Roll back. * * * *”
This I murmured, and texts of our scriptures, and fragments of anthems. It was as if I brought my earthly tribute to lay on this Marsian shrine.
The gates did roll back, the heavens were broken up, new spiritual heights were shown to me, up which my spirit mounted.
I looked at Severnius. His eyes were closed. His face, lighted as by an inner illumination, and his whole attitude, suggested a “waiting upon God,” that
“Intercourse divine,
Which God permits, ordains, across the line.”
There stole insensibly upon the sound-burdened air, the hallowed perfume of burning incense.
I conjectured, and truly as I afterward learned, that I was in my friend’s private sanctuary. It was his spiritual lavatory, in which he made daily ablutions. A service in which the soul lays aside the forms necessary in public worship and stands unveiled before its God.
It was a rare honor he paid me, in permitting me to accompany him. And he repeated it every morning during my stay in his house, except on one or two occasions. It speedily became almost a necessity to me. You know how it is when you have formed a habit of exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. If you leave it off, you are uncomfortable, you have a feeling that you have cheated your body out of its right. It was so with me, when for any reason I was obliged to forego this higher exercise. I was heavy in spirit, my conscience accused me of a wrong to one of the “selfs” in me,—for we have several selfs, I think.
There was not always music. Sometimes a wonderful voice chanted psalms and praises, and recited poems that troubled the soul’s deepest waters. At first I did not understand the words, of course, but the intonations spoke to me the same as music does. And I felt that I knew what the words expressed.