“Who?” I exclaimed, eagerly.
“Your father!”
I looked in the direction indicated by the angel’s face. Out of the darkness—which appeared to me and not to the angels, for it proceeded from my own mind and not from theirs—out of the darkness slowly loomed up a human figure. It brightened as it advanced. Then there stood before me a young man of radiant beauty, clad in a tissue of shining purple. His face was full of eager expectation, sparkling with love and joy.
While I was gazing at this form, which seemed to me a beautiful apparition, the other angels disappeared.
“My son! my son!” exclaimed the shining visitor in a voice of touching sweetness, and which seemed in some way remotely familiar. “Do you not know me?”
I was silent and troubled, for there was not the faintest [pg 176]resemblance between the splendid being who stood before me and the poor father I had buried in the wilderness.
“I am permitted for your sake,” said he, “to return back into the mental states of my earth-life and to resume its forms. This is one of the wonders of the spiritual world, but one which you will frequently see and soon understand. Look steadfastly at the changes I shall undergo, and you will believe.”
The light about him began to fade. The purple tissue darkened; his face grew pale; the lustre passed from his hair. His features gradually changed, becoming less and less beautiful, less and less youthful. Wrinkles appeared; his cheeks became haggard; his eyes sunken and sad; his head bowed and bare; his beard gray. Unsightly scars came upon his forehead; and when he held up his withered hands, from which two or three fingers had dropped, I knew the poor old leper whom the cruel law had driven into the wilderness.
“My father! my father!” I exclaimed, weeping at the sight which recalled so vividly the sorrows long buried in the soul, “I am satisfied. Return again into the beauty and glory of your heavenly youth. Let us forget the past. Let me see you as you are!”
His figure then underwent exactly the reverse series of changes; and when his angelic form was restored, I fell upon his neck and wept tears of joy.