The voice replied not. A flashing opal brilliancy shot across the light in which I rested, and I beheld an Angel, grand, lofty, majestic, with a countenance in which shone the lustre of a myriad summer mornings.

"Spirit that art escaped from the Sorrowful Star," it said in accents clear and sonorous, "wouldst thou indeed be content to suffer the loss of heavenly joy and peace, in order to rescue thy perishing creation?"

"I would!" I answered; "if I understood death, I would die to save one of those frail creatures, who seek to know me and yet cannot find me through the darkness they have brought upon themselves."

"To die," said the Angel, "to understand death, thou wouldst need to become one of them, to take upon thyself their form--to imprison all that brilliancy of which thou art now composed, into a mean and common case of clay; and even if thou couldst accomplish this, would thy children know thee or receive thee?"

"Nay, but if I could suffer shame by them," I cried impetuously, "I could not suffer sin. My being would be incapable of error, and I would show these creatures of mine the bliss of purity, the joy of wisdom, the ecstasy of light, the certainty of immortality, if they followed me. And then I would die to show them death is easy, and that in dying they would come to me and find their happiness for ever!"

The stature of the Angel grew more lofty and magnificent, and its star-like eyes flashed fire.

"Then, oh thou wanderer from the Earth!" it said, "understandest thou not the Christ?"

A deep awe trembled through me. Meanwhile the garden I had thought a world appeared to roll up like a cloudy scroll, and vanished, and I knew that it had been a vision, and no more.

"Oh doubting and foolish Spirit!" went on the Angel--"thou who art but one point of living light in the Supreme Radiance, even THOU wouldst consent to immure thyself in the darkness of mortality for sake of thy fancied creation! Even THOU wouldst submit to suffer and to die, in order to show the frail children of thy dream a purely sinless and spiritual example! Even THOU hast had the courage to plead with the One All-Sufficing Voice against the destruction of what to thee was but a mirage floating in this ether! Even THOU hast had love, forgiveness, pity! Even THOU wouldst be willing to dwell among the creatures of thy fancy as one of them, knowing in thy inner self that by so doing, thy spiritual presence would have marked thy little world for ever as sanctified and impossible to destroy.




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