A passionate desire to plunge back into the mire of earth and suffer trial took possession of them,—­trial through which they might victoriously utter at the sacred gates the words of that radiant Seraph.

The Seraph knelt before the Sanctuary, beholding it, at last, face to face; and he said, raising his hands thitherward, “Grant that these two may have further sight; they will love the Lord and proclaim His word.”

At this prayer a veil fell.  Whether it were that the hidden force which held the Seers had momentarily annihilated their physical bodies, or that it raised their spirits above those bodies, certain it is that they felt within them a rending of the pure from the impure.

The tears of the Seraph rose about them like a vapor, which hid the lower worlds from their knowledge, held them in its folds, bore them upwards, gave them forgetfulness of earthly meanings and the power of comprehending the meanings of things divine.

The True Light shone; it illumined the Creations, which seemed to them barren when they saw the source from which all worlds—­Terrestrial, Spiritual, and Divine-derived their Motion.

Each world possessed a centre to which converged all points of its circumference.  These worlds were themselves the points which moved toward the centre of their system.  Each system had its centre in great celestial regions which communicated with the flaming and quenchless motor of all that is.

Thus, from the greatest to the smallest of the worlds, and from the smallest of the worlds to the smallest portion of the beings who compose it, all was individual, and all was, nevertheless, One and indivisible.

What was the design of the Being, fixed in His essence and in His faculties, who transmitted that essence and those faculties without losing them? who manifested them outside of Himself without separating them from Himself? who rendered his creations outside of Himself fixed in their essence and mutable in their form?  The pair thus called to the celestial festival could only see the order and arrangement of created beings and admire the immediate result.  The Angels alone see more.  They know the means; they comprehend the final end.

But what the two Elect were granted power to contemplate, what they were able to bring back as a testimony which enlightened their minds forever after, was the proof of the action of the Worlds and of Beings; the consciousness of the effort with which they all converge to the Result.

They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming one living melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre, issued all things and recalled all things to Himself.

This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age to age.