Whereon in silence for a space they rode,
While their thoughts ranged diverse in worlds apart.
Then Stephen: "That distempering heat in me,
O uncle, is clean gone from out mine heart,
Slaked by the overshadowing of thy spirit,
Like the earth cooled with overshadowing night.
I am calm enough, I think, to learn, if not
Thy difficult high doctrine touching love,
Something at least about those psalms of hate.
Hate is the spirit of the psalm I said,
Is it not, uncle?"
"As thou saidst it, yea,
Or I mistook the meaning of thy voice,"
Said Paul; "whatever meant the holy words,
The tones, I felt, meant that and nothing else."
"Could then those words themselves mean something else?"
Asked Stephen.
"Yea," said Paul, "for words are naught
But empty vessels that the utterer fills
With his own spirit when he utters them;
The spirit is the lord of utterance."
"What was the spirit with which the Spirit of God
Breathed these into the soul of him elect
Among the sons of men to give them voice?
Did not God hate whom He so heavily cursed?"
Stephen inquired; and Paul at large replied:
"God hates not any, as wicked men count hate—
And men not wicked may, in wicked mood—
Nor wills that of the souls whom He has made
Any should perish; rather wills that all
Come to the knowledge of the truth and live.
But look abroad upon the world of men;
What seest thou? Many souls resist the will,
The blesséd will to save, of God. Of these,
Some will hereafter yield—thou knowest not who,
But some—and let themselves be saved. Again,
Some will to the end resist—thou knowest not who;
But some—and obstinately choose to die;
Choice is the fearful privilege of all.
Now, toward the man incorrigibly bad,
Who evil loves and evil makes his good
Forever, without hope of other change
Than change from worse to worse forevermore—
Toward such a man, what must the aspect be
Of the Supreme Eternal Holiness?
What but of wrath, or as of wrath, and hate?
Canst thou imagine other face of God
Than frown and threat aflame implacable
Against implacable rebellion set,
And sin eternal, to eternal sin
Doomed, for self-doomed through free unchanging choice?
One flame burns love toward love, and hate toward hate—
Toward hate that utmost love cannot subdue,
The hate that, like the stubborn diamond-stone
Amid the fiercest fires rebellious, bides
Still, in love's sevenfold-heated furnace, hate.
That flame is the white flame of holiness—
Which God is, and whose other name is love."
"God is a dreadful thought," said Stephen. "Yea,"
Said Paul; "such Jacob felt it when he cried,
'How dreadful is this place!' and Bethel named
The place where God was and he knew it not.
God is a dreadful thought, dreadful as sweet—
The sweetness and the dreadfulness are one.
But never was the dreadfulness so sweet,
The sweetness never yet so dreadful shown,
As then when Jesus died on Calvary!
Shroud thyself, Stephen, from the dreadfulness,
Felt to be too intolerably bright,
In the cool, shadowing, sheltering thought, so nigh,
Of mercy, mercy, still in judgment sheathed."
"I feel the buoyance of my spirit sink,
Oppressed by the great weight of these thy thoughts,"
Said Stephen; "and my heart is very still.
I wait to hear what God the Lord will speak."
"Hearken," said Paul. "Those fearful words of curse
Which late thou nigh hadst turned to blasphemy,
Daring to lade them with thy personal spite
Against a neighbor man, whom we must love,
Until we know hereafter, which God fend!
That he bides reprobate, self-reprobate—
Those maledictions dire, through David breathed,
Express not human hate, but hate divine,
Revealed in forms of human speech, and, too,
Inspired in whoso can the height attain
To side with God, and passionlessly damn,
As if with highest passion, any found—
Whom, known not yet, even to himself not known,
Much less to thee or me, but known to God,
And to be known, in that great day, to all—
Fixed in his final choice of evil for good.
Henceforward, Stephen, when thou sayest that psalm,
Say it and tremble, lest thyself be he,
The man thou cursest in its awful curse!"
"If it were right," said Stephen, after pause
Prolonged in solemn chiding of himself,
"If it were right and seemly, things profane
To mingle with things sacred so—I think
Perforce now of a certain tragedy
I read once by that Grecian Sophocles,
Wherein a Theban king, one Œdipus,
Denounces on a murderer frightful doom,
Dreaming not he—though every reader knows—
The murderer he so curses is himself.
I shudder when I think, 'Were it to be
That the fierce blasting I invoked to fall
Upon another's head, I drew on mine:
"Cursing he loved, and cursing fell on him!"'
Forefend it God, and Christ with blessing fill
This heart of mine, too hasting prone to hate!"
"Amen!" said Paul, "thou prayest for me and thee!"