Men will know him and know that he is King.To you this truth is to be shown--that you may tell it to others.""This is no vision?" said the bishop, "no dream that will pass away?""Am I not here beside you?"

(5)

The bishop was anxious to be very clear.Things that had been shapelessly present in his mind now took form and found words for themselves.

"The God I saw in my vision--He is not yet manifest in the world?""He comes.He is in the world, but he is not yet manifested.He whom you saw in your vision will speedily be manifest in the world.To you this vision is given of the things that come.The world is already glowing with God.Mankind is like a smouldering fire that will presently, in quite a little time, burst out into flame.

"In your former vision I showed you God," said the Angel."This time I will show you certain signs of the coming of God.And then you will understand the place you hold in the world and the task that is required of you."(6)

And as the Angel spoke he lifted up his hands with the palms upward, and there appeared above them a little round cloud, that grew denser until it had the likeness of a silver sphere.It was a mirror in the form of a ball, but a mirror not shining uniformly; it was discoloured with greyish patches that had a familiar shape.It circled slowly upon the Angel's hands.It seemed no greater than the compass of a human skull, and yet it was as great as the earth.Indeed it showed the whole earth.It was the earth.The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight, dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free.All about the bishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points that shaped out the constellations, and nearest to them, so near as to seem only a few million miles away in the great emptiness into which everything had resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball of red-tongued fires.The Angel was but a voice now; the bishop and the Angel were somewhere aloof from and yet accessible to the circling silver sphere.

At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally, as things happen in a dream.It was only later, when all this was a matter of memory, that the bishop realized how strange and incomprehensible his vision had been.The sphere was the earth with all its continents and seas, its ships and cities, its country-sides and mountain ranges.It was so small that he could see it all at once, and so great and full that he could see everything in it.He could see great countries like little patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces of the men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men s hearts and the thoughts in their minds.But it did not seem in any way wonderful to the bishop that so he should see those things, or that it was to him that these things were shown.

"This is the whole world," he said.

"This is the vision of the world," the Angel answered.

"It is very wonderful," said the bishop, and stood for a moment marvelling at the compass of his vision.For here was India, here was Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and the swarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through twilight to the night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern spots upon the dark; here was Russia under the noontide, and so great a battle of artillery raging on the Dunajec as no man had ever seen before; whole lines of trenches dissolved into clouds of dust and heaps of blood-streaked earth; here close to the waiting streets of Constantinople were the hills of Gallipoli, the grave of British Imperialism, streaming to heaven with the dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and the smoke and flame of burning brushwood.In the sea of Marmora a big ship crowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the clear water, he could see the shape of the British submarine which had torpedoed her and had submerged and was going away.

Berlin prepared its frugal meals, still far from famine.He saw the war in Europe as if he saw it on a map, yet every human detail showed.Over hundreds of miles of trenches east and west of Germany he could see shells bursting and the men below dropping, and the stretcher-bearers going back with the wounded.

The roads to every front were crowded with reserves and munitions.For a moment a little group of men indifferent to all this struggle, who were landing amidst the Antarctic wilderness, held his attention; and then his eyes went westward to the dark rolling Atlantic across which, as the edge of the night was drawn like a curtain, more and still more ships became visible beating upon their courses eastward or westward under the overtaking day.

The wonder increased; the wonder of the single and infinitely multitudinous adventure of mankind.

"So God perhaps sees it," he whispered.

(7)

"Look at this man," said the Angel, and the black shadow of a hand seemed to point.