THE JESUIT'S TALE
453
at the Tempter and said in triumph, 'Get thee behind me, Satan.'
But Satan's greatest strength, as is attested by the Scriptures and the
Fathers of our Church, lies in
his
very subtlety: you might think he
is behind you when he is right before you. In my naive optimism
I had evidently underestimated the Devil. He is no doubt wicked,
proud, brutal and cunning; but he is more than that: he is also
multiform and unpredictable; he adapts himself to every situation;
he can assume an appearance of respectability or even sanctity; he
can usurp the name of Heaven.
"So the shining characters on the tablet, which I now can see
was nothing but a peep into Hell, a temptation that would lead me
to my, doom, was accepted by me at that time as a revelation of
divine truth or divine will. I thought I was seeing Jehovah's fiery
fingers writing down my damnation. The divine guidance I had se–
cretly prayed for seemed to have come at last. But it only said that
my case was hopeless, that the only thing for me to do was to sur–
render myself to the supernatural force which had caught me as if
in a net. Little did I think what a profanity of thought I was then
committing in accepting the analogy of Heaven, which I had always
believed to be merciful, forgiving, and loving, to a mechanical device,
something as subtle and heartless as a net. But seeing the hand of
God was against me, I was ready to give up. Where would be the
glory of death and where indeed could I escape? Who was I but
an old fish who had already lived
his
full span of three score and
ten and who was now lifted out of water, gasping and foaming, to
face the mysterious fisherman whose net was said to be cast over
every corner of the earth?
"So I was actually defeated by the combined strength of the
Chinese pagan religion and the Communist Party. It does not mean,
however, that the Communist Party, unaided, would have failed to
get what they wanted from me. For I always suspect that the Devil
is
at work in everything the Communists have been doing. A move–
ment that has brought about so much misery and loss of reason among .
mankind must have, so it seems to a Christian like me, its spiritual,
as well as its political and economical reasons. Now I can say, after
my own painful experience, that in dealing with the Devil, you will
never be sure how you will meet him or what stratagems he will use.
In my case, I had spent so much time on the study of the Chinese
