The deep tones ceased, and once more silence fell Between those two amid the silent night. But Sergius, lightly rallying soon to speech, Said, with a ready, easy sympathy: "There seems indeed to breathe in such a strain Some solemn joy, but the solemnity Is greater, and my spirit is oppressed. Not less your poets differ from the Greek In matter than in manner, when they sing. How high you make your deity to be, Beyond the stature of the gods of Greece! Homer has Zeus compel the clouds, forth flash The lightnings, and the thunderbolts down hurl; The mightiest meddler with the world, his Zeus, Yet of the world the mighty maker not. But your Jehovah reaches even to that, As with his fingers fashioning yonder heaven, And fixing in their station moon and stars. And he in human things concerns himself! The Epicurean gods are cold and calm; On high Olympus far withdrawn they sit, And smile, and either not at all regard Our case, or, if so be regarding, smile Still, unconcerned, our case however hard. Your Hebrew God is much more amiable, But much more probable that Olympian crew; Nay, probable not at all is either; dream, Fond dream, the fable of divinities Who either care, or care not, for our case. We are the creatures and the sport of chance, Puppets tossed hither and thither in idle play, A while, a little while, fooled to suppose We do the dancing we are jerked to do-- And then, resolved from our compacture brief Into the atoms which once on a time Together chanced and so were we, we drop Plumb down again into the great inane Abyss, and recommence the eternal whirl! There is that Epicurean cosmogony, An endless cycle of evolution turned Upon itself, in worlds forevermore Becoming, out of worlds forevermore Merging in their original elements: No god, or gods, to tangle worse the skein Inextricably tangled by blind chance!" Saul was affronted, but he held his peace, Brooding the while his jealousy for God. At length, with intense calm, he spoke and said: "The Hebrew spirit is severe and says, 'The fool it is who in his secret heart, Rebelling, wills no God.' 'The Hebrew spirit,' Said I? Forget those unadviséd words; For to speak so is not the Hebrew spirit. God is a jealous God; His glory He Will to another not divide; and God Himself it is, the Living God, and not What, Gentile fashion, my rash lips miscalled 'The Hebrew spirit,' that charges atheism With folly. God His prophet psalmist bade Write with a diamond pen on adamant That stern damnation of the atheous soul: 'The fool hath in his heart said, God is not.' This tell I thee my conscience so to cleanse Of sin in saying 'The Hebrew spirit' for God."