" 'No,' I said. 'I see the ruin of hope and love and family; the destruction of peace of mind; I see pain beyond endurance; I see man buckle under this, and fall into bitterness and hate.'

" 'You haven't looked deep enough, Memnoch. You are only an angel. You refuse to understand Nature, and that has been your way since the start.

" 'I will bring my light into Nature, through the flesh for three years. I will teach the wisest things I can know and say in this flesh-and-blood body and brain; and then I will die.'

" 'Die? Why do that? I mean, what do you mean, die? Your soul will leave—' I broke off, uncertain.

"He smiled.

" 'You do have a soul, don't you, Lord? I mean, you are my God inside this Son of Man, and the light fills every particle of you, but you ... you don't have a soul, do you?

You don't have a human soul!'

" 'Memnoch, these distinctions don't matter. I am God Incarnate. How could I have a human soul? What is important is that I will remain in this body as it is tortured and slain; and my death will be evidence of my Love for those whom I have created and allowed to suffer so much. I will share their pain and know their pain.'

" 'Please, Lord, forgive me, but there seems to be something wrong with this whole idea.'

"Again, he seemed amused. His dark eyes were filled with a sympathetic and silent laughter. 'Wrong? What is wrong, Memnoch, that I shall take the form of the Dying God of the Wood, whom men and women have imagined and dreamed of and sung of since time immemorial, a dying god who symbolizes the very cycle of nature itself in which all that is born must die.

" 'I shall die, and I shall rise from the Dead, as that god has risen in every myth of the eternal return of the spring after winter in nations all over the world. I shall be the god destroyed and the god uplifted, only here it will happen literally in Jerusalem, not in ceremony, or with human substitutes. The Son of God himself shall fulfill the myths. I have chosen to sanctify those legends with my literal death.

" 'I shall walk out of the Tomb. My resurrection will confirm the eternal return of the spring after winter. It will confirm that in Nature all things that have evolved have their place.

" 'But Memnoch, it will be for my death that I am remembered. My death. It's going to be terrible. It won't be for my resurrection they'll remember me, you can be sure of it, for that is something many simply will never see or believe. But my death, my death will spring full blown into a confirmation of mythology, underscored by all the myths which have preceded it, and my death will be a sacrifice by God to know His own Creation. Just what you told me to do.'