Through all these things, in doubt, despair, poverty, sick feeble or baffled, we have yet to learn reliance.  “I will not leave thee or forsake thee,” are the words of the most ancient spirit to the spark wandering in the immensity of its own being.  This high courage brings with it a vision.  It sees the true intent in all circumstance out of which its own emerges to meet it.  Before it the blackness melts into forms of beauty, and back of all illusions is seen the old enchanter tenderly smiling, the dark, hidden Father enveloping his children.

All things have their compensations.  For what is absent here there is always, if we seek, a nobler presence about us.

Captive, see what stars give light
        In the hidden heart of clay: 
At their radiance dark and bright
        Fades the dreamy King of Day.

We complain of conditions, but this very imperfection it is which urges us to arise and seek for the Isles of the Immortals.  What we lack recalls the fulness.  The soul has seen a brighter day than this and a sun which never sets.  Hence the retrospect:  “Thou has been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, emerald ....  Thou was upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”  We would point out these radiant avenues of return; but sometimes we feel in our hearts that we sound but cockney choices, as guides amid the ancient temples, the cyclopean crypts sanctified by the mysteries.  To be intelligible we replace the opalescent shining by the terms of the anatomist, and we speak of the pineal gland and the pituitary body in the same breath with the Most High.  Yet when the soul has the vision divine it knows not it has a body.  Let it remember, and the breath of glory kindles it no more; it is once again a captive.  After all, it does not make the mysteries clearer to speak in physical terms and do violence to our intuitions.  If we ever use these centres, as fires we shall see them, or they shall well up within us as fountains of potent sound.  We may satisfy people’s minds with a sense correspondence, and their souls may yet hold aloof.  We shall only inspire by the magic of a superior beauty.  Yet this too has its dangers.  “Thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of they brightness,” continues the seer.  If we follow too much the elusive beauty of form we will miss the spirit.  The last secrets are for those who translate vision into being.  Does the glory fade away before thee?  Say truly in they heart, “I care not.  I will wear the robes I am endowed with today.”  Thou are already become beautiful, being beyond desire and free.

Night and day no more eclipse
        Friendly eyes that on us shine,
Speech from old familiar lips,
        Playmates of a youth divine.