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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 79

Chapter VIII. — 1. The seventh seal opened. 6. Great plagues, trials and tribulations

Chapter VIII.

1. The seventh seal opened. 6. Great plagues, trials and tribulations.

And when he opened the seventh seal his vision did but stagger humanity for about the space of half an hour, and in which short time it was demonstrated that the first man, Adam, was a living soul, but the last man, Bill, was a quickening spirit of muscle and motion operating against his mental stuffing.

2. And brain-cells were opened for a new train of thought, and I saw seven mere men which stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.

3. And there rose from the altar the incense and prayers of saints long dead in Israel, but thanks be to God, for He did purpose it, and they did leave behind their precious life blood embalmed and treasured, to life beyond life in an holy writ immortality.

4. And their writings were scanned and their crystallised thoughts were dissolved and found well to fit the great plan, and there did stand uncovered the riddle of the universe. God had presented to mankind a grand and world-wide mission by the human agency of the Anglo-Saxon white feet, spiritually and ethically the same as God gave Jacob.

5. Plain generalised facts were cast upon the earth, and there were scurryings and commotions and a great upheaval, for never before was there witnessed such reconciliation between science and religion, and they stood looking into hedge-rows, saying: If indeed we had an immortal soul, then a person would be able to reason who had no knowledge of any arbitrary signs, but Bill declared there was no ground for believing that this was possible, nor consequently that immortal souls had any existence at all.

6. And the seven sons of men (for no man hath seen an angel) had the seven trumpets prepared to sound the creed of the master Christian, a tangible truth, a glorious science, and an universal fact. Holy Orders did hereupon commune amongst themselves, and did table motions that it were good indeed for that man he had not been born.

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7. And the first angel sounded, saying: All we like sheep have gone astray, and strong delusion hath beset the minds of powers, principalities, popes, peers, prelates, priests, and parsons who have obsessed their minds with veritable lies, and having no legs to stand on did fall flat at the brightness of His coming to a world wherein was found not the true faith.

8. The second angel sounded, saying: Love truth, love virtue, love God and have the fear of offending Him, and be strong and steady in your belief that nature is uniform in all her doings, so that burning mountains thrown into the sea did not become blood; such were the fanciful creations of a poetic mind. Bill read the poem, kept sane whilst others absorbing got unhinged, so that full moons did affect them.

9. Blinking brutes on land and sea did pass out when their blinking and their thinking ceased, and none had a soul of the orthodox brand. They had but such mental accomplishment as was found in their mixed congregation of common terms. Things absorbed on earth as were their species and their experience, and at death were truly surrendered, and did remain for ever and ever in the same place from whence they sprung. Hearken not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers, but listen to my truth and behold the resurrection of that physical and spiritual kingdom which in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up, and it shall break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms, and shall stand for ever and ever.

10. And the third angel sounding was a woman born blind, deaf, and dumb, and in her natural state had but the soul of the brute, and lo, man's ingenuity taught her language, and the nations saw her dream with her fingers in rapid motion, and she could not talk in her sleep unless her fingers played upon her accomplishment of absorbed common terms. In her affliction and peculiar predication Bill saw the hand of God enlightening the nations; giving to man an inkling and new line of thought, and which new truth the comforter did not preach from soap boxes at street corners, nor in the highway was his voice heard.

11. Men full of gall and wormwood stood shivering, for Bill's dictum was bitter to their soul and its alleged immortality, and they saw such stuffing had been got from the fiction of pagans; for well they knew within the grave her fingers did not move.

12. Richard Whately, the fourth angel, sounded, saying: Without the sign such as language supplies man was but a beast, and on their hearing it the third part of living creatures took week-end holidays, and the church they did neglect, for they had seen and considered and summed up Bill's vision, which was but a quickening spirit of muscle and motion giving unto each page 34 according to his works, and their hidden manna of words and works did but develop their disposition, their character, and their individuality.

13. And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice that traces in the mind and abstract notions, and heaven and hell, and the devil and Satan, and his miracles, were pious frauds, and of their idols and their learned ignorance he did speak contemptuously. The greatest thing on earth was man, and the greatest thing in man was mind, and in that mind there was an instrument of instruments which did quicken muscle and motion and Bill's seven stars, showing them up clearly as The Term, The Proposition, The argument of the heart, The endorsement of the conscience, The declaration of the mouth, Truth tersely spoken, and The peace and rest of righteousness; and there was therein the sum total of God's purpose with man as man.