“In our flesh, in our evil nature, dwelleth no good thing,” cried the Soul; “but, at least, thoughts never with me ripened into actions; the world has not seen the evil fruit.”  And the Soul hurried on to get free from the accusing voices; but the great black fowls swept in circles round, and screamed out their scandalous words louder and louder, as though they would be heard all over the world.  And the Soul fled from them like the hunted stag, and at every step stumbled against sharp flint stones that lay in the path.  “How came these sharp stones here?  They look like mere withered leaves lying on the ground.”

“Every stone is for some incautious word thou hast spoken, which lay as a stumbling-block in thy neighbor’s path, which wounded thy neighbor’s heart far more sorely and deeply than these sharp flints now wound thy feet.”

“Alas!  I never once thought of that,” sighed the Soul.

And those words of the gospel rang through the air, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

“We have all sinned,” said the Soul, recovering from its momentary self-abasement.  “I have kept the Law and the Gospel, I have done what I could, I am not as others are!”

And in his dream this man now stood at the gates of heaven, and the Angel who guarded the entrance inquired, “Who art thou?  Tell me thy faith, and show it to me in thy works.”

“I have faithfully kept the Commandments, I have humbled myself in the eyes of the world, I have preserved myself free from the pollution of intercourse with sinners, I have hated and persecuted evil, and those who practice it, and I would do so still, yea, with fire and sword, had I the power.”

“Then thou art one of Mohammed’s followers?” said the Angel.

“I? a Mohammedan?—­never!”

“‘He who strikes with the sword shall perish by the sword,’ thus spake the Son; His religion thou knowest not.  It may be that thou art one of the children of Israel, whose maxim is, ’An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’—­art thou such?”

“I am a Christian.”

“I see it not in thy faith or in thine actions.  The law of Christ is the law of forgiveness, love, and mercy.”

“Mercy!” The gracious echo of that sweet word thrilled through infinite space, the gates of heaven opened, and the Soul hovered toward the realms of endless bliss.

But the flood of light that streamed forth from within was so dazzlingly bright, so transcendently white and pure, that the Soul shrank back as from a two-edged sword, and the hymns and harp-tones of Angels mingled in such exquisite celestial harmony as the earthly mind has not power either to conceive or to endure.  And the Soul trembled and bowed itself deeper and deeper, and the heavenly light penetrated it through and through, and it felt to the quick, as it had never truly felt before, the burden of its own pride, cruelty, and sin.

“What I have done of good in the world, that did I because I could not otherwise, but the evil that I did—­that was of myself!”