酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Soul of a Bishop-Part31_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
This young man pulled the conversation again and again, Lady



Sunderbund aiding and abetting, in the direction of the "ideal

church." It was his ambition, he said, someday, to build an ideal



church, "divorced from tradition."

Scrope had been drawn at last into a dissertation. He said that



hitherto all temples and places of worship had been conditioned

by orientation due to the seasonal aspects of religion, they



pointed to the west or--as in the case of the Egyptian temples

--to some particular star, and by sacramentalism, which centred



everything on a highly lit sacrificial altar. It was almost

impossible to think of a church built upon other lines than that.



The architect would be so free that--"

"Absolutely free," interrupted the young architect. "He might,



for example, build a temple like a star."

"Or like some wondyful casket," said Lady Sunderbund....



And also there was a musician with fuzzy hair and an impulsive

way of taking the salted almonds, who wanted to know about



religious music.

Scrope hazarded the idea that a chanting people was a religious



people. He said, moreover, that there was a fine religiosity

about Moussorgski, but that the most beautiful single piece of



music in the world was Beethoven's sonata, Opus 111,--he was

thinking, he said, more particularly of the Adagio at the end,



molto semplice e cantabile. It had a real quality of divinity.

The musician betrayed impatience at the name of Beethoven, and



thought, with his mouth appreciatively full of salted almonds,

that nowadays we had got a little beyond that anyhow.



"We shall be superhuman before we get beyond either Purcell or

Beethoven," said Scrope.



Nor did he attach sufficient importance to Lady Sunderbund's

disposition to invite Positivists, members of the Brotherhood



Church, leaders among the Christian Scientists, old followers of

the Rev. Charles Voysey, Swedenborgians, Moslem converts, Indian



Theosophists, psychic phenomena and so forth, to meet him.

Nevertheless it began to drift into his mind that he was by no



means so completely in control of the new departure as he had

supposed at first. Both he and Lady Sunderbund professed



universalism; but while his was the universalism of one who would

simplify to the bare fundamentals of a common faith, hers was the



universalism of the collector. Religion to him was something that

illuminated the soul, to her it was something that illuminated



prayer-books. For a considerable time they followed their

divergent inclinations without any realization of their



divergence. None the less a vague doubt and dissatisfaction with

the prospect before him arose to cloud his confidence.



At first there was little or no doubt of his own faith. He was

still altogether convinced that he had to confess and proclaim



God in his life. He was as sure that God was the necessary king

and saviour of mankind and of a man's life, as he was of the



truth of the Binomial Theorem. But what began first to fade was

the idea that he had been specially called to proclaim the True



God to all the world. He would have the most amiable conference

with Lady Sunderbund, and then as he walked back to Notting Hill



he would suddenly find stuck into his mind like a challenge,

Heaven knows how: "Another prophet?" Even if he succeeded in this



mission enterprise, he found himself asking, what would he be but

just a little West-end Mahomet? He would have founded another



sect, and we have to make an end to all sects. How is there to be

an end to sects, if there are still to be chapels--richly



decorated chapels--and congregations, and salaried specialists

in God?



That was a very disconcerting idea. It was particularly active

at night. He did his best to consider it with a cool detachment,



regardless of the facts that his private income was just under

three hundred pounds a year, and that his experiments in cultured



journalism made it extremelyimprobable that the most sedulous

literary work would do more than double this scanty sum. Yet for



all that these nasty, ugly, sordid facts were entirely

disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in and squatting






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号