“I will do all you tell me,” she answered, lifting her eyes to his with a timid movement.

“I cannot be your companion,” said Seraphitus sadly.

He seemed to repress some thoughts, then stretched his arms towards Christiana, just visible like a speck on the horizon and said:—­

“Look!”

“We are very small,” she said.

“Yes, but we become great through feeling and through intellect,” answered Seraphitus.  “With us, and us alone, Minna, begins the knowledge of things; the little that we learn of the laws of the visible world enables us to apprehend the immensity of the worlds invisible.  I know not if the time has come to speak thus to you, but I would, ah, I would communicate to you the flame of my hopes!  Perhaps we may one day be together in the world where Love never dies.”

“Why not here and now?” she said, murmuring.

“Nothing is stable here,” he said, disdainfully.  “The passing joys of earthly love are gleams which reveal to certain souls the coming of joys more durable; just as the discovery of a single law of nature leads certain privileged beings to a conception of the system of the universe.  Our fleeting happiness here below is the forerunning proof of another and a perfect happiness, just as the earth, a fragment of the world, attests the universe.  We cannot measure the vast orbit of the Divine thought of which we are but an atom as small as God is great; but we can feel its vastness, we can kneel, adore, and wait.  Men ever mislead themselves in science by not perceiving that all things on their globe are related and co-ordinated to the general evolution, to a constant movement and production which bring with them, necessarily, both advancement and an End.  Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.”

“How is it that in thy short life thou hast found the time to learn so many things?” said the young girl.

“I remember,” he replied.

“Thou art nobler than all else I see.”

“We are the noblest of God’s greatest works.  Has He not given us the faculty of reflecting on Nature; of gathering it within us by thought; of making it a footstool and stepping-stone from and by which to rise to Him?  We love according to the greater or the lesser portion of heaven our souls contain.  But do not be unjust, Minna; behold the magnificence spread before you.  Ocean expands at your feet like a carpet; the mountains resemble ampitheatres; heaven’s ether is above them like the arching folds of a stage curtain.  Here we may breathe the thoughts of God, as it were like a perfume.  See! the angry billows which engulf the ships laden with men seem to us, where we are, mere bubbles; and if we raise our eyes and look above, all there is blue.  Behold that diadem of stars!  Here the tints of earthly impressions disappear; standing on this nature rarefied by space do you not feel within you something deeper far than mind, grander than enthusiasm, of greater energy than will?  Are you not conscious of emotions whose interpretation is no longer in us?  Do you not feel your pinions?  Let us pray.”