The grave, sonorous intonation sank and ended as it had begun, like the organ-roll of minor cadences; and the countenance of the phantom grew indistinct and fluctuating, till it seemed to blend with the sombre purple atmosphere that surrounded us.  But as I perceived her bright eyes still fastened upon my face, I lifted my hands imploringly towards the floating presence, and would fain have caught her fading impalpable garments.

“Spirit!” I cried, “one question more!  The boy ’Tista surely came with the morning, and learned at last, even though too late, who had been his unknown friend?”

“Daughter of mortality,” returned the dying voice of the phantom, “I cannot tell.  That night my mission upon earth was ended.  But some of my sister-flowers, which bloom about the graves of the dead, have sent me messages from time to time by the breath of God’s messenger, the errant breeze of heaven.  And they tell me that a certain rich chemist of a large town in Piedmont, a handsome prosperous young man, named Battista Delcor, has caused a great white cross to be set above the resting-place of Herr Ritter.  And upon the base of the cross these words are graven in letters of gold:  “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

And again, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

VIII.  St. George the Chevalier*

During the last few years a growing interest in the subject of religious metaphysic has shown itself in certain strata of our intellectual world.  This interest has taken many forms, and attached itself to many developments, some of which have been chiefly distinguished for

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* Although, strictly, neither a “dream” nor a “dream-story,” this paper 
is included by the express wish of its writer, the interpretations 
contained in it being largely the product of instructions received by 
her in sleep.—­Ed.
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eccentricity, and have attracted attention rather by this quality than by their intrinsic value as solid contributions to thought.  Phrases, symbols, and expositions of theosophical doctrine gathered from sources unfamiliar to the ordinary Western mind, and requiring for their comprehension the study of a foreign tongue and of a strange and intricate psychology, task too much the intellect of a seeker trained in the Christian faith and seriously bent on the profitable study of its mysteries.  Fain would he learn what are these mysteries without recourse to a foreign interpreter.  His own Church, his own creed, he thinks, should teach him all that he seeks to know, and he cares not to set aside and reject names and symbols hallowed by the use of ages among his people, in favour of others new to his ear and tongue.