“I use the phrases,” said Mr. Huss, “that come ready to the mind. But I will meet you so far as to say that I know that I am metaphorical and inexact.... This spirit that comes into life—it is more like a person than a thing and so I call it He. And He is not a feature, not an aspect of things, but a selection among things.... He seizes upon and brings out and confirms all that is generous in the natural impulses of the mind. He condemns cruelty and all evil....
“I will not pretend to explain what I cannot explain. It may be that God is as yet only foreshadowed in life. You may reason, Doctor Barrack, that this fire in the heart that I call God, is as much the outcome of your Process as all the other things in life. I cannot argue against that. What I am telling you now is not what I believe so much as what I feel. To me it seems that the creative desire that burns in me is a thing different in its nature from the blind Process of matter, is a force running contrariwise to the power of confusion.... But this I do know, that once it is lit in a man it is like a consuming fire. Once it is lit in a man, then his mind is alight—thenceforth. It rules his conscience with compelling power. It summons him to live the residue of his days working and fighting for the unity and release and triumph of mankind. He may be mean still, and cowardly and vile still, but he will know himself for what he is.... Some ancient phrases live marvellously. Within my heart I know that my Redeemer liveth....”
He stopped abruptly.
Dr. Barrack was unprepared with a reply. But he shook his head obstinately. These time-worn phrases were hateful to his soul. They smacked to him of hypocrisy, of a bidding for favour with obsolete and discredited influences. Through such leaks it is superstition comes soaking back into the laboriously bailed-out minds of men. Yet Mr. Huss was a difficult controversialist to grapple. “No,” said the doctor provisionally. “No....”
§ 7
Fate came to the relief of Dr. Barrack.
The little conference at Sea View was pervaded by the sense of a new personality. This was a short and angry and heated little man, with active dark brown eyes in a tan face, a tooth-brush moustache of iron-grey, and a protruded lower jaw. He was dressed in a bright bluish-grey suit and bright brown boots, and he carried a bright brown leather bag.
He appeared mouthing outside the window, beyond the range of distinct hearing. His expression was blasphemous. He made threatening movements with his bag.
“Good God!” cried Dr. Barrack. “Sir Alpheus!... I had no idea of the time!”
He rushed out of the room and there was a scuffle in the passage.