1 The Brothers Karamazov
was aghast, realising with my heart as well as my mind what
such a resolution meant.
‘Decide my fate!’ he exclaimed again.
‘Go and confess,’ I whispered to him. My voice failed me,
but I whispered it firmly. I took up the New Testament from
the table, the Russian translation, and showed him the Gos-
pel of St. John, chapter 12, verse 24:
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you,
except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone:
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’
I had just been reading that verse when he came in. He
read it.
‘That’s true,’ he said, he smiled bitterly. ‘It’s terrible the
things you find in those books,’ he said, after a pause. ‘It’s
easy enough to thrust them upon one. And who wrote
them? Can they have been written by men?’
‘The Holy Spirit wrote them,’ said I.
‘It’s easy for you to prate,’ he smiled again, this time al-
most with hatred.
I took the book again, opened it in another place and
showed him the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, verse
- He read:
‘It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God.’
He read it and simply flung down the book. He was trem-
bling all over.
‘An awful text,’ he said. ‘There’s no denying you’ve picked
out fitting ones.’ He rose from the chair. ‘Well!’ he said,