The Devil

"This is his record," the voice of the implacable Judge continued; "not what I have attributed to him as secret thought, but words taken down as spoken by his own mouth. Having committed his crime, he had the calm audacity--to lay the blame on US.... Yes, here is the entry. This is the statement verbatim: 'It is the finger of God'."

And Christ seemed to plead in an agony of grief still strove to lighten the punishment of the pitiful worm that he had deigned to call His brother man. "Oh, he didn't mean it."

"He said it," replied the Holy Ghost, dryly.

"But he didn't think what he was saying--he has been sorry for it ever since."

"Yet, frankly," said the Holy Ghost, "I can not see that he has made a single effort to put things straight, by removing the blame to the proper quarter--that is, to himself."

Nevertheless, Christ still pleaded, could not be silenced, must go on struggling to save this one man--because He was the Savior of all men, because He was Christ. He was there, certainly, infallibly, although quite invisible--He was there, kneeling at the feet of the other Two, praying, weeping:--He was there, filling Heaven with inconsolable woe because, although His myriad suns shone bright as when He lighted them and His universe swung steady and true in His measureless void, one microscopic speck of dirt only just big enough to hold immortal life was in danger of eternal death.

All these imaginations were absolutely real to Dale, an approximate conception of the truth which he could not doubt; and he thought: "Need I wonder if I have not had the slightest glimpse of His face? It is my doom. Christ is cut off from me. So far as human time counts, the communication was broken that afternoon when I was seeming to see him as he rode into Jerusalem and my hankerings after Norah seemed to snap the thread.

"I was judged at that moment. It was my doom--never more, here or there, to look upon His face."