Here he paused, and rose to his feet, and as we were about to rise he signed to us to keep sitting.
“Now,” he said, “hearken carefully while I tell you of those into whose power you are fallen.” And as he spoke it seemed to me that his attention was directed more especially to myself.
He went on—“The Infinite One, ages before your worlds were formed, called the ethereal host into being. [212] ]And at first they were like your brute creatures, only with vastly greater powers and intelligence; yet, like them, for their vast powers were not under the control of any will of their own, for there was no such thing then as will, except the will of the Infinite One.
“But it pleased the Infinite One at last to give His creatures will. That which is His own prerogative He communicated to them in order that He might give manifold scope to the eternal love which is His essence. That will of theirs it was His will that they should exercise in conformity with that eternal love. But being free it might oppose that eternal love, not indeed to eternity, but for incalculable cycles of time.
“A few, a very few, as compared to the whole number, opposed themselves to Him, and as the ages passed these grew ever more evil, and ever more full of hatred of Him and of all who hold with Him. A very few they were as compared with those who held with Him, but a great many when compared with all the men who inhabit this little world of yours, or who ever have inhabited it.”
Here he paused again, and there was dead silence for a space, and then Jack spoke, and his voice was like that of a man hurried and somewhat overawed.
[213] “But how did the will to resist the will of the Infinite One ever come into being at all?”
“It was a possibility from the moment when the first free being was created, and it became actual by the gradual and undue admixture of things in themselves good. The desire to do great things is good, and the joy to be able to do great things is good. But if these two good things are suffered to govern the whole being, they become the possible germs, inert as yet, of self-assertion and pride. And then when the call for self-sacrifice comes, as it must, to the finite in the presence of the Infinite, the will, the spark of divine life which the Creator has committed to the creature, rises up against the sacrifice, and by its action fertilises the germs of self-assertion and pride.
“So began the deadly war of the finite with the Infinite. That had its origin in ‘worlds before the man,’ and it speedily passed over into man’s world, and would long ago have destroyed it had not the Infinite One Himself become human in order to teach men by His own example and in His own Person the divine lesson of self-sacrifice.”
Here Leäfar paused again and sat down, and seemed to wait for some question from us. I was quite powerless to speak. I felt quite awe-stricken and shamed, [214] ]but presently I heard Jack’s voice ringing out clearly and confidently like the voice of a fearless and innocent child.