The monk’s eyes rested on him in mingled compassion and sorrow.
“After all these years—” he said—“are you still asking Pilate’s question?”
“Yes—I am still asking Pilate’s question!” retorted El-Râmi with sudden passion—“See you—I know who you are,—great and wise, a master of the arts and sciences, and with all your stores of learning, still a servant of Christ, which to me is the wildest, maddest incongruity. I grant you that Christ was the holiest man that ever lived on earth,—and if I swear a thing in His name I swear an oath that shall not be broken. But in His Divinity, I cannot, I may not, I dare not believe!—except in so far that there is divinity in all of us. One man, born of woman, destined to regenerate the world!—the idea is stupendous,—but impossible to reason!”
He paced the room impatiently.
“If I could believe it—I say ‘if,’”—he continued, “I should still think it a clumsy scheme. For every human creature living should be a reformer and regenerator of his race.”
“Like yourself?” queried the monk calmly. “What have you done, for example?”
El-Râmi stopped in his walk to and fro.
“What have I done?” he repeated—“Why—nothing! You deem me proud and ambitious,—but I am humble enough to know how little I know. And as to proofs,—well, it is the same story—I have proved—nothing.”
“So! Then are your labours wasted?”
“Nothing is wasted,—according to your theories even. Your theories—many of them—are beautiful and soul-satisfying, and this one of there being no waste in the economy of the universe is, I believe, true. But I cannot accept all you teach. I broke my connection with you because I could not bend my spirit to the level of the patience you enjoined. It was not rebellion,—no! for I loved and honoured you—and I still revere you more than any man alive, but I cannot bow my neck to the yoke you consider so necessary. To begin all work by first admitting one’s weakness!—no!—Power is gained by never-resting ambition, not by a merely laborious humility.”