its rays, as Nature beneath the sun. It resuscitates
virtue, purifies
and sanctifies all actions, peoples
solitude, and gives a foretaste of
eternal joys. When you have once felt the delights of the
divineintoxication which comes of this
internal travail, then all is yours!
once take the lute on which we sing to God within your hands, and you
will never part with it. Hence the
solitude in which Angelic Spirits
live; hence their
disdain of human joys. They are
withdrawn from those
who must die to live; they hear the language of such beings, but they
no longer understand their ideas; they wonder at their
movements, at
what the world terms policies, material laws, societies. For them all
mysteries are over; truth, and truth alone, is
theirs. They who have
reached the point where their eyes
discern the Sacred Portals, who,
not looking back, not uttering one regret,
contemplate worlds and
comprehend their destinies, such as they keep silence, wait, and bear
their final struggles. The worst of all those struggles is the last;
at the
zenith of all
virtue is Resignation,--to be an exile and not
lament, no longer to delight in
earthly things and yet to smile, to
belong to God and yet to stay with men! You hear the voice that cries
to you, 'Advance!' Often
celestialvisions of descending Angels
compass you about with songs of praise; then, tearless, uncomplaining,
must you watch them as they reascent the skies! To murmur is to
forfeit all. Resignation is a fruit that ripens at the gates of
heaven. How powerful, how
glorious the calm smile, the pure brow of
the resigned human creature. Radiant is the light of that brow. They
who live in its
sphere" target="_blank" title="n.大气;空气;气氛">
atmosphere grow purer. That calm glance penetrates and
softens. More
eloquent by silence than the
prophet by speech, such
beings
triumph by their simple presence. Their ears are quick to hear
as a
faithful dog listening for his master. Brighter than hope,
stronger than love, higher than faith, that creature of
resignation is
the
virginstanding on the earth, who holds for a moment the conquered
palm, then, rising heavenward, leaves behind her the imprint of her
white, pure feet. When she has passed away men flock around and cry,
'See! See!' Sometimes God holds her still in sight,--a figure to whose
feet creep Forms and Species of Animality to be shown their way. She
wafts the light exhaling from her hair, and they see; she speaks, and
they hear. 'A miracle!' they cry. Often she
triumphs in the name of
God; frightened men deny her and put her to death; smiling, she lays
down her sword and goes to the stake, having saved the Peoples. How
many a pardoned Angel has passed from
martyrdom to heaven! Sinai,
Golgotha are not in this place nor in that; Angels are crucified in
every place, in every
sphere. Sighs
pierce to God from the whole
universe. This earth on which we live is but a single sheaf of the
great
harvest;
humanity is but a
species in the vast garden where the
flowers of heaven are
cultivated. Everywhere God is like unto Himself,
and everywhere, by prayer, it is easy to reach Him."
With these words, which fell from the lips of another Hagar in the
wilderness, burning the souls of the hearers as the live coal of the
word inflamed Isaiah, this
mysterious being paused as though to gather
some remaining strength. Wilfrid and Minna dared not speak. Suddenly
HE lifted himself up to die:--
"Soul of all things, oh my God, thou whom I love for Thyself! Thou,
Judge and Father, receive a love which has no limit. Give me of thine
essence and thy faculties that I be
wholly thine! Take me, that I no
longer be myself! Am I not purified? then cast me back into the
furnace! If I be not yet proved in the fire, make me some nurturing
ploughshare, or the Sword of
victory! Grant me a
gloriousmartyrdom in
which to
proclaim thy Word! Rejected, I will bless thy justice. But if
excess of love may win in a moment that which hard and patient labor
cannot
attain, then bear me
upward in thy
chariot of fire! Grant me
triumph, or further trial, still will I bless thee! To suffer for
thee, is not that to
triumph? Take me, seize me, bear me away! nay, if
thou wilt,
reject me! Thou art He who can do no evil. Ah!" he cried,
after a pause, "the bonds are breaking.
"Spirits of the pure, ye
sacred flock, come forth from the
hiddenplaces, come on the surface of the
luminous waves! The hour now is;
come, assemble! Let us sing at the gates of the Sanctuary; our songs
shall drive away the final clouds. With one
accord let us hail the
Dawn of the Eternal Day. Behold the rising of the one True Light! Ah,
why may I not take with me these my friends! Farewell, poor earth,
Farewell!"
CHAPTER VII
THE ASSUMPTION
The last psalm was uttered neither by word, look, nor
gesture, nor by
any of those signs which men employ to
communicate their thoughts, but
as the soul speaks to itself; for at the moment when Seraphita
revealed herself in her true nature, her thoughts were no longer
enslaved by human words. The
violence of that last prayer had burst
her bonds. Her soul, like a white dove, remained for an
instant poised
above the body whose exhausted substances were about to be
annihilated.
The
aspiration of the Soul toward heaven was so
contagious that
Wilfrid and Minna, beholding those
radiant scintillations of Life,
perceived not Death.
They had fallen on their knees when HE had turned toward his Orient,
and they shared his ecstasy.
The fear of the Lord, which creates man a second time, purging away
his dross, mastered their hearts.
Their eyes, veiled to the things of Earth, were opened to the
Brightness of Heaven.
Though, like the Seers of old called Prophets by men, they were filled
with the
terror of the Most High, yet like them they continued firm
when they found themselves within the
radiance where the Glory of the
SPIRIT shone.
The veil of flesh, which, until now, had
hidden that glory from their
eyes, dissolved imperceptibly away, and left them free to behold the
Divine substance.
They stood in the
twilight of the Coming Dawn, whose
feeble rays
prepared them to look upon the True Light, to hear the Living Word,
and yet not die.
In this state they began to
perceive the immeasurable differences
which separate the things of earth from the things of Heaven.
LIFE, on the borders of which they stood, leaning upon each other,
trembling and illuminated, like two children
standing under shelter in
presence of a conflagration, That Life offered no lodgment to the
senses.
The ideas they used to interpret their
vision to themselves were to
the things seen what the
visible senses of a man are to his soul, the
material covering of a
divine essence.
The departing SPIRIT was above them, shedding
incense without odor,
melody without sound. About them, where they stood, were neither
surfaces, nor angles, nor
sphere" target="_blank" title="n.大气;空气;气氛">
atmosphere.
They dared neither question him nor
contemplate him; they stood in the
shadow of that Presence as beneath the burning rays of a
tropical sun,
fearing to raise their eyes lest the light should blast them.
They knew they were beside him, without being able to
perceive how it
was that they stood, as in a dream, on the confines of the Visible and
the In
visible, nor how they had lost sight of the Visible and how they
beheld the In
visible.
To each other they said: "If he touches us, we can die!" But the
SPIRIT was now within the Infinite, and they knew not that neither
time, nor space, nor death, existed there, and that a great gulf lay
between them, although they thought themselves beside him.
Their souls were not prepared to receive in its fulness a knowledge of
the faculties of that Life; they could have only faint and confused
perceptions of it, suited to their weakness.
Were it not so, the
thunder of the LIVING WORD, whose
far-off tones
now reached their ears, and whose meaning entered their souls as life
unites with body,--one echo of that Word would have consumed their
being as a
whirlwind of fire laps up a
fragile straw.
Therefore they saw only that which their nature, sustained by the
strength of the SPIRIT, permitted them to see; they heard that only
which they were able to hear.