“Blanco: Take care, Boozy. He hasn’t finished with you yet. He always has a trick up his sleeve.
“Elder Daniels: Oh, is that the way to speak of the Ruler of the Universe—the great and almighty God?
“Blanco: He’s a sly one. He’s a mean one. He lies low for you. He plays cat and mouse with you. He lets you run loose until you think you’re shut of Him; and then when you least expect it, He’s got you.
“Elder Daniels: Speak more respectful, Blanco—more reverent.
“Blanco: Reverent! Who taught you your reverent cant? Not your Bible. It says, ‘He cometh like a thief in the night’—aye, like a thief—a horse-thief. And it’s true. That’s how He caught me and put my neck into the halter. To spite me because I had no use for Him—because I lived my own life in my own way, and would have no truck with His ‘Don’t do this,’ and ‘You mustn’t do that,’ and ‘You’ll go to hell if you do the other.’ I gave Him the go-bye, and did without Him all these years. But He caught me out at last. The laugh is with Him as far as hanging goes.”
Now, let us first note the incapacity of the critic of such an outburst as this to think in terms of the dramatic art—to divine the état d’âme of the speaker, and to recognise the method, and, within bounds, the idiosyncracy of the playwright. But having regard to all that the Censor has done and all that he has left undone, let us also mark his resolve to treat as mere blasphemy on Mr. Shaw’s part the artist’s endeavour to depict a rough man’s first consciousness of a Power that, selecting Blanco as it selected Paul and John Bunyan, threatens to drag him through moral shame and physical death, if need be, to life, and not to let him go till He has wrought His uttermost purpose on him. Mr. Shaw naturally makes Blanco talk as an American horse-stealer would talk. But how does Job talk of God, or the Psalmist, or the Author of the Parables? Nearly every one of Blanco Posnet’s railings can be paralleled from Job. Listen to this:—
“The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.
“He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.
“He taketh the heart of the chief of the people of the earth and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.