If an infidel wishes to insult a godly pilgrim, he can do it no more effectively than by secretly fastening to the believer’s residence a piece of material on which is inscribed one or more of these sacred laws.

Every believer is required to commit to memory this code of laws by hearing them from the lips of the minister.  It is therefore necessary to keep in constant touch with the church service so as to be a continual hearer of these laws, a part of which is repeated every worship day.

The minister does not preach in the same sense that we understand preaching.  His work comes nearer filling the office of a priest under the old Jewish church.  There is much more form and ceremony than is found in our system under the Mediator, Jesus Christ.

The civil law has absolutely nothing to say on the marriage question.  All this is held in the domain of the Church.  In truth, the Divine Family has always regulated this question.  If the legality of a marriage is called in question, all that the civil authorities try to determine is whether the marriage ceremony was performed in accordance with the laws of the Divine Family.  If this point can be established, the marriage is declared legal; if not, it is declared to be null and void.  This one subject of matrimony has caused more friction between the Church and the infidels than all other issues combined.  The infidels are bitterly opposed to take their marriage vows before the minister, yet this must be done to make their marriage legal.  Divorce laws are unknown, although, in rare cases, papers of separation are granted by authority and under seal of the Divine Family.

The religious devotees of Holen look forward to a happier existence when their mortal life is ended.  Their ideas of this future life are quite similar to our cherished ideas of Heaven.

In their moral life they have reached a higher plane than we.  This is due to the fact that the Divine Family wield an influence in the civil realm that cannot be broken.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Mute World.

I proceeded on my journey until I had reached Alcyone in the famous constellation of Taurus.  On one of the planets revolving around Alcyone, I found a distinctive class of human beings faintly resembling creatures that I had seen in several other constellations, but of which I have, as yet, made no special mention.

Among these people no audible language is used as a means of communication.  One might think that high civilization would be impossible without such a vehicle of thought.  But on this Mute world humanity has pushed far along in the great interstellar race for supremacy.

A description of the physical features of these Muteites would not only seem absurd, but would be distorting.  Can you imagine a beautiful person without ears and void of vocal sound, having a head totally out of shape compared with ours, and with a bodily framework ridiculously new to us?  Such would be a brief word sketch of these far-away mortals of unusual intelligence.