“Is there room in Heaven for a false witness?” asked God.

Again did Paul seek God.  “My Lord,” he entreated, “what manner of man is this that confesses his faults?”

“You will provoke my wrath,” said God.  “Go and be merry.”

Paul’s face being well turned, God moved backward into the Record Office, and of the Clerk of the Records He demanded:  “Who is he that prayed unto me?”

“William Hughes-Jones,” replied the Clerk.

“Has the Forgiving Angel blotted out his sins?”

“For that I have fixed a long space of time”; and the Clerk showed God eleven heavy books, on the outside of each of which was written:  “William Hughes-Jones, One and All Drapery Store, Hammersmith.  His sins”; and God examined the books and was pleased, and He cried:  “Rejoice fourfold”; and if Isaiah’s roar was higher than the wailings of the perished it was now more awful than the roar of a hundred bullocks in a slaughter-house, and if Isaiah’s countenance shone more than anything in Heaven, it was now like the eye of the sun.

“Of what nation is he?” the Lord inquired of the Clerk.

“The Welsh; the Welsh Nonconformists.”

“Put before me their good deeds.”

“There is none.  William Hughes-Jones is the first of them that has prayed.  Are not the builders making a chamber for the accounts of their disobedience?”

Immediately God thundered:  the earth trembled and the stars shivered and fled from their courses and struck against one another; and God stood on the brim of the universe and stretched out a hand and a portion of a star fell into it, and that is the portion which He hurled into the garden of Hughes-Jones’s house.  On a sudden the revels ceased:  the bread of the feast was stone and the tea water, and the songs of the angels were hushed, and the strings of the harps and viols were withered, and the hammers were dough, and the mountains sank into Hell, and behold Satan in the pulpit which was an iron cage.

The Prophets hurried into the Judgment Hall with questions, and lo God was in a cloud, and He spoke out of the cloud.

“I am angry,” He said, “that Welsh Nonconformists have not heard my name.  Who are the Welsh Nonconformists?” The Prophets were silent, and God mourned:  “My Word is the earth and I peopled the earth with my spittle; and I appointed my Prophets to watch over my people, and the watchers slept and my children strayed.”

Thus too said the Lord:  “That hour I devour my children who have forsaken me, that hour I shall devour my Prophets.”

“May be there is one righteous among us?” said Moses.

“You have all erred.”

“May be there is one righteous among the Nonconformists,” said Moses; “will the just God destroy him?”

“The one righteous is humbled, and I have warned him to keep my commandments.”

“The sown seed brought forth a prayer,” Moses pleaded; “will not the just God wait for the harvest?”