With green and strangely motionless eyes kept steadily on the clouds, Iamblicus murmured, as if speaking to himself:
"Yes, we have all forgotten the voice of God. Like children estranged from the cradle from the face of their father, we hear Him, and we do not recognise Him. To hear His voice, every earthly cry in our souls must cease. Just so long as reason shines and illumines our souls, we remain imprisoned in ourselves and see not God. But when reason is put by, ecstacy falls upon us like the dew of night—that ecstacy which the evil cannot know. The wise, the good alone can become, of their own will, lyres vibrating under the hand of God. Whence comes that beam which falls into the soul? I do not know. It comes unawares, and when one least expects it. To search for it is useless. God is not remote from us. One must make ready, with a soul becalmed; and simply wait, as the eyes await (according to the saying of the poet) the rush of the sun from dark ocean. God does not come, God does not go away; He is revealed. He is, what the universe is not, the negation of everything that exists. He is nothing, and He is All."
Iamblicus rose and slowly extended his wasted arms:
"Be still, be still, I tell you! Let all things listen for Him! He is here! Let the earth and the sea, let even the sky be dumb! Listen!... It is He who fills the universe, the very atoms sing with His breath; He who illumines matter and chaos—at which the gods tremble—just as the setting sun illumines that dark cloud."
Julian listened. It seemed to him that the master's calm weak voice was filling the world, was reaching the heights of the heaven, and the last confines of the sea. But the boy's sadness was so deep that it escaped from his bosom in an involuntary sigh.
"Father, forgive me if the question is a folly; but if it is thus with the world why go on living? Why this eternal interchange of life and death? Why pain? Why evil? Why the burden of the body? Why doubt? Why this dark thirst for the impossible?"
Iamblicus looked at him with gentleness, and anew passed his hand over Julian's head. He answered:
"Ah, my son, that is the very seat of the mystery! there is no evil, there is no body, there is no universe, if He exists! Think! it is He, or the universe! The body, evil, the universe, all are a mirage, a deception of the living senses. All we have once rested together upon the breast of God in the bosom of invisible light. But there came a time when we beheld from on high matter in its darkness and deadness, and each of us saw in matter its own image, as in a mirror. And the soul mused to itself, 'I can, and I will to, be free! I am like Him! Why not dare to quit Him and contain all in myself?' So the soul, like Narcissus gazing into the brook, fell under the spell of its own image, reflected in its body; and then she fell farther, and desired to fall for ever, to rend herself from God for ever. She cannot do so. The feet of mortal man touch earth, but his stature lifts him through the heavens.
"Upon the Eternal Ladder of births and of death, all souls, all things existing, are ascending and descending, sometimes towards Him, sometimes away from Him, seeking to leave the Father, and never fulfilling their endeavour. Each soul desires to be God. It weeps for the breast of God, has no rest upon earth, and aspires only to return to the Absolute. We must return to Him, and then all things will become God, and God will be in All. Do you imagine that you are alone in regretting Him! Are you not aware that the whole sum of things is yearning for Him? Listen!"
The sun had set. The edges of the flaming clouds had sunk into ashes. The sea had become pale, light, flocculent as the sky; the sky deep and diaphanous as the sea. Upon the road a cart was passing by; a young man and woman were in it—two lovers, perhaps. The woman was singing a melancholy love song. When they had passed all things were plunged into silence again, and became sadder still. With hastened strides, the oriental night swept over the earth. Julian murmured: