“Too brilliantly,” she laughed. “He talks so wisely of all human experience that you suspect him of never having had any of his own. He stands condemned by the amount of wisdom that he can utter concerning life which he has not shared. You feel that it all came from books.”
“But perhaps he will not deal with Job’s emotional experiences. The lecture may be purely abstract. Don’t you like to hear your cousin philosophize?”
“No,” said the girl, “I don’t. Paul finds the universe easy to explain, but I mistrust his logic. To quote, I have forgotten whom: ‘Corner him in an argument, and he escapes out of the window into the Infinite.’”
So I went alone. Before the Altruist had been speaking five minutes I regretted that Janet had not come. He was alluding to other great rebels of literature,—Dante, Prometheus, and our own Carlyle,—souls stung by hurt into war with God, and afterward fighting their way through to a bitter peace.
There was a hush. Then we heard Job talking with God. His upbraiding of the Creator thundered through the room.
The impression given cannot be translated into words. The audience was swayed by the Altruist as grass is swayed by the wind.
Who had not known moments like that, when one arraigned God for hiding his meanings from the eyes of men? That time of negation was necessary, leading, as it must, to affirmation. It was only a season of darkness, breaking into clearest light. Soon insight followed blindness; conviction followed doubt. Uncertainty could be only temporary with noble souls. For them the fog cleared, and a universe of order rose from chaos. They would suffer no longer the clouding of the intellect, or know the rebellion of the heart. Their cry was answered, and reason grasped the scheme of things.
Of this sure knowledge, universal expression had been given in the formulas of Anglican belief.
As the Altruist expounded the final relations of Job to the Creator, and explained God’s thought for man, the sudden illumination was blinding. For a moment the ultimate meaning of life and of death seemed ours.
The audience crowded round the Altruist to utter words of gratitude. One or two women wiped their eyes, and working-men of known sceptical tendencies came forward, with a certain shame-facedness, to grasp the Altruist’s hand.