The Church has assimilated much in her time. Do you think it wise to leave agnostic science at the side of the plate? I think, you know, that this craving for common knowledge is a new birth in the mind of man; and if your church won't recognise that soon, by so much will she be losing her grip for ever over men's minds. What's the test of godliness, but your power to receive the new idea in whatever form it comes and give it life? It is blasphemy to pick and choose your good. (For a moment his thoughts seem to be elsewhere.) That's an unhappy man or woman or nation... I know it if it has only come to me this minute... and I don't care what their brains or their riches or their beauty or any of their triumph may be... they're unhappy and useless if they can't tell life from death. (CANTELUPE: Remember that the Church's claim has ever been to know that difference.) (Fastening to his subject again.) My point is this: A man's demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his assertion that it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious revival... a token of spiritual hunger. What else can it be? And we commercialise our teaching! (CANTELUPE: I wouldn't have it so.) Then I'm offering you the foundation of a new Order of men and women who'll serve God by teaching his children. Now shall we finish the conversation in prose?

Trebell Monologue from Waste: A Tragedy, In Four Acts

Rehearse Trebell's monologue