St. J. There is no sin. Be silent, Martha! Fear, Despondency, decay, the will to die Should neither speak nor think, but fling themselves Upon the Universe. Be silent! Let My meaning touch your nerves. Attempt not Apprehension: feel what I say.--This sense Of sin is ignorance only; every voice Must thunder that, and every intellect Record it, every heart delight to hoard The knowledge till the tissue of the world, Engrained with truth, be guiltless in conceit As in effect it is. Here we are left Unfriended on the surface, far from home; And that imagination which we are, Betrayed and lost on this outlandish earth, Believes itself to blame; but neither man Nor Matter's answerable: the Universe Is a becoming, a passion and a pain, A rapt imagination. Purge yourself Of God, of Heaven and Hell, of soul and sin, Of small humanities, fantastic moods, Putridities of spirit, posies, myths; For all these dreams will leave you when you die. Be Matter pure as flame. Lady S. My soul, my soul! It springs from God: there once was God. St. J. No God: God hitherto has been the world's excuse, The shadow of man that tripped him everywhere, A phantom cul-de-sac in the Universe, A dog in the manger. Men need no excuse: If they must be, they must be what they are. Lady S. And what are they? St. J. I told you: Matter, once Inherent in the nebula that cooled, Contracted, and became the sun and us. Out of the bowels of the earth we rise: Though in that thought at home and happy enough, Yet there imagination feels itself The merest parvenu when it recalls Incalculable ages throbbed away Within the glistering fire diaphanous That filled the deep conceiving womb of space; And on the earth, upon the surface here, No longer than a week-end visit seems Its spectral period hitherto, beside That sojourn in the cooling globe, and date Without beginning in the pristine fire. Lady S. I feel a meaning, Gervase, I feel a power More beautiful than God. How stale God seems Upon a sudden and how ugly! St. J. Of a truth God is an ugly dream, whate'er it meant At one time. Lady S. Who made us then? St. J. We were not made. I told you, Martha; it is man that makes-- And birds and beavers, spiders, bees and ants; All conscious Matter makes and mars a little: But of the staple of the Universe, Unconscious Matter, what we know is this: That it becomes in systems, suns and earths, In plants and beasts and men, a Universe. Lady S. That seems more wonderful than to be made: I feel it may be true. But, oh, dear Gervase, What is the use, what is the end of it?