"He has presented them like rocks of adamant," responded Haterius. "Dionysius has convinced me perfectly that the universe has been produced and is governed by the great being of whom he has so earnestly and so luminously spoken."
"Yet one word with you, young philosopher," said Antistius Labio, sending a glance all round the circle, and finally contemplating intently the broad, candid brow and kindly blue eyes of the Athenian; "one word! You remarked that you could prove all things to be cared for and loved somewhere. You afterward mentioned that the care or love in question could be exercised by none save the stupendous king-spirit whose existence, I confess, you almost persuade me to believe. But now solve me a difficulty. You have alluded to the moral law. You maintain, although this has not been a subject of our debate to-night, the immortality of our souls. Finally—none can forget it—you hinted that there could be no morality, no difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice, were there not one sovereign God. Does this mean, or does it not, that morality is that which pleases his eternal and therefore unchanging views?"
"Ah!" said Dionysius, "I perceive your drift. You land me amid real enigmas. But go on; I answer honestly—Yes."
"Then," pursued Labio, "if the ghost within us be immortal, it will be happy after death, provided it shall have pleased this being, and miserable should it have offended him."
"Yes."
"Now, Augustus," persisted Labio, "what would you think of the justice of a monarch who proclaimed rewards for conforming with his will, and punishments for thwarting it, but at the same time would not make it known what his will was, nor afford any protection to those who might be desirous of giving it effect?
"Can Dionysius of Athens or any body else tell us what are the special desires of this great being in our regard? Does he imagine that unlettered, mechanical, toiling men have either understandings or the leisure to arrive at the conclusions which his own splendid intellect has attained? Then why is there not some authoritative teacher sent down among men from heaven?"
Dionysius answered not. Labio continued,
"I speak roughly and plainly. I transfix him with his own principles. He is too honest not to feel the force of what I say. He cannot reply. Mark next: we live but a short while in this world; and if we be immortal, our state here is downright contemptible in importance compared with that which has to come; and yet he tells us that this contemptible point of time, this mere dot of existence, is to determine our lot for everlasting ages, and he that says this proclaims the being whose existence he certainly has demonstrated to be the very principle of love itself. Yet this being who will establish our destinies according as we please him, tells us not how to do it."
Again the Athenian refrained from breaking the expectant silence which ensued.