"You are one of the world's 'fortunate' men,--" he went on, surveying me straightly and pitilessly--"So at least this world judges you, because you can buy its good-will. But the Forces that govern all worlds, do not judge you by such a standard,--you cannot buy _their_ good-will, not though all the Churches should offer to sell it you! They regard you as you _are_, stripped soul-naked,--not as you _seem_! They behold in you a shameless egoist, persistently engaged in defacing their divine Image of Immortality,--and for that sin there is no excuse and no escape but Punishment. Whosoever prefers Self to God, and in the arrogance of that Self, presumes to doubt and deny God, invites another Power to compass his destinies,--the power of Evil, made evil and kept evil by the disobedience and wickedness of Man alone,--that power whom mortals call Satan, Prince of Darkness,--but whom once the angels knew as Lucifer, Prince of Light!" ... He broke off,--paused,--and his flaming regard fell full upon me. "Do you know Me, ... now?" I sat a rigid figure of fear, dumbly staring, ... was this man, for he seemed man, mad that he should thus hint at a thing too wild and terrible for speech? "If you do not know Me,--if you do not feel in your convicted soul that you are aware of Me,--it is because you will not know! Thus do I come upon men, when they rejoice in their wilful self-blindness and vanity!--thus do I become their constant companion, humouring them in such vices as they best love!--thus do I take on the shape that pleases _them_, and fit myself to their humours! _They_ make me what I am;--they mould my very form to the fashion of their flitting time. Through all their changing and repeating eras, they have found strange names and titles for me,--and their creeds and churches have made a monster of me,--as though imagination could compass any worse monster than the Devil in Man!" Frozen and mute I heard, ... the dead silence, and his resonant voice vibrating through it, seemed more terrific than the wildest storm.