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- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z
- extracted_by
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- 12285
- text
- for Mardi’s grosser air. But that which caused my flesh to faint, was
new vitality to my soul. My eyes swept over all before me. The spheres
were plain as villages that dot a landscape. I saw most beauteous
forms, yet like our own. Strange sounds I heard of gladness that seemed
mixed with sadness:—a low, sweet harmony of both. Else, I know not how
to phrase what never man but me e’er heard.
“‘In these blest souls are blent,’ my guide discoursed, ‘far higher
thoughts, and sweeter plaints than thine. Rude joy were discord here.
And as a sudden shout in thy hushed mountain-passes brings down the
awful avalanche; so one note of laughter here, might start some white
and silent world.’
“Then low I murmured:—‘Is their’s, oh guide! no happiness supreme?
their state still mixed? Sigh these yet to know? Can these sin?’
“Then I heard:—‘No mind but Oro’s can know all; no mind that knows not
all can be content; content alone approximates to happiness. Holiness
comes by wisdom; and it is because great Oro is supremely wise, that
He’s supremely holy. But as perfect wisdom can be only Oro’s; so,
perfect holiness is his alone. And whoso is otherwise than perfect in
his holiness, is liable to sin.
“‘And though death gave these beings knowledge, it also opened other
mysteries, which they pant to know, and yet may learn. And still they
fear the thing of evil; though for them, ’tis hard to fall. Thus hoping
and thus fearing, then, their’s is no state complete. And since Oro is
past finding out, and mysteries ever open into mysteries beyond; so,
though these beings will for aye progress in wisdom and in good; yet,
will they never gain a fixed beatitude. Know, then, oh mortal Mardian!
that when translated hither, thou wilt but put off lowly temporal
pinings, for angel and eternal aspirations. Start not: thy human joy
hath here no place: no name.
“Still, I mournful mused; then said:—‘Many Mardians live, who have no
aptitude for Mardian lives of thought: how then endure more earnest,
everlasting, meditations?’
“‘Such have their place,’ I heard.
“‘Then low I moaned, ‘And what, oh! guide! of those who, living
thoughtless lives of sin, die unregenerate; no service done to Oro or
to Mardian?’
“‘They, too, have their place,’ I heard; ‘but ’tis not here. And
Mardian! know, that as your Mardian lives are long preserved through
strict obedience to the organic law, so are your spiritual lives
prolonged by fast keeping of the law of mind. Sin is death.’
“‘Ah, then,’ yet lower moan made I; ‘and why create the germs that sin
and suffer, but to perish?’
“‘That,’ breathed my guide; ‘is the last mystery which underlieth all
the rest. Archangel may not fathom it; that makes of Oro the
everlasting mystery he is; that to divulge, were to make equal to
himself in knowledge all the souls that are; that mystery Oro guards;
and none but him may know.’
“Alas! were it recalled, no words have I to tell of all that now my
guide discoursed, concerning things unsearchable to us. My sixth sense
which he opened, sleeps again, with all the wisdom that it gained.
“Time passed; it seemed a moment, might have been an age; when from
high in the golden haze that canopied this heaven, another angel came;
its vans like East and West; a sunrise one, sunset the other. As
silver-fish in vases, so, in his azure eyes swam tears unshed.
“Quick my guide close nested me; through its veins the waning light
throbbed hard.
“‘Oh, spirit! archangel! god! whate’er thou art,’ it breathed; ‘leave
me: I am but blessed, not glorified.’
“So saying, as down from doves, from its wings dropped sounds. Still
nesting me, it crouched its plumes.
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