“Oh doubting and foolish Spirit!” went on the Angel—­“thou who art but one point of living light in the Supreme Radiance, even thou wouldst consent to immure thyself in the darkness of mortality for sake of thy fancied creation!  Even thou wouldst submit to suffer and to die, in order to show the frail children of thy dream a purely sinless and spiritual example!  Even thou hast had the courage to plead with the One All-Sufficing Voice against the destruction of what to thee was but a mirage floating in this ether!  Even thou hast had love, forgiveness, pity!  Even thou wouldst be willing to dwell among the creatures of thy fancy as one of them, knowing in thy inner self that by so doing, thy spiritual presence would have marked thy little world for ever as sanctified and impossible to destroy.  Even thou wouldst sacrifice a glory to answer a child’s prayer—­even thou wouldst have patience!  And yet thou hast dared to deny to God those attributes which thou thyself dost possess—­He is so great and vast—­thou so small and slight!  For the love thou feelest throbbing through thy being, He is the very commencement and perfection of all love; if thou hast pity, He has ten thousand times more pity; if thou canst forgive, remember that from Him flows all thy power of forgiveness!  There is nothing thou canst do, even at the highest height of spiritual perfection, that He cannot surpass by a thousand million fold!  Neither shalt thou refuse to believe that He can also suffer.  Know that nothing is more godlike than unselfish sorrow—­and the grief of the Creator over one erring human soul is as vast as He Himself is vast.  Why wouldst thou make of Him a being destitute of the best emotions that He Himself bestows upon thee?  Thou wouldst have entered into thy dream-world and lived in it and died in it, if by so doing thou couldst have drawn one of thy creatures back to the love of thee; and wilt thou not receive the Christ?”

I bowed my head, and a flood of joy rushed through me.

“I believe—­I believe and I love!” I murmured.  “Desert me not, O radiant Angel!  I feel and know that all these wonders must soon pass away from my sight; but wilt thou also go?”

The Angel smiled and touched me.

“I am thy guardian,” it said.  “I have been with thee always.  I can never leave thee so long as thy soul seeks spiritual things.  Asleep or awake on the Earth, wherever thou art, I also am.  There have been times when I have warned thee and thou wouldst not listen, when I have tried to draw thee onward and thou wouldst not come; but now I fear no more thy disobedience, for thy restlessness is past.  Come with me; it is permitted thee to see far off the vision of the Last Circle.”

The glorious figure raised me gently by the hand, and we floated on and on, higher and higher, past little circles which my guide told me were all solar systems, though they looked nothing but slender garlands of fire, so rapidly did they revolve and so swiftly did we pass them.  Higher and higher we went, till even to my untiring spirit the way seemed long.  Beautiful creatures in human shape, but as delicate as gossamer, passed us every now and then, some in bands of twos and threes, some alone; and the higher we soared the more dazzlingly lovely these inhabitants of the air seemed to be.