“There is a sort of rite here, come down to us from old times. We didn’t make it—it was given to us. When one of us has won the great victory, a halo appears over his head. It is the sign that he has entered into himself, and nothing can harm him afterward; and all nature is open to him and serves him.”
“The great victory? Over what? Let me try! I ask no better!”
“No evil can prevail over one who has overcome the ally of evil in himself,” said Lamara. “Dear Jack, no one, of himself, can really do anything. We see paradise before us, but we are kept from it by a wall, and we say we are shut out by some higher power. But the wall is ourselves, and we built it and placed it there. And not even the Spirit Himself, but only we ourselves, who raised it, can level it again and enter the divine garden.”
“But you said we, of ourselves, can do nothing.”
“Yes, and that is the truth! And yet it is the truth that we can do this, and when it is done we need do no more. All else is given to us freely.”
Jack gazed perplexedly at her.
“If you look at the sun, you will see darkness; but it is light,” she continued.
He shook his head despondently. “It’s too deep for me!”
“There is nothing else deeper,” she answered. “You know there is one God, and that He is life; and yet you see what you call life all round us—in these flowers and birds and the very earth, and in yourself; but if life be God, how can these things be alive, unless they are God? And you know they are not!”
“Can you tell me how?” he asked.