“God! God only!” The heavens changed from gold to crimson—anon to shining blue, ... and against this mass of wavering colour that seemed to make a jewelled archway of the sky, I saw the Form of him whom I had known as man, swiftly ascend god-like, with flaming pinions and upturned glorious visage, like a vision of light in darkness! Around him [p 475] clustered a million winged shapes,—but He, supreme, majestic, wonderful, towered high above them all, a very king of splendour, the glory round his brows resembling meteor-fires in an Arctic midnight,—his eyes, twin stars, ablaze with such great rapture as seemed half agony! Breathless and giddy, I strained my sight to follow him as he fled; ... and heard the musical calling of strange sweet voices everywhere, from east to west, from north to south.

“Lucifer! ... Belovëd and unforgotten! Lucifer, Son of the morning! Arise! ... arise! ...”

With all my remaining strength I strove to watch the vanishing upward of that sublime Luminance that now filled the visible universe,—the demon-ship was still sinking steadily, ... invisible hands still held me down, ... I was falling,—falling,—into unimaginable depths, ... when another Voice, till then unheard, solemn yet sweet, spoke aloud—

“Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outermost darkness of the world! There let him find My Light!”

I heard,—yet felt no fear.

“God only!” I said, as I sank into the vast profound,—and lo! while the words yet trembled on my lips, I saw the sun! The sweet earth’s sun!—the kindly orb familiar,—the lamp of God’s protection,—its golden rim came glittering upwards in the east,—higher and higher it rose, making a shining background for that mighty Figure, whose darkly luminous wings now seemed like sable storm-clouds stretched wide across the horizon! Once more ... yet once, ... the Angel-visage bent its warning looks on me, ... I saw the anguished smile, ... the great eyes burning with immortal sorrows! ... then, I was plunged forcibly downwards and thrust into an abysmal grave of frozen cold.

[p 476]
XLII

The blue sea—the blue sky!—and God’s sunshine over all! To this I woke, after a long period of unconsciousness, and found myself afloat on a wide ocean, fast bound to a wooden spar. So strongly knotted were my bonds that I could not stir either hand or foot, ... and after one or two ineffectual struggles to move I gave up the attempt, and lay submissively resigned to my fate, face upturned and gazing at the infinite azure depths above me, while the heaving breath of the sea rocked me gently to and fro like an infant in its mother’s arms. Alone with God and Nature, I, a poor human wreck, drifted,——lost, yet found! Lost on this vast sea which soon should serve my body as a sepulchre, ... but found, inasmuch as I was fully conscious of the existence and awakening of the Immortal Soul within me,—that divine, actual and imperishable essence, which now I recognised as being all that is valuable in a man in the sight of his Creator. I was to die, soon and surely;—this I thought, as the billows swayed me in their huge cradle, running in foamy ripples across my bound body, and dashing cool spray upon my brows,—what could I do now, doomed and helpless as I was, to retrieve my wasted past? Nothing! save repent,—and could repentance at so late an hour fit the laws of eternal justice? Humbly and sorrowfully I considered, ... to me had been given a terrific and unprecedented experience of the awful Reality of the Spirit-world around us,—and now I was cast out on the sea as a thing worthless, I felt that the brief [p 477] time remaining to me of life in this present sphere was indeed my “last probation,” as that Supernatural Wonder, the declared Enemy of mankind, whom still in my thoughts I called Lucio, had declared.

“If I dared,—after a life’s denial and blasphemy,—turn to Christ!” I said—“Would He,—the Divine Brother and Friend of man,—reject me?”