F. T. BULLEN 65 



needed to convey a just idea of what floods the 

 soul when alone upon the face of the deep in a 

 perfect calm. The scale of that heavenly harmony 

 is out of our range. We can only by some subtle 

 alchemy of the brain distil from that celestial 

 silence the voices of angels and archangels and all 

 the glorious company of heaven. Between us and 

 them is but a step, but it is the threshold of the 

 timeless dimension. Again and again I have seen 

 men, racked through and through with a very 

 agony of delight, dash aside the thralls that held 

 them, sometimes with passionate tears, more often 

 with raging words that grated harshly upon the 

 velvet stillness. They felt the burden of the flesh 

 grievous, since it shut them out from what they 

 dimly felt must be bliss unutterable, not to be con- 

 tained in any earthen vessel. On land a thousand 

 things, even in a desert, distract the attention, 

 loose the mind's tension even when utterly alone. 

 But at sea, the centre of one vast glassy circle, 

 shut in on every hand by a perfect demi-globc 

 as flawless as the mirror whereon you float, with 

 even the softest undulation imperceptible, and no 

 more motion of the atmosphere than there is in a 

 perfect vacuum, there is absolutely nothing to 

 come between the Soul of Man and the Infinite 

 Silences of Creation. There and there only is it 

 possible to realize what underlies that mighty line, 

 •'There was silence in Heaven for the space of 

 F 



