nds to God, and prayed that His vengeance might fall because of
the mock done to Him here in His own house. They would gladly go to
destruction together with these fool-hardy, if only He would show His
might. Joyously they would let themselves be crushed beneath His heel,
if only He would triumph, that cries of terror, despair, and repentance,
that were too late, might rise up toward Him from these impious lips.

And they struck up a miserere. Every note of it sounded like a cry for
the rain of fire that overwhelmed Sodom, for the strength which
Samson possessed when he pulled down the columns in the house of the
Philistines. They prayed with song and with words; they denuded their
shoulders and prayed with their scourges. They lay kneeling row after
row, stripped to their waist, and swung the sharp-pointed and knotted
cords down on their bleeding backs. Wildly and madly they beat
themselves so that the blood clung in drops on their hissing whips.
Every blow was a sacrifice to God. Would that they might beat themselves
in still another way, would that they might tear themselves into a
thousand bloody shreds here before His eyes! This body with which
they had sinned against His commandments had to be punished, tortured,
annihilated, that He might see how hateful it was to them, that He might
see how they became like unto dogs in order to please Him, lower than
dogs before His will, the lowliest of vermin that ate the dust beneath
the soles of His feet! Blow upon blow--until their arms dropped or
until cramps turned them to knots. There they lay row on row with eyes
gleaming with madness, with foam round their mouths, the blood trickling
down their flesh.

And those who watched this suddenly felt their hearts throb, noticed how
hotness rose into their cheeks and how their breathing grew difficult.
It seemed as if something cold was growing out beneath their scalps,
and their knees grew weak. It seized hold of them; in their brains was a
little spot of madness which understood this frenzy.

To feel themselves the slaves of a harsh and powerful deity, to thrust
themselves down before His feet; to be His, not in gentle piety, not
in the inactivity of silent prayer, but madly, in a frenzy of
self-humiliation, in blood, and wailing, beneath wet gleaming
scourges--this they were capable of understanding. Even the butcher
became silent, and the toothless philosophers lowered their gray heads
before the eyes that roved about.