ld, were restored for a
season, and then retaken. Thus is my sorrow repeated without end. All
things are taken from me. Night treads upon the heels of Day, the
desolation of Winter wastes the fair fruit of Summer, and Death walks in
the ways of Life with inexorable claims. But at the last, through Him,
my First-begotten and my Best-beloved, who also died and descended into
Hades, and the third day rose again,--through Him, having ceased from
wandering, I shall triumph in Infinite Joy!"

_That_, reader, is not so difficult to translate into human language.
Thus, from the beginning to the end of the world, do these Mysteries,
under various names, shadow forth the great problem of human life, which
problem, as being fundamental, must be religious, the same that is
shadowed forth in Nature and Revelation, namely: man's sin, and his
redemption from sin,--his great loss, his infinite error, and his final
salvation.

Sorrow, so strong a sense of which pervaded these Mysteries that it was
the name (Achtheia) by which Demeter was known to her mystic
worshippers,--_human_ sorrow it was which veiled the eyelids; toward
which veiling (or _muesis_) the lotus about the head of Isis and the
poppy in the hand of Demeter distinctly point. Hence the _mystae_, whom
the reader must suppose to have closed their eyes to all without
them,--even to Nature, except as in sympathy she mirrors forth the
central sorrow of their hearts. But this same sorrow and its mighty
work, veiled from all mortal vision, shut out by very necessity from any
sympathy save that of God, is a preparation for a purer vision,--a
second initiation, in which the eyes shall be reopened and the _mystae_
become _epoptae_; and of such significance was this higher vision to the
Greek, that it was a synonyme for the highest earthly happiness and a
foretaste of Elysium.

As this vision of the _epoptae_ was the vision of real faith, so the
_muesis_, or veiling of the _mystae_, was no mere affectation of
mysticism. Not so easily could be set aside this weight of sorrow upon
the eyelids, which, notwithstanding that, leading to self, it leads to
wandering, leads also through Divine aid to that peace which passeth
all understanding. Thus were the Hebrews led out of Egyptian bondage
through wanderings in the Wilderness to the Promised Land. Even thus,
through rites and ceremonies which to us are hieroglyphics hard to be
deciphered, which are known only as shrouded in infinite sorr