There are very few worlds where the devotional spirit has reached a higher level than in Plasden.  The truths of the Creator are preached and practised with a far more pleasing result than is prevalent on Earth.

Satan has found his way to this planet and has organized his forces into sworn legions against whom the armies of righteousness are waging relentless warfare.

The main secret of Plasden’s high morality is found in the fact that the civil governments insist on moral laws and a careful observance of them.  One blushes with shame at the looseness and laxity with which the greater municipalities of our Earth are governed, and all this under the shadow of our schools and church spires.

Centuries ago the good people of Plasden learned how to co-operate when they desired to win in a struggle against iniquity.  I would give my life-blood if I could transport this secret in such a way as to make it effective on the Earth.

In our world we have before us a most humiliating spectacle.  If an effort is made to extirpate some form of sin that has taken audacious root in the soil of our moral life, one reform element or denomination fights with the other until the hoe is so broken that there is nothing left wherewith to dig out the miserable roots of the obnoxious weed.  Thus do we spend our energies opposing one another instead of fighting the Devil.

O, for the Plasden power of unity, before which any species of corruption can be crushed out that is opposed by the forces of righteousness!

We have succeeded, to a bitter extreme, in getting the church and state separated from each other so far that the latter scarcely ever gets a glimpse of the former, and we stand by priding ourselves in the absolute divorce.  Then we have also succeeded in getting the different creeds separated by chasms so wide that it is impossible to make a combined attack against a common foe.  However, these separations between sects are gradually disappearing, and over the lessening gaps the hands of a more Christian fellowship are being extended.

The Devil, wiser in his generation than the children of light, long ago united his trained forces in defense of his iniquitous schemes, and thus he is permitted for a season to sit on the throne of power and wield his black wand over the civil realm, thereby licensing iniquity, protecting vice, and spreading his dark designs over the commonwealths of the world.

We look forward to the time when the moral and spiritual forces of our world will reach the Plasden unity.  May this be accomplished without struggling along for another century!

CHAPTER XI.

A World of Ideal Cities.

After I had finished my brief stay at Plasden, I again rose high in air and looked over the oceans with their floating cities.  This was one of the most charming views I ever had of any world.