Nov. 9, 1883.] 



♦ KNO^A^LEDGE ♦ 



289 



Cordilleras, and a few moments more reduced the sun to a 

 little star, and soon there remained nothing visible of our sys- 

 tem except a comet, which was travelling from our sun with 

 angelic speed in the direction of Sirius. Our flight now 

 carried us so rapidly through the flocks of solar bodies — 

 ilooks past counting unless to their heavenly Shepherd — 

 that scarcely could they expand themselves before us into 

 the magnitude of moons, before they sank behind us into 

 pale nebular gleams ; and their planetary earths could not 

 reveal themselves for a moment to the transcendent 

 rapidity of our course. At length Sirius and all the 

 brotherhood of our constellations and the galaxy of our 

 heavens stood far below our feet as a little nebula 

 amongst other yet more distant nebulae. Thus we 

 ^lew on through the starry wildernesses ; one heaven 

 after another unfurled its immeasurable banners before 

 us, and then rolled up behind us ; galaxy behind 

 galaxy towered up into solemn altitudes before which 

 the spirit shuddered ; and they stood in long array 

 through which the Infinite Being might pass in progress. 

 .Sometimes the form that lightened would out-fly my weary 

 thoughts ; and then it would be seen far ott' before me like 

 a coruscation among the stars, till suddenly I thought again 

 to myself the thoughts of TIterc, and then I was at its side. 

 But, as we were thus swallowed up by one abyss of stars 

 after another, and the heavens aVjove our eyes were not 

 vmptier ; neither were the heavens below them fuller, and 

 as suns without intermission fell into the solar ocean like 

 water-spouts of a storm which fall into the ocean of 

 waters ; then at length the human heart within me was 

 overburdened and weary and yearned after some narrow 

 cell or quiet oratory in this metropolitan cathedral of the 

 universe. And I said to the Form at my side, " Oh, Spirit ! 

 has then this universe no end ? " and the Form answered, 

 and said, " Lo ! it has no beginning." 



Suddenly, however, the heavens above us appeared to 

 be emptied, and not a star was seen to twinkle in the 

 mighty abyss ; no gleam of light to break the unity of the 

 infinite darkness. The starry hosts behind us had all con- 

 tracted into an obscure nebula; and, at length, tliat also 

 had vanished. And I thought to myself, " At last the 

 universe has ended," and I trembled at the thought of the 

 illimitable dungeon of pure, pure darkness which here began 

 to imprison the creation ; I shuddered at the dead sea of 

 nothing, in whose unfathomable zone of blackness the jewel 

 of the glittering universe seemed to be set and buried for 

 ever ; and through the night in which we moved I saw the 

 Form which still lightened as before, but left all ai'ound it 

 tmilluminated. Then the Form said to me in my anguish 

 — " Oh ! creature of little faith ! Look up ! the most 

 ancient light is coming ! " I looked, and in a moment 

 came a twilight — in the twinkling of an eye a galaxy — 

 and then with a choral burst rushed in all the company of 

 stars. For centuries gr(^y with age, for millennia hoary 

 with antiquity, had the starry light been on its road to us ; 

 and, at length, out of heights inaccessible to thought, it 

 had reached us. Now, then, as through some renovated 

 century, we flew through new cycles of heavens. At length 

 again came a starless interval ; and far longer it endured, 

 before the beams of a starry host again had reached us. 



As we thus advanced for ever through an interchange of 

 nights and solar heavens, and as the inter\al gro^w still 

 longer and long(!r before the last heaven we had quitted 

 contracted to a point, all at once we issued suddenly from 

 the middle of thickest night into an aurora borealis, the 

 herald of an expiring world, and we found throughout this 

 cycle of solar systems that a day of judgment had indeed 

 arrived. The suns liad sickened, and the planets were 

 heaving, rocking, yawning in convulsions. The sub- 



terraneous waters of the great deeps were breaking 

 up, and lightnings that were ten diameters of a 

 world in length ran along, from east to west, from Zenith 

 to Nadir ; and here and there, where a sun should have 

 been, we saw instead, through the misty vapour, a gloomy, 

 ashen, leaden corpse of a solar body that sucked in flames 

 from the perishing world, but gave out neither light nor 

 heat ; and as I saw, through a vista that had no end, 

 mountain towering above mountain, and piled up with 

 what seemed glittering snow from the conflict of solar 

 planetary bodies ; then my spirit bent under the load of 

 the universe, and I said to the Form, " Rest, re.st, and lead 

 me no farther ; I am too solitary in the creation itself, and 

 in its deserts yet more so ; the full world is great, but the 

 empty world is greater, and with the universe increase its 

 Zaarahs." 



Then the Form touched me like the flowing of a breath, 

 and spoke more gently than before : " In the presence of 

 God there is no emptiness ; above, below, between, and 

 round about the stars, in the darkness and in the light, 

 dwelleth the true and very Universe, the sum and founda- 

 tion of all that is. But thy spirit can bear only earthlj- 

 images of the unearthly ; now, then, I cleanse thy sight with 

 euphrasy; look forth, and behold the images." Immediately 

 my eyes were opened, and I looked, and I saw, as it were, 

 an interminable sea of light — sea immeasurable, sea un- 

 fathomable, sea without a shore. All spaces V)etween all 

 heavens were filled with happiest light ; and there was a 

 thundering of floods ; and there were seas above the 

 seas, and seas below the seas ; and I saw all the 

 trackless regions that we had voyaged over ; and 

 my eye comprehended the farthest and the nearest ; 

 and darkness had become light, and the light darkness ; 

 for the deserts and wastes of the creation were now tilled 

 with the sea of light, and in this sea the suns floated like 

 ash-grey blossoms, and the planets like black grains of seed. 

 Then my heart comprehended that immortality dwelled in 

 the spaces between the worlds, and death only amongst 

 the worlds. Upon all the suns there walked upright 

 shadows in the form of men ; but they were glorified when 

 they quitted these perishable worlds, and when they sank 

 into the sea of light ; and the murky planets, I perceived, 

 were but cradles for the infant spirits of the universe of 

 light. In the Zaarahs of the creation I saw — I heard — I 

 felt— the glittering — the echoing — the breathing of life and 

 creative power. The suns were but as spinning-wheels, 

 the planets no more than weavers' shuttles, in relation to 

 the infinite web which composes the veil of Isis [" I am 

 whatsoever is — whatsoever has been — whatsoever shall be ; 

 and the veil which is over my countenance no mortal 

 hand has ever raised "] ; wliich veil is hung over the whole 

 creation, and lengthens as any finite being attempts to 

 raise it. And in sight of this immeasurability of life, no 

 sadness could endure, but only joy that knew no limit, and 

 happy prayers. 



But in the midst of this great vision of the universe the 

 Form that lightened eternally had become invisible, or Iiad 

 vanished to its home in the unseen world of spirits. I 

 was left alone in the centre of a universe of life, and I 

 yearned after some sympathising being. Suddenly from 

 the starry deeps there came floating through the ocean of 

 liglit a planetary body, and upon it there stood a woman 

 whose face was as the face of a Madonna, and by her side 

 there stood a Child, whose countenance A-aried not, neither 

 was it nmgnilied as he drew nearer. This chiUl was a 

 King, fori saw that he had a crown upon his head, but the 

 crown was a crown of thorns. Then also I perceived that 

 the planetary body was our unhappy earth, and, as the 

 earth drew near, this Child, who had come forth from the 



