Jean Paul: SPEECH OF THE DEAD CHRIST THAT THERE IS NO GOD.

Once on a summer evening I was lying upon a quiet hillside in the sun.
I fell asleep, and dreamed that I awoke in a churchyard. The rattle of
the wheels of the clock running down as it was striking eleven, had
awakened me. I looked for the sun in the dark and void night sky, for I
supposed that some eclipse was hiding it with the moon. And all the
graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house kept opening
and shutting, moved by invisible hands. Athwart the walls shadows went
flitting; but no bodies cast those shadows and there were others, too,
moving about out in the open air. Within the open coffins there were
none now asleep, except the children. Nothing was in the sky but sultry
fog, heavy and grey, ranging there in great clammy folds; and some
gigantic shadow closed and closed this fog as in a net, and drew it
ever nearer, closer, and hotter. Up overhead I heard the thunder of
distant avalanches, and beneath my feet the first footfalls of a
boundless earthquake. The church was heaved and shaken to and fro by
two terrific discords striving in it, beating in stormy effort to
attain harmonious resolution. Now and then a greyish glimmer passed
with rapid gleam flittering athwart the windows; but, whenever this
glimmer came, the lead and iron of the frames always melted and ran
rolling down. The fog's net, and the quaking of the earth, drove me
into the temple, past gleaming, glittering basilisks, brooding in
poison-nests beside the door. I passed among shadows, strange and
unknown to me; but they all bore the impress of the centuries. These
shadows stood all grouped about the altar, and their breasts quivered
and throbbed--their _breasts_ but not their hearts. There was but one
of the dead still lying on his pillow, and he was one who had but just
been buried in the church; he lay at peace, his breast without a throb,
a happy dream upon his smiling face. But now, as I came in (I, one of
the living), his sleep broke, he awoke, and smiled no more; with
painful effort he raised his heavy eyelids--and there was no eye
beneath--and in his beating breast there was no heart, but a deep wound
instead. He raised his hands, folded as it for prayer; but then his
arms shot out and came apart from his poor trunk, the folded hands came
off and fell away. Upon the dome above there was inscribed the dial of
eternity--but figures there were none, and the dial itself was its own
gnomon; a great black finger was pointing at it, and the dead strove
hard to read the time upon it.

And at this point a lofty, noble form, bearing the impress of eternal
sorrow, came sinking down towards our group, and rested on the altar;
whereupon all the dead cried out, "Christ! Is there no God?"

He answered, "There is none."

At this the dead quivered and trembled; but now it was not their
breasts alone that throbbed; the quivering ran all through the shadows,
so that one by one the shudder shook them into nothingness. And Christ
spake on, saying, "I have traversed the worlds, I have risen to the
suns, with the milky ways I have passed athwart the great waste spaces
of the sky; there is no God. And I descended to where the very shadow
cast by Being dies out and ends, and I gazed out into the gulf beyond,
and cried, 'Father, where art Thou?' But answer came there none, save
the eternal storm which rages on, controlled by none; and towards the
west, above the chasm, a gleaming rainbow hung, but there was no sun to
give it birth, and so it sank and fell by drops into the gulf. And when
I looked up to the boundless universe for the Divine eye, behold, it
glared at me from out a socket, empty and bottomless. Over the face of
chaos brooded Eternity, chewing it for ever, again and yet again.
Shriek on, then, discords, shatter the shadows with your shrieking din,
for HE IS NOT!"

The pale and colourless shades flickered away to nothingness, as frosty
fog dissolves before warm breath, and all grew void. Ah! then the dead
children, who had been asleep out in the graves, awoke, and came into
the temple, and fell down before the noble form (a sight to rend one's
heart), and cried, "Jesus, have we no Father?" He made answer, with
streaming tears, "We are orphans all, both I and ye. We have no
Father."

Then the discords clashed and clanged more harshly yet; the shivering
walls of the temple parted asunder, and the temple and the children
sank--the earth and sun sank with them--and the boundless fabric of the
universe Bank down before us, while high on the summit of immeasurable
nature Jesus stood and gazed upon the sinking universe, besprent with
thousand suns, and like a mine dug in the face of black eternal night;
the suns being miners' lamps, and the milky way the veins of silvery
ore.

And as he gazed upon the grinding mass of worlds, the wild torch dance
of starry will-o'-the-wisps, and all the coral banks of throbbing
hearts--and saw how world by world shook forth its glimmering souls on
to the Ocean of Death--then He, sublime, loftiest of finite beings,
raised his eyes towards the nothingness and boundless void, saying, "Oh
dead, dumb, nothingness! necessity endless and chill! Oh! mad
unreasoning Chance--when will ye dash this fabric into atoms, and me
too? Chance, knowest thou--thou knowest not--when thou dost march,
hurricane-winged, amid the whirling snow of stars, extinguishing sun
after sun upon thy onward way, and when the sparkling dew of
constellations ceases to gleam, as thou dost pass them by? How every
soul in this great corpse-trench of an universe is utterly alone? _I_
am alone--none by me--O Father, Father! where is that boundless breast
of thine, that I may rest upon it? Alas! if every soul be its own
father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too?
Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine
is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering
cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon
the clouds of dust which shroud your world--dust which is dead men's
ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the
ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of
Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour.
Dost thou see and know thy earth?"

Here Christ looked downward, and his eyes grew full of tears, and he
spake on, and said, "Alas! I, too, was once of that poor earth; then I
was happy, then I still possessed my infinite Father, and I could look
up from the hills with joy to the boundless heaven, and I could cry
even in the bitterness of death, 'My Father, take thy Son from out this
bleeding earthly shell, and lift Him to thy heart.' Alas! too happy
dwellers upon earth, ye still believe in Him. Your sun, it may be, is
setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears
ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy,
ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, 'Oh Father, infinite,
eternal, hear! Thou knowest _me_ in all my littleness, even as Thou
knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou
wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.' Alas!
unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will _not_ be healed. But
when the sad and weary lays down his worn and wounded frame upon the
earth to sleep towards a fairer brighter morn all truth, goodness and
joy,--behold! he awakes amid a howling chaos, in a night endless and
everlasting; and no morning dawns, there is no healing hand, no
everlasting Father. Oh, mortal, who standest near, if still thou
breathest the breath of life, worship and pray to Him, or else thou
losest Him for evermore."

And I fell down and peered into the shining mass of worlds, and beheld
the coils of the great serpent of eternity all twined about those
worlds; these mighty coils began to writhe and rise, and then again
they tightened and contracted, folding round the universe twice as
closely as before; they wound about all nature in thousandfolds, and
crashed the worlds together, and crushed down the boundless temple to a
little churchyard chapel. And all grew narrow, and dark, and terrible.
And then a great immeasurable bell began to swing in act to toll the
last hour of Time, and shatter the fabric of the universe to countless
atoms,--when my sleep broke up, and I awoke.

And my soul wept for joy that it could still worship God--my gladness,
and my weeping, and my faith--these were my prayer! And as I rose the
sun was gleaming low in the west, behind the ripe purple ears of corn,
and casting in peace the reflection of his evening blushes over the sky
to where the little moon was rising clear and cloudless in the east.
And between the heaven and the earth, a gladsome, shortlived world was
spreading tiny wings, and, like myself, _living_ in the eternal
Father's sight. And from all nature round, on every hand, rose
music-tones of peace and joy, a rich, soft, gentle harmony, like the
sweet chime of bells at evening pealing far away.