“Why, you stupid man,” she said to him later on in the day with a quick, kindly smile, “I was looking at you all the time. As soon as the President or Hanky began to talk about you I knew you would stare at him, and then I could look. As soon as they left off talking about you I knew you would be looking at me, unless you went to sleep—and as I did not know which you might be doing, I waited till they began to talk about you again.”
My father had hardly taken note of his surroundings when the choir began singing, accompanied by a few feeble flutes and lutes, or whatever the name of the instrument should be, but with no violins, for he knew nothing of the violin, and had not been able to teach the Erewhonians anything about it. The voices were all in unison, and the tune they sang was one which my father had taught Yram to sing; but he could not catch the words.
As soon as the singing began, a procession, headed by the venerable Dr. Gurgoyle, President of the Musical Banks of the province, began to issue from the robing-room, and move towards the middle of the apse. The President was sumptuously dressed, but he wore no mitre, nor anything to suggest an English or European Bishop. The Vice-President, Head Manager, Vice-Manager, and some Cashiers of the Bank, now ranged themselves on either side of him, and formed an impressive group as they stood, gorgeously arrayed, at the top of the steps leading from the apse to the nave. Here they waited till the singers left off singing.
When the litany, or hymn, or whatever it should be called, was over, the Head Manager left the President’s side and came down to the lectern in the nave, where he announced himself as about to read some passages from the Sunchild’s Sayings. Perhaps because it was the first day of the year according to their new calendar, the reading began with the first chapter, the whole of which was read. My father told me that he quite well remembered having said the last verse, which he still held as true; hardly a word of the rest was ever spoken by him, though he recognised his own influence in almost all of it. The reader paused, with good effect, for about five seconds between each paragraph, and read slowly and very clearly. The chapter was as follows:—
These are the words of the Sunchild about God and man. He said—
God is the baseless basis of all thoughts, things, and deeds.
So that those who say that there is a God, lie, unless they also mean that there is no God; and those who say that there is no God, lie, unless they also mean that there is a God.
It is very true to say that man is made after the likeness of God; and yet it is very untrue to say this.
God lives and moves in every atom throughout the universe. Therefore it is wrong to think of Him as ‘Him’ and ‘He,’ save as by the clutching of a drowning man at a straw.
God is God to us only so long as we cannot see Him. When we are near to seeing Him He vanishes, and we behold Nature in His stead.
We approach Him most nearly when we think of Him as our expression for Man’s highest conception, of goodness, wisdom, and power. But we cannot rise to Him above the level of our own highest selves.
We remove ourselves most far from Him when we invest Him with human form and attributes.
My father the sun, the earth, the moon, and all planets that roll round my father, are to God but as a single cell in our bodies to ourselves.
He is as much above my father, as my father is above men and women.
The universe is instinct with the mind of God. The mind of God is in all that has mind throughout all worlds. There is no God but the Universe, and man, in this world is His prophet.
God’s conscious life, nascent, so far as this world is concerned, in the infusoria, adolescent in the higher mammals, approaches maturity on this earth in man. All these living beings are members one of another, and of God.
Therefore, as man cannot live without God in the world, so neither can God live in this world without mankind.
If we speak ill of God in our ignorance it may be forgiven us; but if we speak ill of His Holy Spirit indwelling in good men and women it may not be forgiven us.
The Head Manager now resumed his place by President Gurgoyle’s side, and the President in the name of his Majesty the King declared the temple to be hereby dedicated to the contemplation of the Sunchild and the better exposition of his teaching. This was all that was said. The reliquary was then brought forward and placed at the top of the steps leading from the apse to the nave; but the original intention of carrying it round the temple was abandoned for fear of accidents through the pressure round it of the enormous multitudes who were assembled. More singing followed of a simple but impressive kind; during this I am afraid I must own that my father, tired with his walk, dropped off into a refreshing slumber, from which he did not wake
