"It will never come--never," and the poor devil slinks to sleep again, with
his tail between his legs. Fierce assertion many times repeated is hard to
stand against; only time separates the truth from the lie. So we dream on.
One day we go with our father to town, to church. The townspeople rustle
in their silks, and the men in their sleek cloth, and settle themselves in
their pews, and the light shines in through the windows on the artificial
flowers in the women's bonnets. We have the same miserable feeling that we
have in a shop where all the clerks are very smart. We wish our father
hadn't brought us to town, and we were out on the karoo. Then the man in
the pulpit begins to preach. His text is "He that believeth not shall be
damned."
The day before the magistrate's clerk, who was an atheist, has died in the
street struck by lightning.
The man in the pulpit mentions no name; but he talks of "The hand of God
made visible amongst us." He tells us how, when the white stroke fell,
quivering and naked, the soul fled, robbed of his earthly filament, and lay
at the footstool of God; how over its head has been poured out the wrath of
the Mighty One, whose existence it has denied; and, quivering and
terrified, it has fled to the everlasting shade.
We, as we listen, half start up; every drop of blood in our body has rushed
to our head.
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