ADIEU
To-day there are many, an ever-swelling number, who behold with joy the gates ajar, who standing in the twilight catch momentary glimpses of dawn upon the horizon of time, who know by personal experience that they have come into touch with a region where vast schemes are conceived, and universal laws of boundless magnitude connected with the soul's eternal pilgrimage are carried out.
Again, there are others, timid, shrinking souls to whom, by a mere chance combination of circumstances, a glimpse has been shown which is none too welcome. Such affrighted ones drop the eyelids from the startling vision. They will have none of it, and they are free to accept or reject, go on, or stand still.
Others, again, have actually been born with that super-normal sight which can discern the workings behind the drop scene shrouding the stupendous drama of cosmic government.
I have long been conscious that the veil has worn very thin between myself and another world lying around me. As the years draw swiftly on, and every second thrown back into eternity brings me nearer to blessed deliverance I find the rents in the veil grow more numerous. They bring single shining moments, which reveal the spirit of life, its motives and consecration.
Through the driving storm wrack there will come quite suddenly a brilliant heavenly glimpse. It never lasts long, but long enough to show me reality. Something of the vastness of cosmos and the pathetic minuteness of this earth, just a speck of star dust in the palm of God, an atom of world stuff swinging in boundless space.
Something of the reality of those shining ones who guide the progression of natural order, embodiments of resistless energy and of stateliest imperial mien.
Glimpses that show to me what was in the mind of the great Christian Mystic when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire."
Behind such visions extend vast ranges of being, quite outside my ken, yet, nevertheless, speaking to me of things, for the expression of which no words have yet been coined. Infinitely greater than anything that can be said. Significant in meaning beyond expression, and far transcending imagination.
Such glimpses show to me lives that as compared with ours, are as ours to the tiniest insect afloat for an hour on the breath of the south wind. Lives which ordain the fateful hour when the rise and fall of empires, the destruction of nations, and the clash of worlds, and their cosmic significance in world history shall begin or end. Where things life promised but never gave come to full fruition.