--And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone, if you
feel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son of
God?
--I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of
God than a son of Mary.
--And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you
are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be
the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And
because you fear that it may be?
--Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.
--I see, Cranly said.
Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once
by saying:
--I fear many things: dogs, horses, fire-arms, the sea,
thunder-storms, machinery, the country roads at night.
--But why do you fear a bit of bread?
--I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind
those things I say I fear.
--Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics
would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious
communion?
--The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear
more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by
a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of
authority and veneration.
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