You've 'eard o' body-snatchers, I suppose?"
"I have."
"Well, I'm a soul-snatcher. I snatches 'em to the Lord whensoever and
wheresoever I can, brother."
"But surely," I demurred, "the soul, which is an abstraction, a part
of the Infinite and thus of God Himself, is therefore imperishable.
Socrates taught this, Pantheism is based on this, the arguments of the
Peripatetic Philosophers all trend to this belief, and Christ preached
the Soul's immortality and life after death. Thus, if the Soul is
immortal and cannot perish, how may it be saved?"
"By the Blood o' the Lamb, brother; otherwise ye shall be cast into
outer darkness to weep and gnash."
"But why?"
"For sins, committed in the flesh and unrepented."
"Supposing a man sins daily for threescore years and ten and dies
unrepentant, must he go down to hell and be tormented for ever and
ever for so short a time of sinning?"
"He must, brother, alas!"
"Horrible!" I cried. "Horrible, and most unjust."
"Why, it do seem a bit 'ard to the likes o' we, brother, but then we
only see as through a glass darkly. God is a just God, a jealous God
and a God o' Vengeance; 't is in the Book--"
"Then this is not Christ's Heavenly Father, but Jehovah, the
blood-spattered deity of the Jews, a God of battles, of sacrifices and
death, a God pitiless and without mercy. But man's soul, being
conceived of the Infinite Mind, may never utterly perish even though
corrupt with sin or debased by ignorance, for even then that divine
Spark which is the very life of the soul shall sooner or later grow to
a flame, burning up the evil, lighting the gloom of ignorance until in
course of time, years, ages, or aeons, the soul purified and perfected
shall win back to the God whence it came!"
For a full minute after I had ended Jessamy Todd was silent, staring
from me to the cloudless sky and back again with a look of growing
perplexity; at length he spoke:
"You've seen better days, brother, I'm thinking.
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