Paul fancied that he now saw at last, with almost the intuitive certainty of elementary mathematics, not only that the governing principle of the universe was love, but that the actual embodiment of that love was Jesus. Moreover, under the influence of the Arch-angel, who had been stimulated by Paul’s searching questions to make statements of doubtful orthodoxy, Paul now affirmed that the universe was celestial through and through, that all things in it, including Satan, worked together for the perfect expression of love, the perfect expression of the nature of Jesus. And the nature of Jesus, Paul learned not from the Bible but from contemplation of the Archangel. For the Archangel was very obviously sustained from morning till evening by a sense of the presence of his divine master. All who came near him were infected with something of this sense. He radiated a conviction of the ultimate rightness of all things, and at the same time he fired men with a zeal for putting the apparently wrong things right. Not that he was a mere stained-glass saint. Paul was proudly, lovingly conscious of the Archangel’s vivid humanity, even of his little weaknesses, which served greatly to endear him to his admirers. He had, for instance, a quaint passion for raisins. After a trying day he would eat them by the handful, almost defiantly. They seemed to have for him the double attraction of the grape’s sacred and profane significance.
Little by little Paul became an earnest Christian. Deep down in his breast, rather than in his mind, he argued thus, ‘Can such a perfect being as the Archangel be mistaken about God? He is too wise. Can he be deceiving me? He is too sincere, too loving. If this man says that God is Love, it is so.’ If ever his doubts returned, he would run to the Archangel to gain strength to abolish them. Once when this had happened, and the two were talking in the priest’s sitting-room, before a fire that radiated optimism, while the landlady’s cat lay asleep on the hearth-rug, Paul had what he considered a real religious experience. The Archangel had been patiently throttling Paul’s doubts. ‘Hang on to this, Paul,’ he said, ‘Love alone matters. And whatever is needed in the world for the existence of love is justified. What kind of a world is it that we actually find around us? I don’t mean your beloved stars and nebulae and your pettifogging laws of nature. No doubt they are marvellous, and all part of God’s house. But they are only the floor-boards. I mean the human world. What do you find there? You find Satan still at large. He always was, and always will be, till time is finished. And why? Because love that has not got to be for ever fighting is no more love than the unborn babe is a man. And so, Paul, we must thank God that, of his great love for us, he made Satan to torment us.’ He paused, then continued: ‘That’s heresy! You see what happens if one thinks too much about these old problems. Think of Christ only. Feel his god-head. Can’t you feel his presence in this room now?’
The Archangel raised his hand and looked at Paul as though listening to angel choirs. For some moments both remained silent. Gradually it came to seem to Paul that the room was all alive, all aglow, all a-murmur with a presence. Was it the presence of this man? Yes, but surely also it was the presence of Jesus. The room? Nay, the universe. The whole universe, it seemed, was somehow gathered into that room, and the whole of it was manifestly infused with the divine love. Everything was warm and bright, tender and true, or else heroically triumphant over an Evil that was not merely defeated but somehow shown never to have been really evil at all. To the adoring Paul it seemed that the very stars and outer universes came flocking into that little room, like lambs, to be comforted by this Shepherd, this supreme Archangel Jesus. They brought with them their little troubles, their sore feet and their stomachaches, and he, with the magic of his love, cured these little troubles so miraculously that they never had existed at all, save as occasions for his love. Paul and the universes nestled together like little white lambs in the bosom of this Love. Once more it seemed to him that he had made contact with reality, that he had penetrated this time surely to the very heart of the universe. The experience was very wonderful, very strange, yet also mysteriously familiar, with the familiarity of some forgotten existence, an existence so remote that it seemed entirely outside time. It seemed to Paul that an immense energy flooded in upon him. He felt in himself the ancient, the longed-for strength of faith. At last, after all his barren years, he was tense with a new vitality, fully charged, ready to spend himself in a new effulgent life.
The smiling, transfigured Archangel laid a hand on Paul’s knee. Paul said, ‘At last I feel Jesus.’
Now while Paul and the Archangel were yielding themselves to this glamorous experience, there was indeed a presence’ with them in the room, though one of a very different nature from that which these two Terrestrial animals themselves had conjured in their imaginations. It was the presence of a man who had seen human species after human species wrest for itself out of chaos some slight amenity and some precarious faith, only to collapse into misery, into despair, often into agony. It was the presence of one who himself looked forward to the impending extinction of Man; who found in this event, and in all existence, overmastering beauty indeed, but for the love-sick human individual no consolation. Strange that it was my presence in Paul’s mind, my coldly scrutinizing presence, that had lent actuality to his sense of union with the God of Love! The exhortation of the priest had made him notice in himself an obscure feeling which had already on earlier occasions fleetingly disturbed him with a sense that in Some way he was ‘possessed’. I now found him peering, as it were, into the recesses of his being in search of the source of this feeling, believing that what he would see would be the love-gaze of Jesus. Had he discovered what it was that actually’ possessed’ him, had he come, so to speak, face to face with his Neptunian parasite, his vision would have been shattered, and no doubt he would have taken me for the Devil. But I was at pains to elude detection. Mentally I held my breath, as it were, lest any slight movement of my mind should reveal more of me than that vague’ presence’ which he had so fantastically misinterpreted.
It was not easy for me to maintain my immobility, for the spectacle of Paul’s fervour stirred me deeply, both toward pity and toward laughter. For what was it that was happening to him? Apart from the complication of my presence’, which lent a spurious actuality to his vision, his experience was an epitome of the religious history of the First Human Species, a pitiable confusion of factors irrelevant to one another. In the first place Paul, partly through the wealth of cosmic imagery with which I had already drenched him, had indeed come face to face with the majesty of the universe. In the second place he had with Katherine experienced very vividly the great excellence which is called love. But the Christian tradition, working on him through his revered priest, had combined with his own desire so as to persuade him to attribute love to the pitiless universe itself. This confusion was caused partly by a trick played upon him by his own remote past. For the strange familiarity and the delicious consolation and peace which Paul had savoured in this religious moment were after all but an echo of his own obscure yearning for the tenderness of the breast and the elysium of the womb.