The thought of death, ever ready to present itself to my imagination, now came, with a disheartening weight, such as I had never before felt. I almost fancied myself already in the dark vestibule of the grave,—separated, for ever, from the world above, and with nothing but the blank of an eternal sleep before me. It had often, I knew, happened that the visitants of this mysterious realm were, after their descent [pg 106]from earth, never seen or heard of;—being condemned, for some failure in their initiatory trials, to pine away their lives in the dark dungeons, with which, as well as with altars, this region abounded. Such, I shuddered to think, might probably be my destiny; and so appalling was the thought, that even the spirit of defiance died within me, and I was already giving myself up to helplessness and despair.
At length, after some hours of this gloomy musing, I heard a rustling in the sacred grove behind the statue; and, soon after, the sound of the Priest’s voice—more welcome than I had ever thought such voice could be—brought the assurance that I was not yet, at least, wholly abandoned. Finding his way to me through the gloom, he now led me to the same spot, on which we had parted so many hours before; and, in a voice that retained no trace of displeasure, bespoke my attention, while he should reveal to me some of those divine truths, by whose [pg 107]infusion, he said, into the soul of man, its purification can alone be effected.
The valley had now become so wholly dark, that we could no longer discern each other’s faces, as we sat. There was a melancholy in the voice of my instructor that well accorded with the gloom around us; and, saddened and subdued, I now listened with resignation, if not with interest, to those sublime, but, alas, I thought, vain tenets, which, with the warmth of a believer, this Hierophant expounded to me.
He spoke of the pre-existence of the soul,—of its abode, from all eternity, in a place of bliss, of which all that we have most beautiful in our conceptions here is but a dim transcript, a clouded remembrance. In the blue depths of ether, he said, lay that “Country of the Soul,”—its boundary alone visible in the line of milky light, that separates it, as by a barrier of stars, from the dark earth. “Oh, realm of purity! [pg 108]Home of the yet unfallen Spirit!—where, in the days of her primal innocence, she wandered, ere her beauty was soiled by the touch of earth, or her resplendent wings had withered away. Methinks,” he cried, “I see, at this moment, those fields of radiance,—I look back, through the mists of life, into that luminous world, where the souls that have never lost their high, heavenly rank, still soar, without a stain, above the shadowless stars, and dwell together in infinite perfection and bliss!”
As he spoke these words, a burst of pure, brilliant light, like a sudden opening of heaven, broke through the valley; and, as soon as my eyes were able to endure the splendour, such a vision of loveliness and glory opened upon them, as took even my sceptical spirit by surprise, and made it yield, at once, to the potency of the spell.
Suspended, as I thought, in air, and occupying the whole of the opposite region of the valley, there appeared an immense [pg 109]orb of light, within which, through a haze of radiance, I could see distinctly groups of young female spirits, who, in silent, but harmonious movement, like that of the stars, wound slowly through a variety of fanciful evolutions; and, as they linked and unlinked each other’s arms, formed a living labyrinth of beauty and grace. Though their feet seemed to tread along a field of light, they had also wings, of the richest hue, which, like rainbows over waterfalls, when played with by the breeze, at every moment reflected a new variety of glory.
As I stood, gazing with wonder, the orb, with all its ethereal inmates, gradually receded into the dark void, lessening, as it went, and growing more bright, as it lessened;—till, at length, distant, apparently, as a retiring comet, this little world of Spirits, in one small point of intense radiance, shone its last and vanished. “Go,” exclaimed the rapt Priest, “ye happy souls, of whose dwelling a glimpse is thus [pg 110]given to our eyes, go, wander, in your orb, through the boundless heaven, nor ever let a thought of this perishable world come to mingle its dross with your divine nature, or tempt you to that earthward fall, by which spirits, as bright, have been ruined!”
A pause ensued, during which, still under the influence of wonder, I sent my fancy wandering after the inhabitants of that orb,—almost wishing myself credulous enough to believe in a heaven, of which creatures, so like all that I most loved on earth, were inmates.
At length, the Priest, with a sigh at the contrast he was about to draw, between the happy spirits we had just seen and the fallen ones of earth, resumed his melancholy History of the Soul. Tracing it, from the first moment of earthward desire, to its final eclipse in the shadows of this world, he dwelt upon every stage of its darkening descent, with a pathos that sent sadness into the very depths of the heart. The first downward look of the Spirit to[pg 111]wards earth—the tremble of her wings on the edge of Heaven—the giddy slide, at length, down that fatal descent, and the Lethæan cup, midway in the sky, of which when she has once tasted, Heaven is forgot,—through all these gradations he mournfully traced her fall, to the last stage of darkness, when, wholly immersed in this world, her celestial nature is changed, she can no longer rise above earth, nor remembers her home, but by glimpses so vague, that, mistaking for hope what is only memory, she believes them to be a light from the Future, not the Past.
“To retrieve this ruin of the once blessed Soul—to clear away, from around her, the clouds of earth, and, restoring her lost wings[5], facilitate their return to Heaven—such,” said the reverend man, “is the great task of our religion, and such the triumph of those divine Mysteries, in [pg 112]which the life and essence of our religion lie. However sunk and changed and clouded may be the Spirit, as long as a single trace of her original light remains, there is yet hope that——”