“The first souls that came to heaven capable of bearing life-forming seeds had undergone this pre-experience. They were few, very few, as you will understand, and not often those which the world would think would arrive there. They were the weak and helpless, the suffering and the patient, who had learnt from the past and present to stand what others could never tamely undergo. They needed above all the spirit of endurance, and all these things are wonderfully well learnt in hell—they are remembered even when forgotten, in the hour of need. My wife Ursula was one these. A noble spirit with great faults tamed in hell and sent again on to earth to suffer in the hour of need. She was one of our first children. I remember the great rejoicing when she was born, and how all gathered round to see a result which all had striven for from time scarce countable. And as I stooped to kiss the baby fingers I felt them clasp unconsciously around my own, and ever afterwards I stood by her through the great weakness and the after-strength that ends the long journey.
“But our progress on the earth was very slow. We had no bribes to offer, nothing to give but a purity and simplicity they could not understand. For, as you know, the earth is tawdry and gaudy, and the devils who tempted it understood its littleness and mediocrity well. And here you will understand that those tempting devils are not the great powers of Evil. I do not know that those great powers have ever once put temptation in the way of man. They punish and give pain, but for the rest, knowing well man’s nature, they leave things to his weakness and ignorance and the slave spirits that work to ruin him for their own ends. And man, left to himself, understands the powers of Evil no better than those of Good. By a remarkably whimsical reasoning, which is his chief characteristic, he put Evil one lower than Good, because somehow, by a very muddled yet ironically truthful process, he has come blindly to understand that Good will help and Evil hinder him. And as, with natural conceit, he imagined all things were made for him to pick and choose, he lauded his benefactor, and spoke of the Rival Power as inferior, and grovelling under a fairly long and loose chain of thraldom. But God is God, whether of Evil or of Good—like action and re-action—equal and opposite.
“I have said that we had nothing to offer humanity. The world did not belong to us, and therefore no pleasure nor greatness that it could give could come from us. But nobility and purity and strength of character had grown up even in this poor soil, as I have shown.
“And then at last the greatest riddle of all was solved—the riddle of human nature. You will perhaps think it was a ridiculously long time to have spent upon so simple a thing. The length of time and the simplicity are equal. We discovered if we were to act with humanity we must suffer with it, feel with it, be of it—in fact, take its nature upon ourselves. It was, or seemed to be, a step of utter humiliation and shame. I remember the time when the discovery was made—the silence that came after it. Before, we had always felt a certain amount of joy and triumph, but now that had gone. But because we had given the word of God to uplift humanity, it could not be broken, nor would we have wished to if we could. We wished to save and raise the many, not the few; and the word ‘impossible’ was unknown to us. The powers of Evil laughed, as well they might. This was the most exquisite jest of all. If we would drag humanity up to us we must first descend to it, not in condescension and superiority but in equality—not even that. But there could be no dallying nor shirking by delay. Our plan was now to see how the great work could be accomplished. It must be done secretly, the introduction of pure light and Godhead on to earth, or otherwise it would meet with ineffectual defeat, and the chance once lost would pass for ever. About this time there was born to me a daughter. She was our first-born child, and it seemed to my fond eyes I had never yet beheld anything so fair and lovely. I used to watch her as she played about the house, and she it was who drew me nearer to the earth—since she had sprung from it by much trial and tribulation.
“But as she grew the question grew, How to descend unknown to touch the nature of humanity.
“Then each spirit of heaven brought some pure essence of his own body, and the whole was compressed to a seed so small as to be near invisible. And it was this one seed that, coming from us and returning to us, made us at one, or seemingly at one, with man.
“The greatest of our sages then were gathered to see how this fine seed could be translated to the earth effectively and secretly, for its presence was traceable but to the blind. At last Michael counselled thus:—
“‘If we send it by one who is as innocent of its presence as of sin or harm we may expect success. None act so well as those free from all taint of deception and pre-arranged thought.’
“And the lot fell upon my daughter.
“She was but a tender spirit, not half formed in strength—never having taken the long journey that completes and perfects the strength to that of highest God. She had nothing but her own sweet graces and winning perfection of beauty; not a fit thing to be left alone in any place of danger. Moreover, she had had no experience of anything beyond our home, and all her days had been spent in singing about the house, and working, and studying such things as were suitable to her age and understanding.