ieved in a future state which should be as
perfect as their present one was imperfect; and the chief aim and
object of all their labours was to become worthy of attaining that
final grand result--Eternal Happiness and Peace.

"Readest thou the lesson in these glowing spheres, teeming with life
and learning?" murmured Azul to me, as we soared swiftly on together.
"Know that not one smallest world in all the myriad systems circling
before thee, holds a single human creature who doubts his Maker. Not
one! except thine own doomed star! Behold it yonder--sparkling feebly,
like a faint flame amid sunshine--how poor a speck it is--how like a
scarcely visible point in all the brilliancy of the ever-revolving
wheel of Life! Yet there dwell the dwarfs of clay--the men and women
who pretend to love while they secretly hate and despise one another.
There, wealth is a god, and the greed of gain a virtue. There, genius
starves, and heroism dies unrewarded. There, faith is martyred, and
unbelief elected sovereign monarch of the people. There, the sublime,
unreachable mysteries of the Universe are haggled over by poor finite
minds who cannot call their lives their own. There, nation wars against
nation, creed against creed, soul against soul. Alas, fated planet! how
soon shalt thou be extinct, and thy place shall know thee no more!"

I gazed earnestly at my radiant guide. "If that is true," I said, "why
then should we have a legend that God, in the person of one called
Christ, came to die for so miserable and mean a race of beings?"

Azul answered not, but turned her luminous eyes upon me with a sort of
wide dazzling wonder. Some strange impelling force bore me onward, and
before I could realize it I was alone. Alone, in a vast area of light
through which I floated, serene and conscious of power. A sound falling
from a great height reached me; it was first like a grand organ-chord,
and then like a voice, trumpet-clear and far-echoing.

"Spirit that searchest for the Unseen," it said, "because I will not
that no atom of true worth should perish, unto thee shall be given a
vision--unto thee shall be taught a lesson thou dreamest not of. THOU
shalt create; THOU shalt design and plan; THOU shalt be worshipped, and
THOU shalt destroy! Rest therefore in the light and behold the things
that are in the light, for the tune cometh when all that seemeth clear
and visible now shall be but darkness. And they that love me not shall
have no place