blinding
clouds and trailing mists of chaos, in whose palpable gloom all memories
are obliterated. Naked, trembling, and human, they arrived upon the
shifting sands of the world of Time and Death.

A vague, shadowy sense, like a forgotten dream which we struggle vainly
to recall, often flitted through their clay-clogged souls, of a
strangely glorious life in some higher sphere; but all attempts to give
definite form to such bewildering visions ended but in fantastic
reveries of mystic possibilities or dim yearnings of unseen glories.
They found the Book of Life, but they remembered not that the Father had
told them the Word was His.

For the thread of _Identity_, on which are strung the pearls of
_Memory_, in the passage through chaos had snapped in twain!

* * * * *

Like the silver light through the storm clouds flitting over the fair
face of the moon, gleam the antenatal splendors through the gloom of the
earth life.

As Anselm wonderingly turned the pages of the Book of Life, strange
memories awoke within him. So inextricably were the dreams of his past
woven with the burning visions of the Prophets, that the darkness of
Revelation, like the heaven vault at midnight, was illumined by the
light of distant worlds; his own vague reminiscences supplying the inner
sense of the inspired but mystic leaves. What wonder that he loved the
Book, when in its descriptions of the life to _come_, he felt the
history of the life already _past_; and through its sternest
threatenings, like the rainbow girdling storm clouds, shone the promise
of a blessed future!

He spent the hours of exile in a constant effort to commune with the
Father; in humble prayer and supplication for strength to resist the
power of sin. For he feared the Evil which lurked in the land. He
examined the springs of his own actions, analyzed his motives, and
tortured himself lest any of the evils denounced in the Book should lurk
in the folds of his own soul. In contemplating the awful justice of the
Father, he sometimes forgot that He is Love. He feared close commune
with the children of the earth, for Evil dwelt among them; he looked not
into the winecup, nor danced with the maidens under the caressing
tendrils of the vine or the luxuriant branches of the myrtle--nay, the
rose cheek of the maiden was a terror to him, for lo! Evil might lurk
under its brilliant bloom. The Dread of Evil sapped the Joy of Life!

He turned fr