to a Valhalla of everlasting mead-drinking in the company of ever-lovely Valkyries. He desires, for every fibre of his body, and every convolution of his brain, and for all the faculties which he may hereafter acquire, that each may be the medium of an occasional revelation. And for every revelation he is willing to abide the time fixed beforehand by the Divine Revealer, from Whose Hands we never escape, even if we make our bed in Hell; and to know Whom is the only Heaven that we need, here or hereafter. And what he knows to be best for himself, that he believes to be best for his friends. He no more desires for his children incessant health or prosperity than he desires for his vines a uniform temperature. Therefore he seems to most people an unfeeling monster. Yet he is not unfeeling. His wife may perhaps desert him,[1] preferring the society of some man who is less advanced in the Science of Prophecy, and therefore more amusing and more outwardly cheerful (perhaps even, as seen from her point of view, more human and lovable). When this happens his heart breaks. But even when a heart is broken, his own or any one else's, the Prophet never forgets to take an awful joy in the fact that such experience is a Revelation.
Most men confess that they can know "God" only by faith; that all experience and actual personal knowledge would lead them no further than to know the "Devil," the Destroyer, the Avenger, the Tempter, the Accuser. The Prophet, too, knows this Destroyer; he differs from other men in this—that instead of inventing by faith a God who does not destroy, he knows the
- ↑ Hosea.
