Papers from Overlook-House

by Frederic W. Beasley

Thus far had his discipline proceeded. The dreams had given activity to the mind. They had bent the spirit of the man in glad submission to a yoke of obedience; and in this submission to all that was pure, he found how the great service was perfect freedom. Holy truths, which had never been great realities, but certainties that were among his deepest convictions, many of them like seeds still capable of life, but floating on the sea in masses of ice, perhaps to be dropped on some island forming in the deep, and there to germinate, now began to be living truth, and to struggle with the soul that it might live. He bowed before the august presence,—now that the great veil that had concealed the kingly visitants was torn away. Now they were not like the magnetic power, affecting dubiously, and without a steady control, the needle of the seaman as he drew near to the coast. They had become the all-pervading power in the needle itself, affecting each particle, and turning all in attraction towards the one star, that is before every bark freighted with the precious trusts, which he now felt to be so grand a responsibility. Are not these sealed with a seal that no enemy can cause to be forged or broken?

A slight change in his dream, and the temptations began to reappear, crowding as the gay tares wind among the eddying wheat heads, and are tossed by the wind and arrest the eye. There was a sense of slight fear and doubt.

Then was he borne onward, and placed on the green sward beneath great overhanging rocks. Their awful majesty was tempered by the endless vines, laden with fruits and flowers that crept along their sides, and waved, as crowns upon their summits.

A lake spread its waters before him. As he looked far off upon its unruffled surface, he saw clouds, now dark, now radiant, floating rapidly in the sky. The wind that impelled them came in great gushes of its power, as their changing shapes, and rapid motion gave full evidence. And when the winds thus swept on, they gave not the slightest ripple to the great blue expanse of the waters. Yet they were no dead sea, but pure and living, from streams on innumerable fertile hill-sides, whose threads of fountain-issues glittered in the sun.

And the great shadows that fell from these floating masses in the air, did not reach to the surface of the lake. They wasted themselves between the clouds and the atmosphere of tranquil light, that rested on the placid, sky-like depths of the blue expanse.

Even at his very feet, these waters seemed in depth ocean-like. His eye was never weary as he gazed into their abyss, and the sight never appeared to have looked down into them, and to have found the limit of its power to penetrate their immeasurable profundity.

Great peace again took possession of his mind! Then he felt the mysterious hand upon him, and he was lifted up from the borders of this lake, for other scenes. He could not but feel regret. He was however convinced, that any new prospect opened before him, would be one that he might earnestly desire to look upon.

The motion of the wings of the angel, as he transported him through the air, was as silent as the calm of the great lake.

They entered into a cave, so vast, that its roofs and sides were at such distance from them, that no object could be distinguished in the evening twilight. But soon he saw before him a high archway, lofty as the summit of the highest mountain, by which they were to emerge into the light. They passed it, and found that it opened into a deep valley.

A plain was here the prospect, and near to him the side of a precipitous hill. It had great sepulchral inscriptions on the surface of the rocks. There was a slight earthquake. Its power caused the sides of the hill to tremble, and revealed the bones of men buried in the sands and crevices.