I say nothing of these things, save that the language of the
Gospel seems to me to go much more singly to a single issue.
The voice that is heard there has such authority as speaks to an army;
and the highest note of it is victory rather than peace.
When the apostles were first sent forth with their faces to the four
corners of the earth, and turned again to acclaim their master,
he did not say in that hour of triumph, "All are aspects of one
harmonious whole" or "The universe evolves through progress
to perfection" or "All things find their end in Nirvana"
or "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea." He looked up and said,
"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."
Then I looked up and saw in the long jagged lines of road and rock
and cleft something of the swiftness of such a thunderbolt.
What I saw seemed not so much a scene as an act; as when
abruptly Michael barred the passage of the Lord of Pride.
Below me all the empire of evil was splashed and scattered
upon the plain, like a wine-cup shattered into a star.
Sodom lay like Satan, flat upon the floor of the world. And far away
and aloft, faint with height and distance, small but still visible,
stood up the spire of the Ascension like the sword of the Archangel,
lifted in salute after a stroke.
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