Jesus Christ -- Fiction; Religious fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
We came and went about our daily business, unconscious that anything
had happened. For so it is, we see and think only of the things of the
earth; for so it is that there is to us no other light than the light
of the sun of this world, no other things than the things of this
mundane universe--beyond these all is void and darkness. These mundane
things stood firm and unshaken when the Son of Man yielded up the
spirit, and only those who saw beneath the shell of things beheld the
darkness and the terror.
A poor carpenter had died that the Law and the Gospel might be
preserved, and a few rough fishermen--a few poor, ignorant,
superstitious outcasts thought that they saw the flaming orb of day
turned into a smoky blackness; that they felt the earth strain and
crack beneath their feet; that they beheld the bulwarks of religion
split in twain from top to bottom.
Gilderman was worried that morning because the baby had caught cold.
The day was pleasant and the sun shone brightly. Do you think he would
have believed you if you had told him, in the midst of his worries,
that the most tremendous cataclysm of the world was about to occur?
He felt a great sense of relief when Dr. Wellington entered the study.
"I'm so glad you've come," said Gilderman, and the two shook hands
almost cordially. At that same moment the old world came to an end and
a new world began.
So the annihilation of the ages was beheld by the scribes, the
pharisees, the priests, Levites, and Romans.
XVIII
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH
WHEN men have slain the Living Truth and a new age has arisen from its
death, the world still rolls onward in its course and mankind does not
know that anything has happened. Children are born into the world, men
and women are married, others die, and only a few poor, lowly ones know
the significance of that death and resurrection. Thus it must ever be.
In the outer world there is no sign; each man pursues his own business
and pleasure with just the same avidity as though God's Truth had not
perished in the flesh to rise again into the glory of resurrection.
Yea; judgment-day may come and the angel may blow his trumpet until
the earth shall crack and heaven itself shall tremble, but the ears of
man are deaf to the blast and his eyes are blind to the terrors that
overhang the soul. In his ears are stoppers of clay and over his eyes
is a film of flesh, and neither sound nor sight can reach him.
What wonder, then, that men not only deny their Creator and their
Redeemer, but even refuse to believe that the soul within them is
alive. To them the body seems alive and not the soul; to them it seems
as though this world is the end of everything.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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