章节正文
minutes the world of delusion about him would dissolve, and that
he would find himself again in the great freedom of the place of
God.
This time the transition came much sooner and much more
rapidly. This time the phases and quality of the experience were
different. He felt once again that luminousconfusion between the
world in which a human life is imprisoned and a circumambient and
interpenetrating world, but this phase passed very rapidly; it
did not spread out over nearly half an hour as it had done
before, and almost immediately he seemed to plunge away from
everything in this life altogether into that outer freedom he
sought. And this time there was not even the elemental scenery of
the former vision. He stood on nothing; there was nothing below
and nothing above him. There was no sense of falling, no terror,
but a feeling as though he floated released. There was no light,
but as it were a clear darkness about him. Then it was manifest
to him that he was not alone, but that with him was that same
being that in his former vision had called himself the Angel of
God. He knew this without knowing why he knew this, and either he
spoke and was answered, or he thought and his thought answered
him back. His state of mind on this occasion was altogether
different from the first vision of God; before it had been
spectacular, but now his perception was altogether
super-sensuous.
(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly
he was still in his room.)
It was he who was the first to speak. The great Angel whom he
felt rather than saw seemed to be waiting for him to speak.
"I have come," he said, "because once more I desire to see
God."
"But you have seen God."
"I saw God. God was light, God was truth. And I went back to my
life, and God was hidden. God seemed to call me. He called. I
heard him, I sought him and I touched his hand. When I went back
to my life I was presently lost in perplexity. I could not tell
why God had called me nor what I had to do."
"And why did you not come here before?"
"Doubt and fear. Brother, will you not lay your hand on mine?"
The figure in the darkness became distincter. But nothing
touched the bishop's seeking hands.
"I want to see God and to understand him. I want reassurance. I
want conviction. I want to understand all that God asks me to do.
The world is full of conflict and confusion and the spirit of
war. It is dark and dreadful now with suffering and bloodshed. I
want to serve God who could save it, and I do not know how."
It seemed to the bishop that now he could distinguish dimly but
surely the form and features of the great Angel to whom he
talked. For a little while there was silence, and then the Angel
spoke.
"It was necessary first," said the Angel, "that you should
apprehend God and desire him. That was the purport of your first
vision. Now, since you require it, I will tell you and show you
certain things about him, things that it seems you need to know,
things that all men need to know. Know then first that the time
is at hand when God will come into the world and rule it, and
when men will know what is required of them. This time is close
at hand. In a little while God will be made manifest throughout
the earth. Men will know him and know that he is King. To you
this truth is to be shown--that you may tell it to others."
"This is no vision?" said the bishop, "no dream that will pass
away?"
"Am I not here beside you?"
(5)
The bishop was anxious to be very clear. Things that had been
shapelessly present in his mind now took form and found words for
themselves.
"The God I saw in my vision--He is not yet manifest in the
world?"
"He comes. He is in the world, but he is not yet manifested. He
whom you saw in your vision will speedily be manifest in the
world. To you this vision is given of the things that come. The
world is already glowing with God. Mankind is like a smouldering
fire that will presently, in quite a little time, burst out into
flame.
"In your former vision I showed you God," said the Angel. "This
time I will show you certain signs of the coming of God. And then
you will understand the place you hold in the world and the task
that is required of you."
(6)
And as the Angel spoke he lifted up his hands with the palms
upward, and there appeared above them a little round cloud, that
grew denser until it had the likeness of a silver sphere. It was
a mirror in the form of a ball, but a mirror not shining
uniformly; it was discoloured with greyish patches that had a
familiar shape. It circled slowly upon the Angel's hands. It
seemed no greater than the compass of a human skull, and yet it
was as great as the earth. Indeed it showed the whole earth. It
was the earth. The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight,
dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free. All
about the bishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points
that shaped out the constellations, and nearest to them, so near
as to seem only a few million miles away in the great emptiness
into which everything had resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball
of red-tongued fires. The Angel was but a voice now; the bishop
and the Angel were somewhere aloof from and yet accessible to the
circling silver sphere.
At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally,
as things happen in a dream. It was only later, when all this was
a matter of memory, that the bishop realized how strange and
incomprehensible his vision had been. The sphere was the earth
with all its continents and seas, its ships and cities, its
country-sides and mountain ranges. It was so small that he could
see it all at once, and so great and full that he could see
everything in it. He could see great countries like little
patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces of
the men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men s
hearts and the thoughts in their minds. But it did not seem in
any way wonderful to the bishop that so he should see those
things, or that it was to him that these things were shown.
"This is the whole world," he said.
"This is the vision of the world," the Angel answered.
"It is very wonderful," said the bishop, and stood for a moment
marvelling at the compass of his vision. For here was India, here
was Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and
the swarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through
twilight to the night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern
spots upon the dark; here was Russia under the noontide, and so
great a battle of artillery raging on the Dunajec as no man had
ever seen before; whole lines of trenches dissolved into clouds
of dust and heaps of blood-streaked earth; here close to the
waiting streets of Constantinople were the hills of Gallipoli,
the grave of British Imperialism, streaming to heaven with the
dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and the smoke
and flame of burning brushwood. In the sea of Marmora a big ship
crowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the
clear water, he could see the shape of the British submarine
which had torpedoed her and had submerged and was going away.
Berlin prepared its frugal meals, still far from famine. He saw
the war in Europe as if he saw it on a map, yet every human
detail showed. Over hundreds of miles of trenches east and west
of Germany he could see shells bursting and the men below
dropping, and the stretcher-bearers going back with the wounded.
The roads to every front were crowded with reserves and
munitions. For a moment a little group of men indifferent to all
this struggle, who were landingamidst the Antarctic wilderness,
held his attention; and then his eyes went westward to the dark
rolling Atlantic across which, as the edge of the night was drawn
like a curtain, more and still more ships became visible beating
upon their courses eastward or westward under the overtaking day.
The wonder increased; the wonder of the single and infinitely
multitudinous adventure of mankind.
"So God perhaps sees it," he whispered.
(7)
"Look at this man," said the Angel, and the black shadow of a
hand seemed to point.
It was a Chinaman sitting with two others in a little low room
separated by translucent paper windows from a noisy street of
shrill-voiced people. The three had been talking of the ultimatum
that Japan had sent that day to China, claiming a priority in
many matters over European influences they were by no means sure
whether it was a wrong or a benefit that had been done to their
country. From that topic they had passed to the discussion of the
war, and then of wars and national aggressions and the perpetual
thrusting and quarrelling of mankind. The older man had said that
so life would allways be; it was the will of Heaven. The little,
very yellow-faced, emaciated man had agreed with him. But now
this younger man, to whose thoughts the Angel had so particularly
directed the bishop's attention, was speaking. He did not agree
with his companion.
"War is not the will of Heaven," he said; "it is the blindness
of men."
"Man changes," he said, "from day to day and from age to age.
The science of the West has taught us that. Man changes and war
changes and all things change. China has been the land of flowery
peace, and she may yet give peace to all the world. She has put
aside that puppet Emperor at Peking, she turns her face to the
new learning of the West as a man lays aside his heavy robes, in
order that her task may be achieved."
The older man spoke, his manner was more than a little
incredulous, and yet not altogethercontemptuous. "You believe
that someday there will be no more war in the world, that a time
will come when men will no longer plot and plan against the
welfare of men?"
"Even that last," said the younger man. "Did any of us dream
twenty-five years ago that here in China we should live to see a
republic? The age of the republics draws near, when men in every
country of the world will look straight up to the rule of Right
and the empire of Heaven."
(" And God will be King of the World," said the Angel. "Is not
that faith exactly the faith that is coming to you? ")
The two other Chinamen questioned their companion, but without
hostility.
"This war," said the Chinaman, "will end in a great harvesting
of kings."
"But Japan--" the older man began.
The bishop would have liked to hear more of that conversation,
but the dark hand of the Angel motioned him to another part of
the world. "Listen to this," said the Angel.
He pointed the bishop to where the armies of Britain and Turkey
lay in the heat of Mesopotamia. Along the sandy bank of a wide,
slow-flowing river rode two horsemen, an Englishman and a Turk.
They were returning from the Turkish lines, whither the
Englishman had been with a flag of truce. When Englishmen and
Turks are thrown together they soon become friends, and in this
case matters had been facilitated by the Englishman's command of
the Turkish language. He was quite an exceptional Englishman. The
Turk had just been remarking cheerfully that it wouldn't please
the Germans if they were to discover how amiably he and his
charge had got on. "It's a pity we ever ceased to be friends," he
said.
"You Englishmen aren't like our Christians," he went on.
he would find himself again in the great freedom of the place of
God.
This time the transition came much sooner and much more
rapidly. This time the phases and quality of the experience were
different. He felt once again that luminousconfusion between the
world in which a human life is imprisoned and a circumambient and
interpenetrating world, but this phase passed very rapidly; it
did not spread out over nearly half an hour as it had done
before, and almost immediately he seemed to plunge away from
everything in this life altogether into that outer freedom he
sought. And this time there was not even the elemental scenery of
the former vision. He stood on nothing; there was nothing below
and nothing above him. There was no sense of falling, no terror,
but a feeling as though he floated released. There was no light,
but as it were a clear darkness about him. Then it was manifest
to him that he was not alone, but that with him was that same
being that in his former vision had called himself the Angel of
God. He knew this without knowing why he knew this, and either he
spoke and was answered, or he thought and his thought answered
him back. His state of mind on this occasion was altogether
different from the first vision of God; before it had been
spectacular, but now his perception was altogether
super-sensuous.
(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly
he was still in his room.)
It was he who was the first to speak. The great Angel whom he
felt rather than saw seemed to be waiting for him to speak.
"I have come," he said, "because once more I desire to see
God."
"But you have seen God."
"I saw God. God was light, God was truth. And I went back to my
life, and God was hidden. God seemed to call me. He called. I
heard him, I sought him and I touched his hand. When I went back
to my life I was presently lost in perplexity. I could not tell
why God had called me nor what I had to do."
"And why did you not come here before?"
"Doubt and fear. Brother, will you not lay your hand on mine?"
The figure in the darkness became distincter. But nothing
touched the bishop's seeking hands.
"I want to see God and to understand him. I want reassurance. I
want conviction. I want to understand all that God asks me to do.
The world is full of conflict and confusion and the spirit of
war. It is dark and dreadful now with suffering and bloodshed. I
want to serve God who could save it, and I do not know how."
It seemed to the bishop that now he could distinguish dimly but
surely the form and features of the great Angel to whom he
talked. For a little while there was silence, and then the Angel
spoke.
"It was necessary first," said the Angel, "that you should
apprehend God and desire him. That was the purport of your first
vision. Now, since you require it, I will tell you and show you
certain things about him, things that it seems you need to know,
things that all men need to know. Know then first that the time
is at hand when God will come into the world and rule it, and
when men will know what is required of them. This time is close
at hand. In a little while God will be made manifest throughout
the earth. Men will know him and know that he is King. To you
this truth is to be shown--that you may tell it to others."
"This is no vision?" said the bishop, "no dream that will pass
away?"
"Am I not here beside you?"
(5)
The bishop was anxious to be very clear. Things that had been
shapelessly present in his mind now took form and found words for
themselves.
"The God I saw in my vision--He is not yet manifest in the
world?"
"He comes. He is in the world, but he is not yet manifested. He
whom you saw in your vision will speedily be manifest in the
world. To you this vision is given of the things that come. The
world is already glowing with God. Mankind is like a smouldering
fire that will presently, in quite a little time, burst out into
flame.
"In your former vision I showed you God," said the Angel. "This
time I will show you certain signs of the coming of God. And then
you will understand the place you hold in the world and the task
that is required of you."
(6)
And as the Angel spoke he lifted up his hands with the palms
upward, and there appeared above them a little round cloud, that
grew denser until it had the likeness of a silver sphere. It was
a mirror in the form of a ball, but a mirror not shining
uniformly; it was discoloured with greyish patches that had a
familiar shape. It circled slowly upon the Angel's hands. It
seemed no greater than the compass of a human skull, and yet it
was as great as the earth. Indeed it showed the whole earth. It
was the earth. The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight,
dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free. All
about the bishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points
that shaped out the constellations, and nearest to them, so near
as to seem only a few million miles away in the great emptiness
into which everything had resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball
of red-tongued fires. The Angel was but a voice now; the bishop
and the Angel were somewhere aloof from and yet accessible to the
circling silver sphere.
At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally,
as things happen in a dream. It was only later, when all this was
a matter of memory, that the bishop realized how strange and
incomprehensible his vision had been. The sphere was the earth
with all its continents and seas, its ships and cities, its
country-sides and mountain ranges. It was so small that he could
see it all at once, and so great and full that he could see
everything in it. He could see great countries like little
patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces of
the men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men s
hearts and the thoughts in their minds. But it did not seem in
any way wonderful to the bishop that so he should see those
things, or that it was to him that these things were shown.
"This is the whole world," he said.
"This is the vision of the world," the Angel answered.
"It is very wonderful," said the bishop, and stood for a moment
marvelling at the compass of his vision. For here was India, here
was Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and
the swarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through
twilight to the night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern
spots upon the dark; here was Russia under the noontide, and so
great a battle of artillery raging on the Dunajec as no man had
ever seen before; whole lines of trenches dissolved into clouds
of dust and heaps of blood-streaked earth; here close to the
waiting streets of Constantinople were the hills of Gallipoli,
the grave of British Imperialism, streaming to heaven with the
dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and the smoke
and flame of burning brushwood. In the sea of Marmora a big ship
crowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the
clear water, he could see the shape of the British submarine
which had torpedoed her and had submerged and was going away.
Berlin prepared its frugal meals, still far from famine. He saw
the war in Europe as if he saw it on a map, yet every human
detail showed. Over hundreds of miles of trenches east and west
of Germany he could see shells bursting and the men below
dropping, and the stretcher-bearers going back with the wounded.
The roads to every front were crowded with reserves and
munitions. For a moment a little group of men indifferent to all
this struggle, who were landingamidst the Antarctic wilderness,
held his attention; and then his eyes went westward to the dark
rolling Atlantic across which, as the edge of the night was drawn
like a curtain, more and still more ships became visible beating
upon their courses eastward or westward under the overtaking day.
The wonder increased; the wonder of the single and infinitely
multitudinous adventure of mankind.
"So God perhaps sees it," he whispered.
(7)
"Look at this man," said the Angel, and the black shadow of a
hand seemed to point.
It was a Chinaman sitting with two others in a little low room
separated by translucent paper windows from a noisy street of
shrill-voiced people. The three had been talking of the ultimatum
that Japan had sent that day to China, claiming a priority in
many matters over European influences they were by no means sure
whether it was a wrong or a benefit that had been done to their
country. From that topic they had passed to the discussion of the
war, and then of wars and national aggressions and the perpetual
thrusting and quarrelling of mankind. The older man had said that
so life would allways be; it was the will of Heaven. The little,
very yellow-faced, emaciated man had agreed with him. But now
this younger man, to whose thoughts the Angel had so particularly
directed the bishop's attention, was speaking. He did not agree
with his companion.
"War is not the will of Heaven," he said; "it is the blindness
of men."
"Man changes," he said, "from day to day and from age to age.
The science of the West has taught us that. Man changes and war
changes and all things change. China has been the land of flowery
peace, and she may yet give peace to all the world. She has put
aside that puppet Emperor at Peking, she turns her face to the
new learning of the West as a man lays aside his heavy robes, in
order that her task may be achieved."
The older man spoke, his manner was more than a little
incredulous, and yet not altogethercontemptuous. "You believe
that someday there will be no more war in the world, that a time
will come when men will no longer plot and plan against the
welfare of men?"
"Even that last," said the younger man. "Did any of us dream
twenty-five years ago that here in China we should live to see a
republic? The age of the republics draws near, when men in every
country of the world will look straight up to the rule of Right
and the empire of Heaven."
(" And God will be King of the World," said the Angel. "Is not
that faith exactly the faith that is coming to you? ")
The two other Chinamen questioned their companion, but without
hostility.
"This war," said the Chinaman, "will end in a great harvesting
of kings."
"But Japan--" the older man began.
The bishop would have liked to hear more of that conversation,
but the dark hand of the Angel motioned him to another part of
the world. "Listen to this," said the Angel.
He pointed the bishop to where the armies of Britain and Turkey
lay in the heat of Mesopotamia. Along the sandy bank of a wide,
slow-flowing river rode two horsemen, an Englishman and a Turk.
They were returning from the Turkish lines, whither the
Englishman had been with a flag of truce. When Englishmen and
Turks are thrown together they soon become friends, and in this
case matters had been facilitated by the Englishman's command of
the Turkish language. He was quite an exceptional Englishman. The
Turk had just been remarking cheerfully that it wouldn't please
the Germans if they were to discover how amiably he and his
charge had got on. "It's a pity we ever ceased to be friends," he
said.
"You Englishmen aren't like our Christians," he went on.
- dissolve [di´zɔlv]
v.(使)溶解；解除 (初中英语单词) - confusion [kən´fju:ʒən] n.混乱(状态)；骚乱 (初中英语单词)
- plunge [plʌndʒ] v.插进 n.投入；冲击 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- nevertheless [,nevəðə´les] conj.&ad.然而；不过 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- conflict [´kɔnflikt, kən´flikt] n.&vi.战斗；抵触 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- distinguish [di´stiŋgwiʃ] v.区分；识别；立功 (初中英语单词)
- anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
- compass [´kʌmpəs] n.指南针；圆规 (初中英语单词)
- velvet [´velvit] n.&a.天鹅绒(般的) (初中英语单词)
- purple [´pə:pl] n.紫色 a.紫(红)的 (初中英语单词)
- visible [´vizəbəl] a.可见的；明显的 (初中英语单词)
- european [juərə´pi:ən] a.欧洲的 n.欧洲人 (初中英语单词)
- discussion [di´skʌʃən] n.讨论；辩论 (初中英语单词)
- emperor [´empərə] n.皇帝 (初中英语单词)
- learning [´lə:niŋ] n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- scenery [´si:nəri] n.舞台布景 (高中英语单词)
- manifest [´mænifest] a.明显的 v.表明 (高中英语单词)
- likeness [´laiknis] n.相似；肖像；外表 (高中英语单词)
- sphere [sfiə] n.圆体；天体；范围 (高中英语单词)
- spinning [´spiniŋ] n.纺织 a.纺织品的 (高中英语单词)
- artillery [ɑ:´tiləri] n.炮兵部队 (高中英语单词)
- constantinople [,kɔnstænti´nəupl] n.君士坦丁堡 (高中英语单词)
- famine [´fæmin] n.饥荒 (高中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- indifferent [in´difrənt] a.不关心的；中立的 (高中英语单词)
- westward [´westwəd] a.向西的 n.西方；西部 (高中英语单词)
- cheerfully [´tʃiəfuli] ad.高兴地，愉快地 (高中英语单词)
- transition [træn´ziʃən, -´si-] n.转变；过渡 (英语四级单词)
- luminous [´lu:minəs] a.发光的；明晰的 (英语四级单词)
- perception [pə´sepʃən] n.感觉；概念；理解力 (英语四级单词)
- perplexity [pə´pleksiti] n.困惑；为难；纷乱 (英语四级单词)
- speedily [´spi:dili] ad.迅速地 (英语四级单词)
- resolved [ri´zɔlvd] a.决心的；坚定的 (英语四级单词)
- accessible [ək´sesəbəl] a.易接近的；可到达的 (英语四级单词)
- silvery [´silvəri] a.银一般的 (英语四级单词)
- amidst [ə´midst] prep.=amid (英语四级单词)
- eastward [´i:stwəd] a.&ad.向东(的) (英语四级单词)
- exceptional [ik´sepʃənəl] a.异常的，特别的 (英语四级单词)
- delusion [di´lu:ʒən] n.欺骗；幻觉；迷惑 (英语六级单词)
- bloodshed [´blʌdʃed] n.流血；杀人 (英语六级单词)
- purport [´pə:pɔ:t, -pət] n.意义 vt.意味着 (英语六级单词)
- noontide [´nu:ntaid] n.正午 (英语六级单词)
- turkish [´tə:kiʃ] a.&n.土耳其人(语)的 (英语六级单词)
- frugal [´fru:gəl] a.节俭的，俭朴的 (英语六级单词)
- landing [´lændiŋ] n.登陆；降落；楼梯平台 (英语六级单词)
- antarctic [æn´tɑ:ktik] a.南极的；近南极的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- puppet [´pʌpit] n.木偶；傀儡 (英语六级单词)
- contemptuous [kən´temptjuəs] a.蔑视的；傲慢的 (英语六级单词)
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