“’I dare say,’ I said. ‘What reason?’
“’Because otherwise,’ he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, ‘we might worship that.’
“’What do you mean?’ I demanded.
“’Eternity,’ he said in his harsh voice, ‘the largest of the idols— the mightiest of the rivals of God.’
“’You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,’ I suggested.
“’I mean,’ he said with increasing vehemence, ‘that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, i
