"Dare and do, for God is with thee," said the devil.
"I know it, and therefore I will wait," returned the king of his
brothers. And now, after three years of divine action, when his course
is run, when the old age of finished work is come, when the whole frame
is tortured until the regnant brain falls whirling down the blue gulf
of fainting, and the giving up of the ghost is at hand, when the
friends have forsaken him and fled, comes the voice of the enemy again
at his ear: "Despair and die, for God is not with thee. All is in vain.
Death, not Life, is thy refuge. Make haste to Hades, where thy torture
will be over. Thou hast deceived thyself. He never was with thee. He
was the God of Abraham. Abraham is dead. Whom makest thou thyself?" "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" the Master cries. For God was
his God still, although he had forsaken him--forsaken _his vision_ that
his faith might glow out triumphant; forsaken _himself_? no; come
nearer to him than ever; come nearer, even as--but with a yet deeper,
more awful pregnancy of import--even as the Lord himself withdrew from
the bodily eyes of his friends, that he might dwell in their
profoundest being.
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