--melted into peacock and cool saffron hues. He
mused aloud:--

"By the very nature of his mental organs man can never grasp reality. It
is always the sensation, never the real thing, he feels. The
metaphysicians are right. We can never know the actual world outside of
ourselves. We are imprisoned in a dream cage; the globe itself is a cage
of echoes. Science, instead of contradicting religion, has but affirmed
its truths. Matter is radiant energy--matter is electric phenomenon. The
germ-plasma from which we stem--the red clay of Genesis--is eternal. The
individual is sacrificed to the species. The species never dies. And how
beautifully logical is the order of our ancestry as demonstrated by the
science of embryology. Fish, batrachians, reptiles, mammals; in which
latter are included the marsupials as well as lemurs, primates, Man. And
after what struggles Man assumed an erect position and looked into the
eyes of his mate! After Man? Nietzsche preaches that man is a link
between the primate and Superman; Superman--the angels! But intelligence
in man may be an accident caused by over-nutrition, the brain developing
from rich phosphors. If this were so--how would fall to earth our house
of pride! Are we so close to the animal? But Quinton proves that _after_
man in the zooelogical series comes the bird. Birds--half reptiles, half
angels. Angels! Do evolution and revelation meet here on common ground?
Or was Joachim, the Abbot of Flores, inspired when he wrote of the Third
Kingdom, that Kingdom in which the empire of the flesh is swallowed up
in the empire of the spirit; that Third Kingdom in which the
twin-natured shall reign, as Ibsen declares; the Messiah--neither
Emperor nor Redeemer, but the Emperor-God. The slime shall become sap
and the sap become spirit! From gorilla to God! Man in the coming Third
Kingdom may say: "I, too, am a god." But is this not blasphemous? And
after the wheel of the universe has again revolved, will I see, as
foresaw Nietzsche, the selfsame spider, the same moonlight? There is
nothing new under the sun, says Ecclesiastes. Wretched man is never to
know the entire truth but will be always at daggers drawn with his
destiny. After classic Paganism came romantic Christianity; after the
romantic will the pendulum swing back--or--alas! is there coming another
horde of atheists with a new Attila at their head?"

He threw himself before the crucifix and sobbed.

"Lord Jesus, Our Christ! Thou art t