d, deceived, tricked, as
Caliban tricks Prospero,--so run the crude theological speculations of
this man. He gets no step nearer truth. He walks in circles. He is
shut in by common human limitations. Man can not dream about the sky
until he has seen a sky, nor can he dream out God till God has been
revealed. Caliban is no more helpless here than other men. His
failure in theology is a picture of the failure of all men. God must
show himself at Sinais and at Calvarys, at cross and grave and
resurrection and ascension; must pass from the disclosure of his being
the "I Am" to those climacteric moments of the world when he discovered
to us that he was the "I am Love" and the "I am the Resurrection and
the Life." God is

"Terrible: watch his feats in proof!
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope,
He hath a spite against me, that I know,
Just as He favors Prospero; who knows why?
So it is all the same as well I find.
. . . So much for spite."

There is no after-life.

"He doth His worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst--with which, an end.
Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire
Is, not to seem too happy."

Poor Caliban, not to have known that in the summer of man's joy our God
grows glad! All he hopes is,

"Since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier he
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die."

This is tragic as few tragedies know how to be. Setebos is mean,
revengeful, fitful, spiteful, everything but good and noble; and his
votary will live to hope that he will either be conquered by a mightier
or will slumber forever!

So Caliban creates a god, a cosmogony, a theology; gets no thought of
goodness from God or for himself; gets no sign of reformation in
character; rises not a cubit above the ground where he constructs his
monologue; puts into God only what is in Caliban; has no faint hint of
love toward him from God, or from him toward God, when suddenly

"A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes,
There scuds His raven that has told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze--
A tree's head