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 divine
intoxication 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 They are withdrawn from those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 hidden

places, 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 Invisible, nor how they had lost sight of the Visible and how they
beheld the Invisible.

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.