Dialogues with the Devil by Taylor Caldwell

Author:Taylor Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504042932
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

Greetings to my brother, Michael, who himself, alas, never learns from the history of men!

I am sorrowful, not for the death of Lencia the Beautiful, but for your sorrow. You indeed have too tender a heart for the contemptible races! I rejoice, not repine, that again I have proved myself right and Our Father wrong. There are a thousand ways to death and only one way to life, but men indefatigably seek the roads to destruction. If they were not so inclined by their very nature they would not listen to me. Lencia died, not by war, as so many other planets died, but through the sluggish ways of what she designated as peace and security. Again, I only suggested. It was in the power of the men of Lencia to reject.

I am deeply interested in what I perceive of Heaven, where there seems a tremendous coming and going as of late, and not all the faces are joyous. What is it that portends? I remember His prophecy, and so I am alert to any stir in Heaven.

Is it possible that the Christ will degrade Himself again before man on Terra? I shall fight that possibility with all my powers. I shall guard His Majesty. I have already begun the process. Even now, whole nations for the first time in Terra’s history are declaring that “God is dead!” This was once the province of only a few cynical and enlightened men, who hardly dared speak abroad for fear of the superstitious and the faithful. Did not Socrates die for something similar, though it was very mild? He spoke of “God” and not gods, and for that he was executed. He was considered a great criminal by the ignorant. Yet he was a man faithful to his noble idea. But the men of Terra, in uncountable millions, are neither wise nor faithful. They proclaim, with their round and defiant faces, “He does not exist!” or “Our old conception of God was wrong and we must have a New Definition!” They even announce that God appears to have vanished from the affairs of men; therefore, He is no longer potent, if ever He was potent. (That, as you know, is my suggestion.)

It is as if ants, who had never seen a man but had heard only rumors of him, declared that as they had not observed him, themselves, he could not possibly live. Other ants had seen the stature of man and had heard the thunder of his step—so they alleged. But as these particular ants had neither seen nor heard the myth was not valid.

To my mind an honest and industrious ant is worth a whole world of men, for the ant labors ceaselessly according to his good instinct, is never slothful, never given to vice or depravity, and as his nature is sound he adheres to it. If an ant said, “There is no Man,” I should be inclined to believe him, for ants are sensible, and never lie, and their opinion would be valuable.

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