“What on earth are you thinking about?” gasped Patience.
“Tell us what is in your heart,” said Miss Beale, in a tremulous voice.
And, “Tell us! Tell us!” came from the girls.
“You don’t know what you are saying,” said Patience, freeing herself angrily. “Let me go.” She was trembling with excitement. Her head felt very light. The blood was pounding in her ears. She started to her feet, meaning to rush to the door; but Miss Beale was too quick for her. She caught her firmly by the waist and led her to the middle of the space at the head of the room.
“I know she will speak,” said Miss Beale. “Patience, we all feel our awful responsibility. If you speak out now, you will be saved. If your timidity overcomes you, you may go hence and never hear His knock again.”
“Speak! Speak!” came with solemn emphasis from the Y’s.
“Oh, well, I’ll speak,” cried Patience. “And suppose you hear me out. It will be only polite, since you have forced me to speak. You have always misunderstood me. I am by no means indifferent to the God you worship. I have the most exalted respect and admiration for this tremendous creative force behind the Universe, a respect so great that I should never presume to address him as you do in your funny little egoism. Do you realise that this magnificent Being of whose essence you have not the most approximate idea, is the Creator, not only of this but of countless other worlds and systems, and furthermore of the psychic and physical laws that govern them and of the extraordinary mystery of which we are a part, and which has its most subtle expression in the Space surrounding us? And yet you, atoms, pigmies, tiny individual manifestations of a great correlative force called human nature, you presume to address this stupendous Being, and stand up and kneel down and talk to It, to imagine that It listens to your insignificant wants,—that It writes newspaper articles! Is it Christianity that has destroyed the sense of humour in its disciples?
“In each of you is a shaft from the great dominating Force—that is quite true, and it is for you to develop that force—character—and rely upon it, not upon a spiritual lover, as weak women do upon some unfortunate man. What good does all this religious sentimentality do you? Your brains are rotting. You have nothing to talk about to intelligent men. No wonder the men of small towns get away as soon as they can, and seek the intelligent women of lower strata. Men are naturally brighter than women, and girls of your sort deliberately make yourselves as limited and colourless as you can. Go, make yourselves companions for men, if you would make the world better, if you must improve the human race. Study the subjects that interest them, that fill their life; study politics and the great questions of the day, that you may lead them to the higher ethical plane on which nature has placed you. Quit this erotic sentimentalising over an abstract being to whom you must be the profoundest joke of his civilisation—”
“Hush!” shrieked Miss Beale. For some moments Patience had been obliged to raise her voice above the angry mutterings of her audience. One or two were sobbing hysterically. Miss Beale’s cry was the signal for the explosion of pent-up excitement.
“Go! Go!” cried the girls. “Go out of this church! Blasphemer! Shame! Shame!”