THE THIRD KINGDOM
I
A DOUBTER
Brother Hyzlo sat in his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand,—the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine and had once evoked for him visions of antique splendour. But Brother Hyzlo no longer cared for mundane delights. His doubting soul was the battle-field over which he ranged day and night searching for diabolic opponents. Exterior existence had become for him a shadow; the only life worth living was that of the spirit.
In his book that fresh spring morning he read as if in the flare of a passing meteor these disquieting words:—
"How were it if, some day or night, a demon stole after thee into thy most solitary solitude, and said to thee: 'This life, as thou livest it now, and hast lived it, thou shalt have to live over again, and not once but innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every pleasure and every thought and sigh, and everything in thy life, the great and the unspeakably petty alike, must come again to thee, and all in the same series and succession; this spider, too, and this moonlight betwixt the trees and this moment likewise and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of time is always turned again, and thou with it, thou atom of dust'? Wouldst thou not cast thyself down and with gnashing of teeth curse the demon who thus spoke? Or, hast thou ever experienced the tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: 'Thou art a god and never heard I anything more divine'?"
The book slipped from his hands. "Why not?" he murmured, "why not? There is no such thing as chance. The law of probabilities is not a mere fancy, but an austere need. Matter is ever in evolution. Energy alone is indestructible. Radium has revealed this to us. In eternity when the Infinite throws the dice, double-sixes are sure to come up more than once. Miracles? But why miraculous? Infinity of necessity must repeat itself, and then I, sitting here now, will sit here again, sit and doubt the goodness of God, ay, doubt His existence.... How horrible!" He paused in the whirl of his thoughts.
"Yet how beautiful, for if the eternal recurrence be truth, then must the great drama of the Redemption be repeated. Then will our foes be convinced of Christianity and its reality. But shall we be conscious in that far-off time of our anterior existence? Ah! hideous, coiling doubt. What a demon is this Nietzsche to set whirring in the brains of poor, suffering humanity such torturing questions! Better, far better for the world to live and not to think. Thought is a disease, a morbid secretion of the brain-cells. Ah! materialist that I am, I can no longer think without remembering the ideas of Cabanis, that gross atheist. Why am I punished so? What crimes have I committed in a previous existence—Karma, again!—that I must perforce study the writings of impious men? Yet I submitted myself as a candidate for the task, to save my brethren in Christ from soiling their hearts. Heaven preserve me from the blight of spiritual pride, but I believe that I am now a scapegoat for the offences of my fellow-monks, and, thus, may redeem my own wretched soul. Ah! Nietzsche—Antichrist."
He arose and threw the volume across his cell. Then going to the window regarded with humid gaze the world that sprawled below him in the voluptuous sunshine. But so sternly was the inner eye fixed on the things of the spirit that he soon turned away from the delectable picture, and as he did so his glance rested upon a crucifix. He started, his perturbed imagination again touched.
"What if Nietzsche were right? The first Christian, the only Christian, died on the cross, he has said. What an arraignment of our precious faith, Jesus Christ, our Lord God! What sweet names are Thine! How could Nietzsche not feel the music of that Hebrew-Greek combination? Perhaps he did; perhaps he masked a profound love behind his hatred. Jesus our Lord! Hebrew-Greek. But why Greek? Why ...?" Another pause in this sequestered chamber where the buzzing of an insect could assume a thunderous roar. "The eternal return. Why should Christ return? Must the earth be saved again and again and a billion times again? Awful thought of a God descending to a horrible death to cleanse the nameless myriads from sins which they seek ever as flies treacle. More ghastly still is the thought that the atheist Scandinavian put into the mouth of his Julian the Apostate: When our Christ is not saving this earth from eternal damnation then he may be visiting remote planets or inaccessible stars, where coloured double suns of blinding brilliancy revolve terrifically in twin harness. There, too, are souls to be rescued. What a grand idea! It is Ibsen's, as is the interpretation of the Third Kingdom. It should have been Nietzsche's. Why this antinomianism? Why this eternal conflict of evil and good, of night and day, of sweet and sour, of God and devil, of Ormuzd and Ahriman?"