With just a word of introduction, Godfrey read Carlyle's
translation of that finest of Jean Paul's dreams in which he sets
forth the condition of a godless universe all at once awakened to
the knowledge of the causelessness of its own existence. Slowly,
with due inflection and emphasis--slowly, but without pause for
thought or explanation--he read to the end, ceased suddenly, and
lifted his eyes.
"There, Letty," he said, "what do you think of that? There's a
bit of Sunday reading for you!"
Letty was looking altogether perplexed, and not a little
frightened.
"I don't understand a word of it," she answered, gulping back her
tears. He glanced at Mary. She was white as death, her lips
quivered, and from her eyes shot a keen light that seemed to
lacerate their blue.
"It is terrible!" she said. "I never read anything like that."
"There _is_ nothing like it," he answered.
"But the author is a Unitarian, is he not?" remarked Mary--for
she heard plenty of theology, if not much Christianity, in her
chapel.
Godfrey looked at her, then at the book for a moment.
"That may merely seem, from the necessity of the supposition," he
answered; and read again:
"'Now sank from aloft a noble, high Form, with a look of
uneffaceable sorrow, down to the Altar, and all the Dead cried
out, "Christ! is there no God?" He answered, "There is none!" The
whole Shadow of each then shuddered, not the breast alone; and
one after the other all, in this shuddering, shook into pieces.
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