I had finally taught myself not to count the days when, after a day much like all the others, don Alejandro surprised us.
"We"re turning in now," he informed us. "Tomorrow morning we"ll be leaving at first light."
Once I was downriver I began to feel so happy that I could actually think about La Caledonia with some affection.
We began to hold our Sat.u.r.day sessions again. At the first meeting, Twirl asked for the floor. He said (with his usual flowery turn of phrase) that the library of the Congress of the World must not be limited to refer- ence books alone-the cla.s.sics of every land and language were a treasure we overlooked, he declared, only at our peril. His motion was pa.s.sed imme- diately;FernandezIrala and Dr. Cruz, a professor of Latin, undertook to choose the necessary texts. Twirl had already spoken withNierensteinabout the matter.
At that time there was not an Argentine alive whose Utopia was not Paris. Of us all, the man who champed at the bit the most was perhapsFer- minEguren; next wasFernandezIrala, for quite different reasons. For the poet ofLos marmoles,Paris wasVerlaineand LecontedeLisle; for Eguren, an improved extension ofCalle Junin.He had come to an understanding, I presume, with Twirl. At another meeting, Twirl brought up the language that would be used by the delegates to the Congress, and he suggested that two delegates be sent immediately to London and Paris to do research. Feign- ing impartiality, he first proposed my name; then, after a slight pause, the name of his friend Eguren. Don Alejandro, as always, went along.
I believe I mentioned that Wren, in exchange for a few lessons in Italian, had initiated me into the study of that infinite language English. He pa.s.sed over grammar and those manufactured "cla.s.sroom" sentences (insofar as possible) and we plunged straight into poetry, whose forms demand brevity. My first contact with the language that would fill my life was Stevenson"s courageous "Requiem"; after that came the ballads that Percy unveiled to the decorous eighteenth century. A short while before my departure for London, I was introduced to the dazzling verse of Swinburne, which led me (though it felt like sin) todoubt the preeminence of Irala"s alexandrines.
I arrived in London in early January of 1902.1 recall the caress of the snow, which I had never seen before, and which I must say I liked. Happily, I had not had to travel with Eguren. I stayed at a modest inn behind the British Museum, to whose library I would repair morning and afternoon, in search of a language worthy of the Congress of the World. I did not neglect the universal languages; I looked into Esperanto (which Lugones"Lunariosentimental*calls "reasonable, simple, and economical") andVolapuk,which attempts to explore all the possibilities of language, declining verbs and conjugating nouns. I weighed the arguments for and against reviving Latin (for which one still finds some nostalgia, even after so many centuries). Ialso devoted some time to a study of the a.n.a.lytical language of John Wilkins, in which the definition of each word is contained in the letters that const.i.tute it. It was under the high dome of the reading room that I met Beatrice.
This is the general history of the Congress of the World, not the history of AlexanderFerri-emphatically not my own-and yet the first includes the second, as it includes all others. Beatrice was tall and slender, her fea- tures pure and her hair bright red; it might have reminded me of the devi- ous Twirl"s, but it never did. She was not yet twenty. She had left one of the northern counties to come and study literature at the university. Her ori- gins, like mine, were humble. In the Buenos Airesofthattime, being of Ital- ian extraction was a questionable social recommendation; in London I discovered that for many people it was romantic. It took us but a few after- noons to become lovers; I asked her to marry me, but Beatrice Frost, like Nora Erfjord, was a votary of the religion of Ibsen and would not join her- self to any man. From her lips came the word I dared not speak. Oh nights, oh shared warm darkness, oh love that flows in shadow like a secret river, oh that moment of joy in which two are one, oh innocence and openness of delight, oh the union into which we entered, only to lose ourselves after- ward in sleep, oh the first soft lights of day, and myself contemplating her.
On that harsh border with Brazil I had been prey to homesickness; not so in the red maze of London, which gave me so many things. But in spite of the pretexts I invented to put off my departure, at the end of the year I had to return; we would celebrate Christmas together. I promised her that don Alejandro would ask her to join the Congress; she replied, vaguely, that she"d like to visit the Southern Hemisphere -a cousin of hers, she said, a dentist, had settled in Tasmania. Beatrice had no wish to see the boat off; farewells, in her view, were an emphasis, a senseless celebration of misfor- tune, and she hated emphases.
We parted at the library where we had met the previous winter. I am a coward; to avoid the anguish of waiting for her letters, I did not give her my address.
I have noticed that return voyages are shorter than voyages out, but that particular crossing of the Atlantic, wallowing in memories and heavy seas, seemed inordinately long to me. Nothing pained me so much as thinking that Beatrice"s life, parallel with my own, was continuing onward, minute by minute and night by night. I wrote a letter many pages long, and tore it up when we anch.o.r.ed in Montevideo. I arrived in my own country on a Thurs- day; Irala was at the dock to greet me. I returned to my old lodgings inCalleChile. That day and the next we spent talking and walking; I wanted to recapture Buenos Aires. It was a relief to know thatFermin Egurenwas still in Paris; the fact that I"d returned before him might somehow mitigate my long absence.
Irala was discouraged.Ferminwas spending vast sums of money in Eu- rope and more than once had disobeyed instructions to return immedi- ately. That was all predictable enough. It was other news that I found more disturbing: despite the objections of Irala and Cruz, Twirl had invoked Pliny the Younger- who had affirmed that there was no book so bad that it didn"t contain some good-to suggest that the Congress indiscriminatelyVipurchase collections ofLa Prensa,thirty-four hundred copies (in various "<>
formats) ofDonQuijote,Balmes"Letters,and random collections of univer- sity dissertations, short stories, bulletins, and theater programs. "All things are testaments," he had said.Nierensteinhad seconded him; don Alejandro, "after three thunderous Sat.u.r.days," had agreed to the motion. Nora Erfjord had resigned her post as secretary; she was replaced by a new member, Kar-linski, who was a tool of Twirl"s. The enormous packages now began piling up, uncataloged and without card files, in the back rooms and wine cellar of don Alejandro"s mansion. In early July, Irala had spent a week in La Caledo- nia. The carpenters were not working. The foreman, questioned about this, explained that don Alejandro hadordered the work halted, and the workers were feeling the time on their hands.
In London I had drafted a report (which need not concern us here); on Friday, I went to pay my respects to don Alejandro and deliver the manu- script to him.FernandezIrala went with me. It was that hour of the evening when the pampas wind begins to blow; the house was filled with breezes. Before the iron gate onCalleAlsina there stood a wagon with three horses. I recall men, bent under the weight of their loads, carrying large bundles into the rear patio; Twirl was imperiously ordering them about. There too, as though they"d had a foreboding, were Nora Erfjord andNierensteinand Cruz and Donald Wren and one or two others. Nora put her arms around me and kissed me, and that embrace, that kiss, reminded me of others. The Negro, high-spirited and gay, kissed my hand.
In one of the bedrooms the square trap-door to the cellar was lying open; crude cement steps led down into the dimness.
Suddenly we heard footsteps. Even before I saw him, I knew it was don Alejandro arriving home. He was almost running when he came into the room.
His voice was changed. It was not the voice of the thoughtful, deliberate gentleman who presided over our Sat.u.r.day meetings, nor was it the voice ofthefeudalseigneur who stopped a knife fight and read the word of G.o.d to hisgauchos,though it did resemble this latter one. He did not look at any- one when he spoke.
"Start bringing up everything that"s piled down there," he commanded. "I don"t want a book left in that cellar."
The job took almost an hour. In the earthen-floored patio we made a pile of books taller than the tallest among us. We all worked, going back and forth until every book had been brought up; the only person that did not move was don Alejandro.
Then came the next order: "Now set that mound afire."
Twirl was pallid.Nierensteinmanaged to murmur: "The Congress of the World cannot do without these precious aids that I have chosen with such love."
"The Congress of the World?" said don Alejandro, laughing scorn- fully-and I had never heard him laugh.
There is a mysterious pleasure in destruction; the flames crackled brightly while we cowered against the walls or huddled into the bedrooms. Night, ashes, and the smell of burning lingered in the patio. I recall a few lost pages that were saved, lying white upon the packed earth. Nora Erfjord, who pro- fessed for don Alejandro that sort of love that young women sometimes harbor for old men, finally, uncomprehending, spoke: "Don Alejandro knows what he"s doing."
Irala, one of literature"s faithful, essayed a phrase: "Every few centuries the Library at Alexandria must be burned."
It was then that we were given the explanation for all this.
"It has taken me four years to grasp what I am about to tell you. The task we have undertaken is so vast that it embraces-as I now recognize- the entire world. It is not a handful of prattling men and women muddying issues in the barracks of some remote cattle ranch. The Congress of the World began the instant the world itself began, and it will go on when we are dust. There is no place it is not. The Congress is the books we have burned. It is the Caledonians who defeated the Ca.s.sars" legions. It is Job on the dunghill and Christ on the Cross. The Congress is even that worthless young man who is squandering my fortune on wh.o.r.es."
I could not restrain myself, and I interrupted.
"Don Alejandro, I am guilty too. I had finished my report, which I have here with me, but I stayed on in England, squandering your money, for the love of a woman."
"I supposed as much,Ferri," hesaid, and then continued: "The Con- gress is my bulls. It is the bulls I have sold and the leagues of countryside that do not belong to me."
An anguished voice was raised; it was Twirl"s.
"You"re not telling us you"ve sold La Caledonia?"Don Alejandro answered serenely: "I have. Not an inch of land remains of what was mine, but my ruin can- not be said to pain me because now I understand. We may never see each other again, because we no longer need the Congress, but this last night we shall all go out to contemplate the Congress."
He was drunk with victory; his firmness and his faith washed over us. No one thought, even for a second, that he had gone insane.
In the square we took an open carriage. I climbed into the coachman"s seat, beside the coachman.
"Maestro," ordered don Alejandro, "we wish to tour the city. Take us where you will."
The Negro, standing on a footboard and clinging to the coach, never ceased smiling. I will never know whether he understood anything of what was happening.
Words are symbols that posit a shared memory. The memory I wish to set down for posterity now is mine alone; those who shared it have all died. Mystics invoke a rose, a kiss, a bird that is all birds, a sun that is the sun and yet all stars, a goatskin filled with wine, a garden, or the s.e.xual act. None of these metaphors will serve for that long night of celebration that took us, exhausted but happy, to the very verge of day. We hardly spoke, while the wheels and horseshoes clattered over the paving stones. Just before dawn, near a dark and humble stream-perhaps the Maldonado, or perhaps theRiachuelo- Nora Erfjord"s high soprano sang out the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, and don Alejandro"s ba.s.s joined in for a verse or two-out of tune. The English words did not bring back to me the image of Beatrice.
Twirl, behind me, murmured: "I have tried to do evil yet I have done good."
Something of what we glimpsed that night remains-the reddish wall of theRecoleta,the yellow wall of the prison, two men on a street corner dancing the tango the way the tango was danced in the old days, a checker- board entryway and a wrought-iron fence, the railings of the railroad sta- tion, my house, a market, the damp and unfathomable night-but none of these fleeting things (which may well have been others) matters. What mat- ters is having felt that that inst.i.tution of ours, which more than once we hadmade jests about, truly and secretly existed, and that it was the universe and ourselves. With no great hope, through all these years I have sought the sa- vorofthatnight; once in a great while I have thought I caught a s.n.a.t.c.h of it in a song, in lovemaking, in uncertain memory, but it has never fully come back to me save once, one early morning, in a dream. By the time we"d sworn we would tell none of this to anyone, it was Sat.u.r.day morning.
I never saw any of those people again, with the exception of Irala, and he and I never spoke about our adventure; any word would have been a profanation. In 1914, don Alejandro Glencoe died and was buried in Monte- video. Irala had died the year before.
I b.u.mped intoNierensteinonce onCalleLima, but we pretended we didn"t see each other.
There Are More Things
To the memory of H. P. Lovecraft
Just as I was about to take my last examination at the University of Texas, in Austin, I learned that my uncle Edwin Arnett had died of an aneurysm on the remote frontier of South America. I felt what we always feel when some- one dies-the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving. One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men. The subject I was studying was philosophy; I recalled that there in the Red House nearLomas,my uncle, without employing a single proper noun, had revealed to me the lovely perplexities of the discipline. One of the dessert oranges was the tool he employed for initiating me into Berkeleyan idealism; he used the chessboard to explain the Eleatic para- doxes. Years later, he lent me Hinton"s treatises, which attempt to prove the reality of a fourth dimension in s.p.a.ce, a dimension the reader is encouraged to intuit by means of complicated exercises with colored cubes. I shall never forget the prisms and pyramids we erected onthe floor of his study.
My uncle was an engineer. Before retiring from his job at the railway, he made the decision to move to t.u.r.dera,* which offered him the combined advantages of a virtual wilderness of solitude and the proximity of Buenos Aires. There was nothing more natural than that the architect of his home there should be his close friend AlexanderMuir.This strict man professed the strict doctrine of Knox; my uncle, in the manner of almost all the gentlemen of his time, was a freethinker-or an agnostic, rather-yet at the same time he was interested in theology, the way he was interested in Hin- ton"s fallacious cubes and the well-thought-out nightmares of the young Wells. He liked dogs; he had a big sheepdog he called Samuel Johnson, in memory of Lichfield, the distant town he had been born in.
The Red House stood on a hill, hemmed in to the west by swampy land.
The Norfolkpines along the outside of the fence could not temper its air of oppressiveness. Instead of flat roofs where one might take the air on a sultry night, the house had a peaked roof of slate tiles and a square tower with a clock; these structures seemed to weigh down the walls and stingy windows of the house. As a boy, I accepted those facts of ugliness as one accepts all those incompatible things that only by reason of their coexistence are called "the universe."
I returned to my native country in 1921. To stave off lawsuits, the house had been auctioned off; it had been bought by a foreigner, a man named Max Preetorius, who paid double the amount bid by the next highest bid- der. After the bill of sale was signed, he arrived one evening with two a.s.sis- tants and they threw all the furniture, all the books, and all the household goods in the house into a dump not far from the Military Highway. (I recall with sadness the diagrams in the volumes of Hinton and the great terraque - ous globe.) The next day, he went toMuirand suggested certain changes to the house, whichMuirindignantly refused to carry out. Subsequently, a firm from Buenos Aires undertook the work.
The carpenters from the vil- lage refused to refurnish the house; a certain Mariani, from Glew,* at last accepted the conditions that Preetorius laid down. For a fortnight, he was to work at night, behind closed doors. And it was by night that the new resi- dent of Red House took up his habitation. The windows were never opened anymore, but through the darkness one could make out cracks of light.
One morning the milkman came upon the body of the sheepdog, decapitated and mutilated, on the walk.
That winter the Norfolk pines were cut down. No one ever saw Preetorius again; he apparently left the country soon after.
Such reports, as the reader may imagine, disturbed me. I know that I am notorious for my curiosity, which has, variously, led me into marriage with a woman utterly unlike myself (solely so that I might discover who she was and what she was really like), into trying laudanum (with no apprecia- ble result), into an exploration oftransfinitenumbers, and into the terrify- ing adventure whose story I am about to tell.
Inevitably, I decided to look into this matter.
My first step was to go and see AlexanderMuir.I remembered him as a ramrod-straight, dark man whose leanness did not rule out strength; now he was stooped with years and his jet black beard was gray. He greeted me at the door of his house in Temperley-which predictably enough resembled my uncle"s, as both houses conformed to the solid rules of the good poet and bad builder William Morris.
Our conversation was flinty; not for nothing is the thistle the symbol ofScotland. I sensed, however, that the strong Ceylon tea and the judicious plate of scones (which my host broke and b.u.t.tered as though I were still a child) were, in fact, a frugal Calvinistic feast laid out to welcome his old friend"s nephew. His theological debates with my uncle had been a long game of chess, which demanded of each player the collaborative spirit of an opponent.
Time pa.s.sed and I could not bring myself to broach my subject. There was an uncomfortable silence, and thenMuirhimself spoke.
"Young man," he said, "you have not taken such trouble to come here to talk to me about Edwin or the United States, a country that holds little in- terest for me. What keeps you from sleeping at night is the sale of the Red House, and that curious individual that"s bought it. Well, it keeps me from sleeping, too.
Frankly, I find the whole affair most disagreeable, but I"ll tell you what I can. It shan"t be much."
In a moment, he went on, without haste.
"Before Edwin died, the mayor called me into his office. The parish priest was there. They wanted me todraw up the plans for a Catholic chapel. They would pay me well. I gave them my answer on the spot.
No, I told them, I am a servant of the Lord, and I cannot commit the abomination of erecting altars for the worship of idols."
Here he stopped.
"That"s all?" I hazarded.
"No. That Jewish whelp Preetorius wanted me to destroy my work, the house I"d built, and put up a monstrosity in its place. Abomination takes many forms."
He p.r.o.nounced these words with great gravity, then he stood up.
As I turned the corner, Daniel Iberra approached me. We knew each other the way people in small towns do. He suggested we walk back together. I"ve never held any brief for h.e.l.lions and that lot, and I could foresee a sordid string of more or less violent and more or less apocryphal bar stories, but I resigned myself and said I"d walk with him. It was almost dark. When he saw the Red House up on its hill a few blocks away, Iberra turned down another street. I asked him why. His answer was not what I"d expected.
"I"m don Felipe"s right arm. n.o.body"s ever been able to say I backed down from anything. You probably remember that fellow Urgoiti that came all the way here fromMerlolooking for me, and what happened to him when he found me. Well, listen-a few nights ago I was coming back from a big whoop-de-doo. About a hundred yards from the house, I saw something. My pinto spooked, and if I hadn"t talked her down andturned down along that alleyway there, I might not be telling the story. What I saw was..." He shook his head. Then, angrily, he cursed.
That night I couldn"t sleep. Toward sunrise I dreamed of an engraving in the style of Piranesi, one I"d never seen before or perhaps had seen and forgotten-an engraving of a kind of labyrinth. It was a stone amphitheater with a border of cypresses, but its walls stood taller than the tops of the trees. There were no doors or windows, but it was pierced by an infinite se- ries of narrow vertical slits. I was using a magnifying gla.s.s to try to find the Minotaur. At last I saw it. It was the monster of a monster; it looked less like a bull than like a buffalo, and its human body was lying on the ground. It seemed to be asleep, and dreaming-but dreaming of what, or of whom?
That evening I pa.s.sed by the Red House. The gate in the fence was locked, and some iron bars had been twisted around it. What had been the garden was now weeds. Off to the right there was a shallow ditch, and its banks were trampled.
I had one card still up my sleeve, but I put off playing it for several days, not only because I sensed how utterly useless it would be but also because it would drag me to the inevitable, the ultimate.
Finally, with no great hopes, I went to Glew. Mariani, the carpenter, now getting on in years, was a fat, rosy Italian-a very friendly, unpreten- tious fellow. The minute I saw him I discarded the stratagems that had seemed so promising the day before. I gave him my card, which he spelled out to himself aloud with some ceremony, and with a slight reverential hitch when he came to thePh.D. I told him I was interested in the furnish- ings he had made for the house that had belonged to my uncle, in t.u.r.dera. The man talked on and on. I will not attempt to transcribe his many (and expressively gesticulated) words, but he a.s.sured me that his motto was "meet the client"s demands, no matter how outrageous," and told me he"d lived up to it. After rummaging around in several boxes, he showed me some papers I couldn"t read, signed by the elusive Preetorius. (No doubt he took me for a lawyer.) When we were saying our good-byes, he confided that all the money in the world couldn"t persuade him to set foot again in t.u.r.dera, much less in that house. He added that the customer is always right, but that in his humble opinion, Sr. Preetorius was "notquite right," if I knew what he meant-he tapped his forehead with his finger. Then, re- gretting he"d gone so far, he would say no more. I could get not another word out of him.
I had foreseen this failure, but it is one thing to foresee something, and another thing when it comes to pa.s.s.
Over and over I told myself that time-that infinite web of yesterday, today, the future, forever, never- is the only true enigma. Such profound thoughts availed me nothing; after dedicating my evening to the study of Schopenhauer orRoyceI would still wander, night after night, along the dirt roads bordering the Red House. At times I would make out a very white light up on the hill; at others I would think I couldhear moaning. This went on until the nineteenth of January.
It was one of those days in Buenos Aires when one feels not only in- sulted and abused by the summer, but actually degraded. It was about eleven that night when the storm clouds burst. First came the south wind, and then sheets, waves, torrents of water. I scurried about in the darkness, trying to find a tree to take shelter under. In the sudden sharp light from a bolt of lightning, I found that I was but steps from the fence. I am not cer- tain whether it was with fear or hopefulness that I tried the gate. Unexpect- edly, it opened. Buffeted by the storm, I made my way in; sky and earth alike impelled me. The front door of the house was also ajar. A gust of rain lashed my face, and I went in.
Inside, the floor tiles had been taken up; my feet trod gra.s.s in clumps and patches. A sweetish, nauseating odor filled the house. To the left or right, I am not sure which, I stumbled onto a stone ramp. I scrambled up it. Almost unthinkingly my hand sought the light switch.
The dining room and library of my recollections were now (the divid- ing wall having been torn out) one large ruinous room, with pieces of fur- niture scattered here and there. I will not attempt to describe them, because in spite of the pitiless white light I am not certain I actually saw them. Let me explain: In order truly to see a thing, one must first understand it. An armchair implies the human body, its joints and members; scissors, the act of cutting. What can be told from a lamp, or an automobile? The savage cannot really perceive the missionary"s Bible; the pa.s.senger does not see the same ship"s rigging as the crew. If we truly saw the universe, perhaps we would understand it.
None of the insensate forms I saw that night corresponded to the hu- man figure or any conceivable use.
They inspired horror and revulsion. In one corner I discovered a vertical ladder that rose to the floor above. The wide iron rungs, no more than ten in all, were s.p.a.ced irregularly; that lad- der, which implied hands and feet, was comprehensible, and somehow it re- lieved me. I turned off the light and waited for a while in the darkness. I could hear not the slightest sound, but the presence of so many incompre- hensible things unnerved me. At last, I made my decision.
Upstairs, my trembling hand once again reached out for the light switch. The nightmare prefigured by the downstairs rooms stirred and flowered in the upper story. There were many objects, or several interwoven ones. I now recall a long, U-shaped piece of furniture like an operating ta- ble, very high, with circular openings at the extremes. It occurred to me that this might be the bed used by the resident of the house, whose monstrous anatomy was revealed obliquely by this object in much the way the anatomy of an animal, or a G.o.d, may be known by the shadow it casts. From some page of Lucan, read years ago and then forgotten, there came to my lips the wordamphisbna,which suggested (though by no means fully captured) what my eyes would later see. I also recall a V of mirrors that faded into shadows above.
What must the inhabitant of this house be like? What must it be seek- ing here, on this planet, which must have been no less horrible to it than it to us? From what secret regions of astronomy or time, from what ancient and now incalculable twilight, had it reached this South American suburb and this precise night?
I felt that I had intruded, uninvited, into chaos. Outside, the rain had stopped. I looked at my watch and saw with astonishment that it was almost twoa.m. I left the light on and began cautiously to climb back down the ladder. Climbing down what I had once climbed up was not impossible- climbing down before the inhabitant came back. I conjectured that it hadn"t locked the front door and the gate because it hadn"t known how.
My feet were just touching the next to last rung when I heard some- thing coming up the ramp-something heavy and slow and plural. Curi- osity got the better of fear, and I did not close my eyes.
The Sect of the Thirty
The original ma.n.u.script may be consulted in the library at the University of Leyden; it is in Latin, but its occasional h.e.l.lenism justifies the conjecture that it may be a translation from the Greek. According to Leisegang, it dates from the fourth century of the Christian era; Gibbon mentions it, in pa.s.s- ing, in one of his notes to the fifteenth chapter ofThe Decline and Fall. These are the words of its anonymous author:... The Sect was never large, but now its followers are few indeed. Their number decimated by sword and fire, they sleep by the side of the road or in the ruins spared them by war, as they are forbidden to build dwellings. They often go about naked. The events my pen describes are known to all men; my purpose here is to leave a record of that which has been given me to dis- cover about their doctrine and their habits. I have engaged in long counsel with their masters, but I have not been able to convert them to Faith in Our Lord.
The first thing which drew my attention was the diversity of their opin- ion with respect to the dead. The most unschooled among them believe that they shall be buried by the spirits of those who have left this life; others, who do not cleave so tight to the letter, say that Jesus" admonitionLet the dead bury the dead condemns the showy vanity of our funerary rites.
The counsel to sell all that one owns and give it to the poor is strictly observed by all; the first recipients give what they receive to others, and these to yet others. This is sufficient explanation for their poverty and their nakedness, which likewise brings them closer to the paradisal state. Fer- vently they cite the wordsConsider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap: which neither have storehouse nor barn: and G.o.d feedeth them: how muchmore are ye better than the fowls? Thetext forbids saving, forIf G.o.d so clothe the gra.s.s, which is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven: how much more will he clothe you,O yeof little faith? And seek not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.
The prescriptionWhosoever looketh on a woman to l.u.s.t after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart is an unmistakable exhorta- tion to purity. Still, many are the members of the Sect who teach that be- cause there is no man under heaven who has not looked upon a woman to desire her, then we have all committed adultery. And since the desire is no less sinful than the act, the just may deliver themselves up without risk of h.e.l.lfire to the exercise of the most unbridled l.u.s.tfulness.
The Sect shuns churches; its teachers preach in the open, from a mountaintop or the top of a wall, or sometimes from a boat upturned upon the sh.o.r.e.
There has been persistent speculation as to the origins of the Sect"s name. One such conjecture would have it that the name gives us the num- ber to which the body of the faithful has been reduced; this is ludicrous but prophetic, as the perverse doctrine of the Sect does indeed predestine it to extinction.
Another conjecture derives the name from the height of the Ark, which was thirty cubits; another, misrepresenting astronomy, claims that the name is taken from the number of nights within the lunar month; yet another, from the baptism of the Savior; another, from the age of Adam when he rose from/the red dust. All are equally false. No less untruthful is the catalog of thirty divinities orthrones, of which, one is Abraxxas, pic- tured with the head of a c.o.c.k, the arms and torso of a man, and the coiled tail of a serpent.
I know the Truth but I cannot plead the Truth. To me the priceless gift of giving word to it has not been granted. Let others, happier men than I, save the members of the Sect by the word. By word or by fire.
It is better to be killed than to kill oneself. I shall, therefore, limit myself to an account of the abominable heresy.
The Word was made flesh so that He might be a man among men, so that men might bind Him to the Cross, and be redeemed by Him. He was born from the womb of a woman of the chosen people not simply that He might teach the gospel of Love but also that He might undergo that martyrdom.
It was needful that all be unforgettable. The death of a man by sword or hemlock was not sufficient to leave a wound on the imagination of man- kind until the end of days. The Lord disposed that the events should inspirepathos. That is the explanation for the Last Supper, for Jesus" words fore- telling His deliverance up to the Romans, for the repeated sign to one of His disciples, for the blessing of the bread and wine, for Peter"s oaths, for the solitary vigil on Gethsemane, for the twelve men"s sleep, for the Son"s hu- man plea, for the sweat that was like blood, for the swords, the betraying kiss, the Pilate who washed his hands of it, the flagellation, the jeers and de- rision, the thorns, the purple and the staff of cane, the vinegar with honey, the Tree upon the summit of the Hill, the promise to the good thief, the earth that shook, and the darkness that fell upon the land.