Sir T. 'Tis easy comforting the poor with heaven,
And those that never tasted delicate meats,
Soft music, murmurs, vintages mature,
And savoury ecstasy of man and woman.
St. J. Kings, conquerors, artists, poets, power and wealth
Demand a concrete heaven, just like the poor.—
Still the rack wrenched me, "Will you teach a lie?"
So tortured, I betook me to the east,
The womb and cradle, nurse and school of thought,
Of knowledge, poetry, religion, art.
There in the desert, insufferable beams
Their daily meaning smote through every sense;
By night the deep immensity of heaven
Revealed its wonder: all the centuries,
The tattered stoles and finery of Time,
Departed from me, and I knew myself
Material in a Universe of pure
Material substance, conscious mystery throned
On the eternal moment that becomes
For ever new. "This is for me," I thought:
"Enough that one man once should so transcend:
"Let the world now decay." But the last pangs
Of Hell laid instant hold on me and put
Me to the question: "Will you teach a lie?"
"What must I teach?" I cried. "Teach thou the truth,"
The answer came, "the pure, material truth;
"But firstly know the truth about the lie."
Sir T. What is the truth about it, Gervase?
St. J. This:—
That Christianity is the foe of life,
Of health, of wealth, of intellect and strength;
The friend of all the feeble, the diseased,
The low, the loathsome, the depraved, the dirt,
The offal of mankind. Instinctively the strong
Laid hands upon it and wove imperial power
Out of its filthy rags: a purple star
Of high unchristian sovereignty in Rome;
In England here an aristocracy
Of brains and culture. Long they kept in check,
The churchdoms did, with Hell and Heaven for sword
And buckler, and a sense of sin to salt
The wounds they dealt—how long they kept in check
Dynamic pressure of the Christian lie
That men are equal in the sight of God!
Sir T. Men are not equal, and there is no God.
St. J. They are not equal, and there is no God.
And when the myth of Heaven-and-Hell—the valves
Wherein the world lay like an oyster pearled
With the soul of man: when this great fable gaped
And fell away, the lethal meaning, hid
In Christian tenets, like a serpent brood
Uncoiled, as rancour, decadence, despair,
In revolutions, anarchies, nihilisms,
A will to end the world. There stand we now,
Naked against the Universe.
Sir T. The truth
About the lie! The double carapace
Of Heaven-and-Hell sloughed off, mankind remains
A houseless mollusc.
St. J. Pitiful to see!
Imagination—let me use that word
Instead of soul; and let it mean entire
The powers of blood and nerve, of heart and brain,
And aught occult and undiscovered yet
In carnate matter: Imagination, not
Conceiving what has happened in the world,
Much wonders at the darkness and the cold.
How simple, how appalling, how secure
Were Heaven and Hell; what fathomless content
In that deep home of penitential fire,
That everlasting, joyful holiday
In golden streets lit by the glory of God!
Sir T. Will the great heart of the world be great enough
To bid that dream avaunt once and for ever?
St. J. It will, it must, though it should come with wars,
Convulsions, burnings, tortures, massacres,
With centuries of woe employing all
Prodigious powers of slaughter, powers of pain,
Wherein our civilized self-consciousness
Outdoes barbarity and instinct far
Beyond comparisons of Heaven and Hell.