Miss Church-Member trembled at this announcement and urged Mr. World to conduct her to the base of the tower that they might visit other parts of the city.
As I was looking at all these things, a flash of light, coming from one side, blinded my vision, and as I turned I saw a heavenly messenger in a blaze of glory.
“Hither, hither!” beckoned the sweet-faced angel.
I was instantly at his side without effort, except an act of volition. He transported me almost instantaneously to the apex of the great tower in the Wizard City.
There I stood without fear under the sweet charms of my angel guide who floated gently about me in the air.
“O mortal man,” calmly spoke the angel, “thou shalt now be privileged, for a brief space of time, to gaze upon this Wizard City as angels do. Thy memory shall be strengthened so that thou shalt not forget the vision of these carnal things.”
Then, in a manner surpassing all things human, scales fell from my eyes, and I was struck with horror at the awful sight that lay before me.
“Look thou first into the interior of this tower,” bade the angel, as he pointed downward. All things were open to my view, and I saw many of the bright geniuses of the world in league with the imps of darkness, all busily engaged in the secret service of Satan.
I saw how Satan used the ingenuity of man to carry forward his infamous schemes. Instead of the old rifles used in the earlier days of Christianity I saw in this tower almost numberless kinds of fatal weapons which send forth their poisonous and deadly discharges without smoke or sound, so that the wounded, not knowing whence the missiles come, might imagine that they were smitten of God.
The angel informed me that every year this fiendish tower puts out into the hands of its agents many new devices, either for poisoning or wounding the disciples who travel on the King’s Highway, and who by any kind of negligence come within reach of Satan’s forces.