Just as when they had come here from the classroom earlier, the teacher walked ahead, with Kallen following beside him. The teacher spoke, and Kallen listened quietly most of the time.
At certain points, the teacher deliberately laid some groundwork, then stopped to wait for Kallen to pick up the thread or answer.
And Kallen's brief answers invariably hit the very spot that most delighted the teacher, making him take rapid, deep breaths he could not suppress, his body even beginning to sway slightly.
Clearly, the teacher was thoroughly enjoying himself.
In many people's eyes, history was dull and rigid, but in truth, it was alive. When looking back on history, people always liked to compare it to a "river of history," and what many historians did was fish in that river. They not only had to know when a fish had swum through, but also carefully examine and record its scales, gills, and tail-even every individual scale-while figuring out where it had come from and where it was going.
What distinguished Divine Historians within the churches from historians in the ordinary world was that they could take a longer view, because the "span of civilization" they examined differed enormously.
This teacher truly knew his subject. Although it was only a simple lesson, and he had not prepared beforehand, his account reconstructed and presented the reasons for, and manifestations of, the disagreement between the God of Order and the God of Light in exquisite detail.
Much of the historical material he cited came from early versions of the major churches' mythological accounts, while much more came from ancient texts of vanished churches he had sought out himself. He had even participated in many excavations of ruins during the first half of his life. Who knew how much "exclusive material" he