or thought in any way greatly, I have gone from one day to the next day
without looking very much farther than the end of the day, I have gone
on as life has befallen; if no great trouble had come into my life, so
I should have lived to the end of my days. But life which began for me
easily and safely has become constantly more difficult and strange.
I could have held my services and given my benedictions, I could have
believed I believed in what I thought I believed.... But now I am lost
and astray--crying out for God...."

(9)

"Let us talk a little about your troubles," said the Angel. "Let us talk
about God and this creed that worries you and this church of yours."

"I feel as though I had been struggling to this talk through all the
years--since my doubts began."

"The story your Creed is trying to tell is much the same story that
all religions try to tell. In your heart there is God, beyond the stars
there is God. Is it the same God?"

"I don't know," said the bishop.

"Does any one know?"

"I thought I knew."

"Your creed is full of Levantine phrases and images, full of the patched
contradictions of the human intelligence utterly puzzled. It is about
those two Gods, the God beyond the stars and the God in your heart. It
says that they are the same God, but different. It says that they have
existed together for all time, and that one is the Son of the other. It
has added a third Person--but we won't go into that."

The bishop was reminded suddenly of the dispute at Mrs. Garstein
Fellows'. "We won't go into that," he agreed. "No!"

"Other religions have told the story in a different way. The Cathars and
Gnostics did. They said that the God in your heart is a rebel against
the God beyond the stars, that the Christ in your heart is like
Prometheus--or Hiawatha--or any other of the sacrificial gods, a rebel.
He arises out of man. He rebels against that high God of the stars and
crystals and poisons and monsters and of the dead emptiness of space....
The Manicheans and the Persians made out our God to be fighting
eternally against that Being of silence and darkness beyond the stars.
The Buddhists made the Lord Buddha the leader of men out of the futility
and confusion of material existence to the great peace beyond. But it is
all one story really, the story of the two essential Beings, always the
same story and the same perplexity cropping up under different names,
the story of one being who stirs us, cal