"
"Say rather," said Holmes, "that the soul is so starved and blind
that it cannot recognize itself as God."
The Doctor's intolerant eye kindled.
"Humph! So that's your creed! Not Pantheism. Ego sum. Of
course you go on with the conjugation: I have been, I shall be.
I,-- that covers the whole ground, creation, redemption, and
commands the hereafter?"
"It does so," said Holmes, coolly.
"And this wretched huckster carries her deity about her,--her
self-existent soul? How, in God's name, is her life to set it
free?"
Holmes said nothing. The coarse sneer could not be answered.
Men with pale faces and heavy jaws like his do not carry their
religion on their tongue's end; their creeds leave them only in
the slow oozing life-blood, false as the creeds may be.
Knowles went on hotly, half to himself, seizing on the new idea
fiercely, as men and women do who are yet groping for the truth
of life.
"What is it your Novalis says? `The true Shechinah is man.' You
know no higher God? Pooh! the idea is old enough; it began with
Eve. It works slowly, Holmes. In six thousand years, taking
humanity as one, this self-existent soul should have clothed
itself with a freer, royaller garment than poor Lois's body,-- or
mine," he added, bitterly.
"It works slowly," said the other, quietly. "Faster soon, in
America. There are yet many ills of life for the divinity within
to conquer."
"And Lois and the swarming mass yonder in those dens? It is late
for them to begin the fight?"
"Endurance is enough for them here, and their religions teach
them that.
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