elves, and they teach mortals by their own
experience. For these radiant creatures are expiating sins of their own
in thus striving to save others--the oftener they succeed the nearer
they approach to Heaven. This is what is vaguely understood on your
earth as purgatory; the sufferings of spirits who love and long for the
presence of their Creator, and who yet are not pure enough to approach
Him. Only by serving and saving others can they obtain at last their
own joy. Every act of ingratitude and forgetfulness and wickedness
committed by a mortal, detains one or another of these patient workers
longer away from Heaven--imagine then what a weary while many of them
have to wait."

I made no answer, and we floated on. Higher and higher--higher and
higher--till at last my guide, whom I knew to be that being whom
Heliobas had called Azul, bade me pause. We were floating close
together in what seemed a sea of translucent light. From this point I
could learn something of the mighty workings of the Universe. I gazed
upon countless solar systems, that like wheels within wheels revolved
with such rapidity that they seemed all one wheel. I saw planets whirl
around and around with breathless swiftness, like glittering balls
flung through the air--burning comets flared fiercely past like torches
of alarm for God's wars against Evil--a marvellous procession of
indescribable wonders sweeping on for ever in circles, grand, huge, and
immeasurable. And as I watched the superb pageant, I was not startled
or confused--I looked upon it as anyone might look on any quiet
landscape scene in what we know of Nature. I scarcely could perceive
the Earth from whence I had come--so tiny a speck was it--nothing but a
mere pin's point in the burning whirl of immensities. I felt, however,
perfectly conscious of a superior force in myself to all these enormous
forces around me--I knew without needing any explanation that I was
formed of an indestructible essence, and that were all these stars and
systems suddenly to end in one fell burst of brilliant horror, I should
still exist--I should know and remember and feel--should be able to
watch the birth of a new Universe, and take my part in its growth and
design.

"Remind me why these wonders exist," I said, turning to my guide, and
speaking in those dulcet sounds which were like music and yet like
speech; "and why amid them all the Earth is believed by its inhabitants
to have merited destruction, and ye