Again the great voice shook the air: 

“They love darkness rather than light; they love the perishable earth of which they are in part composed, better than the germ of immortality with which they were in the beginning endowed.  This garden of thine is but a caprice of thy intelligence; the creatures that inhabit it are soulless and unworthy, and are an offence to that indestructible radiance of which thou art one ray.  Therefore I say unto thee again—­destroy!”

My yearning love grew stronger, and I pleaded with renewed force.

“Oh, thou Unseen Glory!” I cried; “thou who hast filled me with this emotion of love and pity which permeates and supports my existence, how canst thou bid me take this sudden revenge upon my frail creation!  No caprice was it that caused me to design it; nothing but a thought of love and a desire of beauty.  Even yet I will fulfil my plan—­even yet shall these erring children of mine return to me in time, with patience.  While one of them still lifts a hand in prayer to me, or gratitude, I cannot destroy!  Bid me rather sink into the darkness of the uttermost deep of shadow; only let me save these feeble little ones from destruction!”

The voice replied not.  A flashing opal brilliancy shot across the light in which I rested, and I beheld an Angel, grand, lofty, majestic, with a countenance in which shone the lustre of a myriad summer mornings.

“Spirit that art escaped from the Sorrowful Star,” it said in accents clear and sonorous, “wouldst thou indeed be content to suffer the loss of heavenly joy and peace, in order to rescue thy perishing creation?”

“I would!” I answered; “if I understood death, I would die to save one of those frail creatures, who seek to know me and yet cannot find me through the darkness they have brought upon themselves.”

“To die,” said the Angel, “to understand death, thou wouldst need to become one of them, to take upon thyself their form—­to imprison all that brilliancy of which thou art now composed, into a mean and common case of clay; and even if thou couldst accomplish this, would thy children know thee or receive thee?”

“Nay, but if I could suffer shame by them,” I cried impetuously, “I could not suffer sin.  My being would be incapable of error, and I would show these creatures of mine the bliss of purity, the joy of wisdom, the ecstasy of light, the certainty of immortality, if they followed me.  And then I would die to show them death is easy, and that in dying they would come to me and find their happiness for ever!”

The stature of the Angel grew more lofty and magnificent, and its star-like eyes flashed fire.

“Then, oh thou wanderer from the Earth!” it said, “understandest thou not the Christ?”

A deep awe trembled through me.  Meanwhile the garden I had thought a world appeared to roll up like a cloudy scroll, and vanished, and I knew that it had been a vision, and no more.