The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

That, of course, was the best solution of all, to leave the living witness to the weakness of their faith. It showed the deception they had practised all these years. For if they really believed in heaven or hell, they wouldn’t mind a little pain now, in return for what immensities

He would eliminate from their childhood everything which had made him miserable, all that was poor, superstitious, and corrupt. They deserved nothing less than the truth—a vacant universe and a cooling world, the right to be happy in any way they chose. He was quite prepared to make a massacre for their sakes—first the Church and then the foreigner and then the politician—even his own chief would one day have to go. He wanted to begin the world again with them, in a desert.

This, he thought, must be what all parents feel: ordinary men go through life like this crossing their fingers, praying against pain, afraid. … This is what we escape at no cost at all, sacrificing an unimportant motion of the body. For years, of course, he had been responsible for souls, but that was different … a lighter thing. You could trust God to make allowances, but you couldn’t trust smallpox, starvation, men

Again he was touched by an extraordinary affection. He was just one criminal among a herd of criminals … He had a sense of companionship which he had never experienced in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.

When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt…

‘You are getting too old for work.’ He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Get out of here, and don’t let me see your face again. Mind that.’ The priest held the coin in his fist—the price of a Mass. He said with astonishment, ‘You’re a good man.’

He felt sadness and longing at the vaguest idea of a life he couldn’t lead himself … words like peace, glory, love.