Читать книгу The Undying Fire. A contemporary novel онлайн

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But the computation was brushed aside.

“A thousand years in my sight are but as yesterday when it is past. I will grant what you seek to prove; that Job has become mankind.”

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The dark regard of Satan smote down through the quivering universe and left the toiling light waves behind. “See there,” he said pointing. “My old friend on his little planet—Adam—Job—Man—like a roast on a spit. It is time we had another wager.”

God condescended to look with Satan at mankind, circling between day and night. “Whether he will curse or bless?”

“Whether he will even remember God.”

“I have given my promise that I will at last restore Adam.”

The downcast face smiled faintly.

“These questions change from age to age,” said Satan.

“The Whole remains the same.”

“The story grows longer in either direction,” said Satan, speaking as one who thinks aloud; “past and future unfold together.... When the first atoms jarred I was there, and so conflict was there—and progress. The days of the old story have each expanded to hundreds of millions of years now, and still I am in them all. The sharks and crawling monsters of the early seas, the first things that crept out of the water into the jungle of fronds and stems, the early reptiles, the leaping and flying dragons of the great age of life, the mighty beasts of hoof and horn that came later; they all feared and suffered and were perplexed. At last came this Man of yours, out of the woods, hairy, beetle-browed and blood-stained, peering not too hopefully for that Eden-bower of the ancient story. It wasn’t there. There never had been a garden. He had fallen before he arose, and the weeds and thorns are as ancient as the flowers. The Fall goes back in time now beyond man, beyond the world, beyond imagination. The very stars were born in sin....