It will probably be advisable at this point to explain the details of the lance and the veil as used in this Devil’s Mass. The explanation, fortunately, can be shortly put. The lance was a real lance, which the hooded man handed to Jurgen (153). The veil was also real. It hung before the _adytum_ (Gr. = inner part of a temple) and inside this adytum, beyond the veil, was the cross with a toad nailed upon it (157). The tip of the lance was red (154) and with it the veil was pierced that concealed the cross, but upon the cross hung the disgusting figure of a toad. The whole thing was, as Jurgen called it on the spot, a piece of “God-baiting”, a mockery, after the manner of the mediæval necromancers, of the mystery of the Passion of the Cross, of the lance that pierced a sacred Side, of the veil of the Temple that broke with a certain event which changed all the tides of history. Taking it by itself this incident is not obscene or lewd; for mockery of sacred belief does not, as matter of law, fall into that class. An attack on religious belief cannot be indictable as an obscenity under Section 1141 of the Penal Code; if prosecuted, it must be indicted as a libel (_People_ v. _Eastman_, 188 N. Y. 478). _But we will not allow the defendants, nor Mr. Cabell, the author, to remain for a moment solely under that protection. This book puts forth the attack upon the Christian belief, not to support the attack, but to deride the attack itself._ It is a matter of common observation that _infidelity itself partakes of a religious fervor, and it is of that fervor that Jurgen makes fun_. “Well, well!” says Jurgen, “but you are a little old fashioned, with all these equivocal mummeries” (157). Being “skeptical” (165) he denies that “death is going to end all for him” (171). And so Cocaigne “does not satisfy him” (172), he expresses his discontent at length (163-170) until Anaitis, in wrath, calls him “irreverent” (167), and that leads to their parting. Surely that is a moral ending! Jurgen leaves Anaitis, his heart and mind not going along with the beliefs and practices of a goddess who enjoys every “far-fetched frolic of heathenry”, and who goes forth into the world to tempt people like St. Simeon Stylites and the hermits of the Thebaid (176). If it is unlawful to say that in print, then we must suppress Flaubert’s “Temptation of St. Anthony”, and we should certainly never permit “Tannhäuser” or “Thais” to be sung at the Metropolitan. Then what survives all of this? What indeed but the words of one of the goddess’ friends, the Master Philologist, who says: “The Jewish mob spoke louder than He Whom they crucified. But the Word endures” (182). Jurgen, in short, tires of this place, a place where “it appears that their notion of felicity is to dwell eternally in a glorified brothel” (187).