The Ball and The Cross | Page 5

it
was made of crosses. He was found in the river."
Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
"Is that story really true?" he asked.
"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your
rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the
habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody ought to join the Church against his
will. When we meet you again you are saying that no one has any will to join it with. We
leave you saying that there is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no
such place as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come to hate everything,
for everything is irrational and so----"
Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. "Ah," he screamed, "to every man
his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it save you."
And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the reeling car on to
the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with as abrupt an agility, caught one of the
beams of the cross and saved himself from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove
down a lever and the ship shot up with him in it alone.
"Ha! ha!" he yelled, "what sort of a support do you find it, old fellow?"
"For practical purposes of support," replied Michael grimly, "it is at any rate a great deal
better than the ball. May I ask if you are going to leave me here?"
"Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!" cried the professor in ungovernable excitement. "Altiora
peto. My path is upward."
"How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or down in space?"
said the monk. "I shall mount up as much as you will."
"Indeed," said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. "May I ask what you are
going to do?"
The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. "I am going," he said, "to climb up into a
star."
Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as something which

belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this kind is to be found in the saying
of the dandy, in the decadent comedy, "Life is much too important to be taken seriously."
Those who look at the matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a thing
which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is to be found in such a
saying as "The meek shall inherit the earth." But those who see and feel the fundamental
fact of the matter know that paradox is a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to
all vivid and violent practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may be clearly
perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space, clinging to one arm of
the Cross of St. Paul's.
Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism (or because of it, for all
I know), was a very healthy and happy old gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above
the sickening emptiness of air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which
belongs to the brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which is
involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old gentleman and
therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as every man feels in the taut moment
of such terror that his chief danger was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a
coolness amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too desperately
desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that awful facade, if only he could not
care whether they were footholds or no. If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were
wise he would stop where he was till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this
antinomy kept on repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large and staring as the
immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered having often heard the words,
"Whosoever shall lose his life the same shall save it." He remembered with a sort of
strange pity that this had always been made to mean that whoever lost his physical life
should save his spiritual life. Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters, and
hunters, and climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life could only be saved by
a considerable readiness