“Your Sphere was a Fact,”—he said quietly—“Visible to the eye, it glittered and whirled—but it was not tangible, and it had no life in it. It is a fair example of other Facts,—so called. And you could not have created so much as that perishable bubble, had not God placed the materials in your hands. It is odd you seem to forget that. No one can work without the materials for working,—the question remains, from Whence came those materials?”
El-Râmi smiled with a touch of scorn.
“Rightly are you called Supreme Master!” he said—“for your faith is marvellous—your ideas of life both here and hereafter, beautiful. I wish I could accept them. But I cannot. Your way does not seem to me clear or reasonable,—and I have thought it out in every direction. Take the doctrine of original sin for example—what is original sin, and why should it exist?”
“It does not exist—” said the monk quickly—“except in so far that we have created it. It is we, therefore, who must destroy it.”
El-Râmi paused, thinking. This was the same lesson Lilith had taught.
“If we created it—” he said at last, “and there is a God who is omnipotent, why were we allowed to create it?”
The monk turned round in his chair with ever so slight a gesture of impatience.
“How often have I told you, El-Râmi Zarânos,” he said,—“of the gift and responsibility bestowed on every human unit—Free-Will. You, who seek for proofs of the Divine, should realise that this is the only proof we have in ourselves of our close relation to ‘the image of God.’ God’s Laws exist,—and it is our first business in life to know and understand these—afterwards, our fate is in our own hands,—if we transgress law, or if we fulfil law, we know, or ought to know, the results. If we choose to make evil, it exists till we destroy it—good we cannot make, because it is the very breath of the Universe, but we can choose to breathe in it and with it. I have so often gone over this ground with you that it seems mere waste of words to go over it again,—and if you cannot, will not see that you are creating your own destiny and shaping it to your own will, apart from anything that human or divine experience can teach you, then you are blind indeed. But time wears on apace,—and I must speak of other things;—one message I have for you that will doubtless cause you pain.” He waited a moment—then went on slowly and sadly—“Yes,—the pain will be bitter and the suffering long,—but the fiat has gone forth, and ere long you will be called upon to render up the Soul of Lilith.”
El-Râmi started violently,—flushed a deep red, and then grew deadly pale.
“You speak in enigmas—” he said huskily and with an effort—“What do you know—how have you heard——”