"God is a dreadful thought," said Stephen. "Yea," Said Paul; "such Jacob felt it when he cried, 'How dreadful is this place!' and Bethel named The place where God was and he knew it not. God is a dreadful thought, dreadful as sweet-- The sweetness and the dreadfulness are one. But never was the dreadfulness so sweet, The sweetness never yet so dreadful shown, As then when Jesus died on Calvary! Shroud thyself, Stephen, from the dreadfulness, Felt to be too intolerably bright, In the cool, shadowing, sheltering thought, so nigh, Of mercy, mercy, still in judgment sheathed." "I feel the buoyance of my spirit sink, Oppressed by the great weight of these thy thoughts," Said Stephen; "and my heart is very still. I wait to hear what God the Lord will speak." "Hearken," said Paul. "Those fearful words of curse Which late thou nigh hadst turned to blasphemy, Daring to lade them with thy personal spite Against a neighbor man, whom we must love, Until we know hereafter, which God fend! That he bides reprobate, self-reprobate-- Those maledictions dire, through David breathed, Express not human hate, but hate divine, Revealed in forms of human speech, and, too, Inspired in whoso can the height attain To side with God, and passionlessly damn, As if with highest passion, any found-- Whom, known not yet, even to himself not known, Much less to thee or me, but known to God, And to be known, in that great day, to all-- Fixed in his final choice of evil for good. Henceforward, Stephen, when thou sayest that psalm, Say it and tremble, lest thyself be he, The man thou cursest in its awful curse!" "If it were right," said Stephen, after pause Prolonged in solemn chiding of himself, "If it were right and seemly, things profane To mingle with things sacred so--I think Perforce now of a certain tragedy I read once by that Grecian Sophocles, Wherein a Theban king, one OEdipus, Denounces on a murderer frightful doom, Dreaming not he--though every reader knows-- The murderer he so curses is himself. I shudder when I think, 'Were it to be That the fierce blasting I invoked to fall Upon another's head, I drew on mine: "Cursing he loved, and cursing fell on him!"' Forefend it God, and Christ with blessing fill This heart of mine, too hasting prone to hate!" "Amen!" said Paul, "thou prayest for me and thee!"