human
Adams, began the court, laying down the typewritten manuscript,
gpt
I suppose you think you are a martyr.
human
Well, speak up. Aren't you a martyr?
gpt
No, meeting the eye of the court,
human
I want to get out and get to work too keenly to be a martyr.
gpt
To get to work, sneered the court.
human
You mean to keep others from going to work. Now, Adams, isn't it true that you are trying to steal the property of this district from its legal owners by riot and set yourself up as the head of your Democracy of Labor, to fatten on the folly of the working men? The court did not pause for a reply, but continued:
gpt
Now, Adams, there is no merit to the contentions of your counsel in this hearing, but, even if there was mere technical weight to his arguments, the moral issues involved, the vast importance of this ease to the general welfare of this Republic, would compel this court to take judicial notice of the logic of its decision in your favor. For it would release anarchy, backed by legal authority, and strike down the arm of the State in protecting property and suppressing crime.
human
Adams, do you think you are a God? What is this rot you're talking about the Prince of Peace? What do you mean by saying nothing can hurt you? If you know nothing can hurt you, why do you let your attorney plead the baby act and declare that, if you are not released to-night, a mob will wait on you? If you are a God, why don't you help yourself--quell the mob, overcome the devil?
gpt
See here, Adams, if you aren't crazy, what are you trying to do? What do you expect to get out of all this glib talk about the power of spiritual forces and the peaceful revolution and the power greater than bullets and your fanatical ranting about the Holy Ghost in the dupes you are inciting to murder? Come now, maybe you are crazy? Maybe if you'd talk and not stand there like a loon--
human
Maybe if you'd not stand there grouching, you'd prove to the court that you are crazy, and on the grounds of insanity the court might grant your prayer. Come, now, Adams, speak up; go the whole length. Give us your creed!
gpt
Well, began Adams,
human
Don't you know how to address a court?
gpt
To say 'Your honor' would be a formality which even your friends would laugh at, replied Grant quietly. The crowd hissed; the court turned purple. Grant Adams stood rigid, with white face and quivering muscles. His jaws knotted and his fist clenched. Yet when he spoke he held his voice down. In it was no evidence of his tension. Facing for the first few moments of his speech the little group of his friends--Dr. Nesbit, George Brotherton, Captain Morton, Nathan Perry and Amos Adams--who sat at the lawyers' table with Henry Fenn, Grant Adams plunged abruptly into his creed:
human
I believe that in every human adult consciousness there is a spark of altruism, a divine fire, which marks the fatherhood of God and proves the brotherhood of man. Environment fans that spark or stifles it. Its growth is evidenced in human institutions, in scales and grades of civilization. Christ was a glowing flame of this fire. The court gave a knowing wink to Ahab Wright, who grinned at the court's keen sense of humor. Adams saw the wink, but proceeded:
gpt
That is what He means when He says: 'I am the resurrection and the life,' for only as men and nations, races and civilization by their institutions fan that spark to fire, will they live, will they conquer the forces of death ever within them.
human
This is no material world. Humanity is God trying to express Himself in terms of justice--with the sad handicap of time and space ever holding the Eternal Spirit in check. We are all Gods.