“I hardly know; I fear I am not very reverent.  I was born of a question-asking time, like that Galilean boy, whose, mother, after long search, found him in the Temple, disputing with the doctors, and asking them questions.”

“Good! good! that is it; my great mother will find me in her Temple, asking questions of her doctors and ministers!” exclaimed Sartliff.

“And what do you ask, and what response do you get?” asked Bart.

“I lay myself on the earth’s bosom in holy solitudes, with fasting and great prayer, and send my soul forth in one great mute, hungry demand for light.  I, a man, with some of the Father God stirring the awful mysteries of my nature, go yearningly naked, empty, and alone, and clamor to know the way.  And sometimes deep, sweet, hollow voices answer in murmurs, which I feel rather than hear; but I cannot interpret them, I cannot compass their sounds.  And sometimes gigantic formless shadows overcloud me.  I know they have forms of wondrous symmetry and beauty, but they are so grand that my vision does not reach their outline, and I cannot comprehend them.  I know that I am dominant of the physical creation on this earth, but at those times I feel that these great and mighty essences, whose world in which they live and move, envelopes ours and us, and to whom our matter is as impalpable air—­I know that they and we, theirs and ours, are involved in higher and yet higher conditions and elements, that in some mysterious way we mutually and blindly contribute and minister to each other.”

“And what profit do you find in such communication?” asked Bart.

“It is but preparatory to try the powers, clear the vision and senses, train and discipline the essential faculties for a communion with this essence that may be fully revealed, and aid in the workings and immediate government of our gross material world, and the spirits that pertain to it more immediately, if such there are.”

“And you are in doubt about that?”

“Somewhat; and yet through some such agencies came the givings forth of the Prophets.”

“You believe in the Prophets?” asked Case.

“Assuredly.  The many generations which inherited from each other the seer faculty, developed and improved, living the secluded, severe, and simple lives of the anchorite, amid the grand and solemn silence of mountain and desert, were enabled, by wondrous and protracted effort, to wear through the filament—­impenetrable as adamant to common men—­that screened from them the invisible future, and they told What they saw.”

“Yet they never told it so that any mortal ever understood what they said, or could apply their visions to any passing events, and the same givings out of these half-crazed old bards, for such they were, have been applied to fifty different things by as many different generations of men,” said Case.