"Of course. So much of what I think is the opposite of what you do. And then--I believe a lot that Jesus said. While you don't believe any of it at all." He flushed. "I'm not sure I'd want you to talk to my young people." "You relieve me. And you've been very decent to listen--yourself." "Oh," he said, fairly jovially, now that he was about to be gone, "I listen to them all. Crackpots, nuts, psychiatrists, anybody--" "Listen to yourself, once." Suddenly he was sore. "Who in hell do you think you are?" "Somebody," I answered, "whose religion doesn't insist it knows all about all truth for all people for all time. Somebody who isn't a stuck-up, luxury-struck, fatuous, patronizing jerk in a black vest who carries around God's credit card in his hip pocket and keeps in the collection-plate business by holding smut sessions in the church gymnasium. Now, for God's sake, get out of here and let me work." He stood at the door. He smiled again. "I'm sorry for you, Phil. Truly sorry. You're a brave man--in a way--and so arrogantly blind." "Sure. We all are." "Do me one favor?" "Do me one. Cross the hall--poke the bell--" "Pray." "You pray. Wear holes in the sky. Tell God you're coming, soon. And tell Him I am, too, while you're at it. See you there!" When he was gone, I felt washed out. Why had I bothered to try something that couldn't come off? Didn't I know the work I'd done--the hells I'd gone through to get my Inkling--would never tempt that fat bastard past the first six steps of a million rugged miles? Houses on sand paper roofs putty pillars no brains What is conscience but fealty to truth? What man can have good conscience if his beliefs conceal the smallest truth--or especially if they conceal himself from himself? With honesty toward science--and toward the inner sciences--man and ethic are one. Ethos is, indeed, what man has, and is. Come off it, Wylie! The serial! 4 But I couldn't work, any longer. I filled my tub, instead, with the coolest water in the tap. _You_ pray. He would, too. A lugubrious joke uttered itself within me. Father, bring insight to this sincerely mistaken man-- (Taking the words out of my mouth: you right--me wrong) Or, Spare us the ineffable harm of the intellectual, the Antichrist-- (All who oppose us oppose Jesus--but didn't He say, In my house are many mansions?) Prince of Peace! (Peace, in a pig's eye.) A mighty fortress. Onward, Christian soldiers. The Son of God Goes Forth to War. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword-- All the clayfaces, upturned to the ceramic excellence of the dominie Let us pray: Father, forgive them-- The hypocrites! Perhaps some--the widow kneeling in the stained-glass effulgence--clutching her mite--debating love against appetite--a possibly hungrier widow against bread and her own belly--she might see God there-- Our organ cost thirty-six thousand dollars and has five keyboards God,