“The Good Spirit is here. I heard Him above the wind and storm. I saw Him when He took me to the seventh-heaven where I did see more than I do now. But He is here!—the thunderings and lightnings were the noise of His horn (trumpet), and the light of His Countenance?—the dust you saw was the mountain smoking under Him.”
The people trembled with dread of what their Seer had seen.
“I saw the Evil Spirits driven before Him, as the torrent drives the wild beasts from the forest; and when He made a scourge of small cords He drove them from his Temple as sheep and oxen are driven. Some had disguised themselves as those who sold doves—they fled at His approach. Deceivers offered Him money, to tempt—He overthrew their tables, tore their shams (hypocrisy) to shreds, and banished them from His sight. And they cried: Peace! peace! and there was no peace.”
The populace thought of demons let loose, and of a “hell upon earth.” The Seer instantly thrust home his vivid thoughts:
“You, yourselves, saw how He cleared the sky! You, yourselves, know how His rains and storms cleaned out the dirt and sickness. You saw it! You saw it yourselves! You sent up the sweet odor! You made the sacrifice! See how you were answered, your prayers answered.”
And a great shout went up: “We did! We saw it! a miracle! when the sun shone again.”
And then the Seer closed with a statement so terrible, that none in reason, among them, could doubt the truth depicted:
“These are they—these evil ones—who fell into deserted graves; graves that men walk over them and are not aware of them.”
The hearers shivered with abhorrence—the direful thought! deserted graves! terrible consequence of disrespect to ancestors, frightful neglect of ancestral veneration, abhorrent disrespect to that source from which they had received their being, as the Great Good Spirit had granted them life.
Thus ended the Seer’s message, and his own application of it. Such was the imagery he used, such the emotion he endeavored to portray and to excite. And yet, with all his flights, from the Divine Message to the human application, this Primitive Primate of Nature’s Cathedral had been profound. He had touched upon the three great facts in things as they are, and reasonably shall be: