"Can you doubt it?"
"I fear you are right, yet they should be my allies, not my enemies. In the spectacle of a world in arms the churches must surely recognise the evidence of failure. If they would survive they must open their doors to reform."
"And what is the nature of the reform you would suggest?"
"Conversion from nineteen centuries of error to the simple creed of their Founder."
"Impossible. Churches, like Russian securities, may be destroyed but never converted."
"Yet in their secret hearts millions of professed churchmen believe as I believe——"
"——That heaven and hell are within every man's own soul and that the state in which he is born is the state for which he has fitted himself by the acts of his pre-existence?"
Paul inclined his head. "No other belief is possible to-day."
"There are higher planets than Earth, perhaps lower. The ultimate deep is Hell, the ultimate height Heaven. The universe is a ladder which every soul must climb."
From a catechism Jules Thessaly's words had developed into a profession of faith, and Paul, who stood watching the speaker, grew suddenly aware—a phenomenon which all have experienced—that such a profession had been made to him before, that he had stood thus on some other occasion and had heard the same words spoken. He knew what Jules Thessaly was about to say.