Late one evening my door suddenly opened, and Magistus entered the dungeon, followed by Ethopus. The latter bore an immense roll of some kind of cloth under his arm.

Magistus stood contemplating me for several minutes with folded arms and the old diabolical sneer on his face. Ethopus stepped behind him with downcast eyes.

“Now,” he said, slowly, “for the greatest, sweetest revenge which any man in this world has ever enjoyed.

“You have been the bane, the curse, the evil genius of my life. I have always hated you; I know not why, but that it so pleased me. If you had perished in the desert as I designed, all would have been well. Simon would have procured the body of Mary, and we should have been gods in power and glory and pleasure. If you had not escaped my dungeon in Bethany, I would not be at this moment an exile and an outcast. You have eluded me twice. You are cunning. You have eluded the grave itself; but now, my amiable nephew, your time has really come.

“I respect my family too much, I respect your own distinguished merits too much, to doom you to any common ignoble death. Your friend Helena and I have put our brains together to devise something for your especial honor. We have achieved it. It is striking, original, charming. Listen.

“Our plan could not be carried out without absolute power. I have it. Do you see this diamond ring with this great seal upon it? That is the ring of the Roman governor. He who presents it to any officer, soldier, jailer, servant of the government, is to pass untouched, unquestioned. His word is law. When he speaks, it is obedience or death. This absolute power is given me for this whole evening by virtue of the ring.

“Helena obtained this favor from Lelius. Who but she could have done it? Who can say how she did it? Ah! she is deep; she is cunning; she is irresistible.

“Now see what we intend to do. This cloth is a stiff heavy woollen, thoroughly saturated with bituminous substances. We intend to bind your arms down to your side and roll your body tightly up in this cloth, merely leaving out your head. This, when ignited, will burn slowly but brightly, and make a beautiful candle of you.

“But you will fall over, you say. Oh no: a strong iron rod run deep into the ground will pass through the outer layer of the cloth and keep you steady by penetrating in a long, sharp, needle-like point under your chin and through your mouth. Could there be anything more ingenious than that?

“You will be taken out in a cart to the great public square opposite the palace of Simon. There are twelve of you. Christian candles I have named you. You will be stationed immediately opposite our grand portico. Helena and I, arm in arm, will witness your combustion from that point. It is pleasant in a great crowd to know where one’s true love is standing.

“Come,” he continued, turning to Ethopus. “Come, my old jolly, spotted dog of Egypt! get to work. Simon says his last training made a perfect machine of you. Be quick and bind this old friend and master of yours.”

My feelings of horror and of terror during this diabolical monologue, can be better imagined than described. I was dumbfounded. I said nothing. I regarded a speedy death as now inevitable. I looked anxiously at Ethopus, who stoically unrolled the cloth. He took out a strong leather band or girdle. He advanced toward me. He seemed impassive as a stone. I gave myself up in despair.

A moment of awful suspense—and all was changed.

Quick as thought Ethopus turned and dashed Magistus against the wall, throwing the band over his head at the same time. He pulled it down over his chest and buckled it tightly, securing his arms at his side. He drew the signet-ring of Lelius from his finger and threw it to me. Curses and struggles were in vain; for Ethopus seemed strong as a lion and animated with a terrible fury.

In another moment Ethopus hurled him upon his back, and seating himself upon his body, took a knife from his pocket and cut off half his tongue. He then deliberately passed a stout pin through the stump and tied a strong thread behind the pin. He thus stopped the blood which was pouring out of the wretch’s mouth and gurgling in his throat. He was now dumb like Ethopus. He could not betray him. He could not escape him.

This was one of the most horrible scenes I ever witnessed. It had evidently been deliberately planned. I was chained against the wall and could not stir. I called out to Ethopus to stop, not to cut out his tongue, not to roll him up in the cloth, but to leave him bound and gagged until we escaped. He paid no more attention to my entreaties, to my excitement, than if I was not present. He seemed deaf, dumb, blind, insensible to everything except to the one master resolution of his soul.

He wound the body carefully up in the bituminous cloth and secured it with leather thongs. It was a shocking sight. He then removed my bolts and chains and set me free. He led me sternly and forcibly to the door, and we passed out, leaving Magistus to his terrible fate. He had fallen into the very pit that he had dug for me.

There was no one in the hall as we came out. Ethopus took the opposite way from that by which he and Magistus came. We soon met officers and guards. I showed the signet-ring; no questions were asked; and we shortly found ourselves in the street and free. What a release!

We came very near to Simon’s palace. It was brilliantly illuminated. I recognized the figures of Helena and Lelius and Simon and Demetrius promenading with others on the grand portico. The carts or wagons came along with the unhappy victims. There was a great bustle in the crowd. The figures were set up on a green knoll which elevated them above the heads of the people.

One of the Christians sang, with a clear, sweet voice:

The mob hooted and yelled and applauded, each in an uproarious manner.

“Ready,” cried an officer.

The torches were applied; and twelve bright pillars of flame rose in the air. There was wild cheering from the crowd; but I heard a wilder cry from the spectators on the portico of Simon. The cry was:

“Magistus! Magistus!”

His own friends recognized his face and witnessed his death-struggles!

Such was the origin of the Christian candles, a mode of fatal torture afterward adopted on a grand scale by the emperor Nero in his persecution of the disciples at Rome.

Helena! Beautiful, enchanting, detestable woman! From this point our currents of life diverged never again to meet. When I look back, I can scarcely comprehend the causes of the wonderful control she exercised over my spirit. I was young, enthusiastic, and impressible; and the senses, educated first, prolonged their sway over the rational faculties. I have been so long delivered from the bondage of the sensuous life, that I am astonished that I ever found any beauty unallied to goodness, or any fascination in aught but a pure and virtuous love.

Women who are given to luxury and pleasure; who aspire to captivate men by the charms of the senses; who live upon the flattering incense of lovers and admirers; who are cunning, proud, vain, ambitious and contemptuous toward others, are Helenas at heart. Circumstances beyond their control may curb their wills and prevent the outward development of their characters. But the revealing light of the spiritual world will show them to be selfish, sensual and cruel to a dreadful degree; and they become the syrens of hell.

I had no time to philosophize in this manner, when I knew that the friends of Magistus had recognized his face before it was concealed by the fatal flames. A keen and rapid pursuit would immediately follow in every direction. To get out of the city was our first thought, our only safety. If we took the roads to the interior of the country, we could certainly be overtaken. If we struck out eastwardly for the sea-beach, we might pick up some fisherman’s boat and escape to sea. We took the latter course.

We walked rapidly, and were many miles up the coast before midnight. I was fresh and under high excitement, and Ethopus seemed capable of all endurance. I occupied the time in telling him the whole history of his brother Anthony, and in thanking him over and over again for my extraordinary deliverance. The poor, dumb man could only manifest his delight by shaking my hand and patting me on the shoulder, which he repeatedly did.

Several hours more and I was thoroughly fatigued. Just before dawn we lay down under a great tree on the banks of a little stream which was perpetually tripping from the mountains toward the sea, bearing its crystal tokens from the spirit of liberty in the one to the kindred soul in the other.

The morning was bright and balmy. A little silver mist rose softly from the woods, the leaves of which were twinkling with dew. The sea’s surf, which at times is so white and boisterous, rippled gently against the yellow beach. The singing of birds was heard here and there in the branches, and now and then a great shining fish flapped up out of the water. The air was sweet and serene, the sky soft and pure. “This heavenly peace and repose of nature,” said I to myself, “is neither silence nor solitude!”

One of the most beautiful things in the world to me is a little stream of clear water, afar off in the country among the green hills, breaking into sounds and colors over the stones and pebbles in its path. I could sit by the hour on the banks of such a lovely rivulet, looking into its face and listening to its music. It is there, if ever, that the breathings of the spirit world upon the heart endeavor to break forth from the lips in poesy and song.

A sharp cry from Ethopus, who was getting the boat ready, suddenly aroused me from my dream. He pointed down the beach. Before I had put on my robe, I heard the tramp of horses, and in a few moments we were surrounded by a troop of cavalry and taken prisoners. Bound tightly and mounted behind two of the soldiers, we were hurried back to Antioch and cast into separate dungeons.

I lay there for several weeks neglected and alone. I had at least no fear of a visit from Magistus. A visitor, however, at last appeared. It was Demetrius.

“Lazarus,” said he, “I reproach myself for the part I took in decoying you into the house of Simon and betraying you into the hands of Magistus. It was not well done toward a fellow-student of the Platonic philosophy. I have labored to make you amends. I have saved your life, but it was a hard struggle. Ethopus was thrown to the lion. Helena pouted and fumed because you did not share his fate. Lelius was for a long time inflexible. I have gained something for you, although not much. You are condemned for life to the chain-gang of criminals who are compelled to labor on the public works. It is a sad fate, but you are young. Time, the revolutionist, sometimes releases the bound.”

“Where did you get this religious philosophy?”

“From a greater than Plato—from Christ.”

He turned away.

It was thus that the secret pride of my selfhood buoyed me up in the direst adversity, and that my own self-righteousness became the fountain of hope!

Notwithstanding all this, I remained a captive at hard labor for forty years of my manhood! As long as the children of Israel were in the wilderness, so long was I in the convict prison of Antioch! Terrible thought!

When I emerged from my prison-grave into the world and the Church again, I was old and feeble and bronzed and broken, forgotten by all men, a cipher in the sphere of thought and life in which I had expected to occupy so commanding a position.

The wicked and detestable emperors, those monsters of nature, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, had successively governed and cursed the Roman state. The Christian religion had spread into all countries; into Syria and Parthia and Arabia, into Egypt and Abyssinia, into Spain and Gaul and Britain, by the zealous labors and fiery devotion of Paul and Peter and Barnabas and Philip and James and hundreds of lesser lights of the new faith.

All this and thousands of other strange events had occurred without my knowledge, without my participation. The great world moved on without me. I knew as little of it in my prison as a child knows of the sea, who bathes his little feet in the surf that breaks upon the beach at his father’s door.

This great lapse of time, an entire manhood, so devoid of incident, so uninteresting to the general reader, was my real life. All that had happened previously was my childhood. It was in this fearful school of captivity and sorrow and labor and solitude and darkness, that I became a man and a Christian. Looking backward, I am filled with gratitude for the wisdom and goodness of God, which infused such health and blessing into the cup of bitterness which I was compelled to drink.

I passed through three great spiritual eras during my captivity. Life does not consist in external events, but in the revelation of spiritual states. This alone is the true biography.

The first era was one of intense resistance to my fate. My disagreeable surroundings annoyed and irritated me. The unaccustomed labor in the burning sun was almost too great for my strength. I loathed my companions and my keepers. I loathed my tasks. Still greater suffering was occasioned by my losses; the loss of friends and relatives; of books and study; of the delightful society of woman; of all the thousand little things which constitute the comfort and charm of civilized life.

Wounded and bleeding in my self-love and self-respect, my sufferings, physical and mental, seemed to have a destructive effect upon my spiritual nature. Destruction of the old precedes a new order of things. Along with hope, faith also sickened and died. For a long time I consoled myself by recalling my wonderful experiences in the spiritual world. I prayed, and recited to myself the sweet promises of Scripture to those in affliction. But as months and years rolled away, despair overpowered me. I began to doubt the truth of religion, the reliability of my own memory, and even the very existence of God.

So little depth of earth had the good seed found in my heart! I, who thought I loved and believed in Christ; who had seen him in both worlds; who conceived myself ready and able to preach his true doctrine to mankind; thus tried in the fiery furnace of temptation, found myself all dross, thoroughly skeptical and wicked, worse than the ignorant convicts and keepers around me.

What mortal can comprehend the meaning of those mysterious words of the Divine Man on the cross: “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?”

I felt also that God had forsaken me. When the little religious light I had, faded away in my soul, I was taken possession of by demons, male and female. I verily believe that I was, for a while, what the world calls insane. I became proud, and supercilious, and scoffing. I was ambitious as Simon, cruel as Magistus, sensual and abandoned as Helena. Escaped from those wretches in the body, my spirit became the sport and prey of infernal spirits similar to them. I envied the power, the glory, the magic of Simon. At night I dreamed only of bacchanalian orgies in a Grecian heaven, and awoke parched and feverish and excited and maddened, as if some syren-like Helena had kissed me in my sleep.

This wretched state lasted about ten years. It culminated in a great illness; for relief or death had become the alternative. The illness of a convict in prison! Cast upon my pallet of straw, without friends, without nurses, without proper diet or medicine, frequently without water; what days and nights of suffering and anguish did I experience!

It was a long, long sickness. The stage of excitement was accompanied with wild delirium, and my imagination was haunted by fiery figures of infernal spirits.

Then exhaustion came, and forgetfulness. Nature slowly rallied; after that, thought returned, strength and feeling came back. My sisters and Beltrezzor and Jesus loomed up away off, as pleasant pictures or beautiful dreams. Many sweet little scenes of my happy childhood revisited me in charming memories. I lay for hours in peaceful trances. I had consoling visions. The poor convict’s cell was illumined with a glory not its own.

One night I saw the house that was building for me in the heavens. It was rising in stately grandeur. Oh it was beautiful! but still unfinished. Mary Magdalen was toiling away with earnest brow and face more angelic than ever. Many shining spirits were about her. I was lying some distance off, asleep in the shadow of a great rock. She said to her companions with a sweet smile:

“He will awake presently and help me build.”

One day I heard the voice of my father saying to John the Baptist,

“The crisis is over; he will be saved; we must teach him the power of the Lord’s Prayer.”

I know not whether this was a dream or a genuine vision. But I repeated the Lord’s Prayer feebly and with folded hands. The effect was wonderful. A great light shone around me. The air was full of little cherub forms. Heavenly music was heard in the distance. The deepest chords of my being were touched. The flood-gates of contrition were reopened. Faith returned. I wept. I was happy—oh, so happy!

This also may have been a dream, but it was a potent medicine; for after that, my recovery was amazingly rapid. I then entered into a second and very different phase of my spiritual life. The devil, after casting me repeatedly into the water and the fire, and rending me sorely, had departed. But I knew full well that he only departs for a season—that his return is as sure as the rising of the tides. I knew that the only way to keep him out, was to refurnish my house on the heavenly model.

The first element was profound humility and reverence. God only enters the soul which is thoroughly emptied of self. A proud Christian is a devil in disguise. The angels are so thoroughly divested of the selfhood, that they live and labor only for others’ good; and that is living and laboring for God.

Prayer is the means by which humility and reverence are cultivated. It does not change the Unchangeable; it only brings the soul into that state in which it is receptive of the divine love and wisdom. I determined, therefore, to pray—for I had long neglected prayer—and to pray regularly, systematically, earnestly, and especially in the form or after the manner that the Lord himself had appointed.

The second element of angelic life was cheerfulness. The cheerfulness of angels flows from the peace and joy in which they live. They cannot be present in a sphere of gloom and darkness. The silent, tearful, mourning, austere, ascetic Christian, cuts himself off from angelic consolations, and renders his regeneration doubly painful and difficult. Tears and fastings and scourgings and solitude and fantastic self-denials do not lead to heaven. They block up the way thither with needless difficulties.

The third element of the angelic life was useful activity. An idle angel is an impossibility. They are all busy as bees; and like those little preachers to mankind, each labors intently, not for his own special benefit, but for the good of all the rest. Their cheerfulness and usefulness run in equal and parallel streams, and they are both proportioned to their reverence and humility.

I determined therefore to work willingly; to accept my hard tasks as those appointed of God; to be no longer an eye-servant but an earnest, faithful, intelligent co-operator in building, repairing and improving the magnificent temples, baths, aqueducts, walls, quays and fortifications of Antioch; to treat my fellow-laborers as brethren, not by descending to their gross level, but by striving to lift them as well as myself up to the height of a noble and unselfish manhood.

Twenty years or more were spent in the great combat between my old natural man and the new spiritual man which was being conceived, born, nourished, instructed and vitalized within me. I am still engaged in the same conflict. But after twenty years, I felt that the good had attained a permanent ascendency—that duty had become pleasure—that self was so far subdued that I expected nothing, desired nothing for myself alone, and experienced a serene delight in promoting the happiness of others.

The reader need not think that a convict’s prison afforded no opportunities for the great work of regeneration, and for the development of Christian character. The rainbow that shines in the cloud, and glitters in the dew-drop, is the same. The divine influx is identical in the greatest things and in the least. The patience, the meekness, the kindness to others, the obedience to law, the truthfulness, the industry, the honesty which can be exhibited in the lowliest sphere of human life, have no sweeter odor, no greater worth in the sight of heaven when they are displayed on the throne of the Cæsars.

This steady growth of a good and useful character in spite of the sneers and rebuffs of the ill-disposed, and in the face of mighty difficulties, brought substantial comforts to myself also. I was released from strict confinement; I was made overseer of a considerable party; I was allowed liberties I had not known before; and I was fed with abundance from the officers’ table. Thus, with advancing years, I became contented and happy, and my means of being useful to others were greatly increased.

I was permitted to plant flowers and vines in the interior courtyard of our prison. After long and patient labor I adorned and beautified the spot so greatly that it attracted the attention of every visitor.

The mission of flowers is like that of poetry, to enchant, to elevate, and to purify. Therefore the Spring comes annually to shower her myriads of fragrant little lyrics upon the world!

It seemed a shame to constrain these sweet and free children of the air and sunlight to illumine the interior of a dungeon and to live with criminals; but I remembered that the angels whom they represent, delight to visit the humblest spot and to assist the most forlorn and helpless creatures of God.

It was to me a whole flower-garden of sweets and beauties. The sad fate of Orestes, haunted by the Furies, struck the tenderest chords in my heart; and I contemplated with the joy of kinship and sympathy the grandeur of Prometheus chained to the rock, for holding in his possession secret knowledge which no tortures could compel him to reveal.

I, too, was to learn the sanctity of silence!

One day the old Greek, when working on a pier, suddenly plunged twenty feet into the rapid Orontes. He struck out boldly down the river for the sea, and the boat sent after him did not overtake the desperate swimmer. He left Eschylus behind him.

I had been in prison about twenty-five years, when I came into possession of another and far greater book. A young Jew was condemned to hard labor for striking a Roman officer who had insulted his sister. He fell sick almost immediately, and was carried off by grief and a rapid consumption. I nursed him closely, and he seemed much attached to me until he discovered that I was a Christian. He became at once stern and cold and uncommunicative, and ended by requesting the keeper to provide him with another nurse or none at all.

He died not long after, and I was surprised at receiving a message from his deathbed. He thanked me for my kindness to him, and begged me to accept from him a beautiful little copy of the Psalms of David.

What a treasure I found it! It was a mirror of my own struggles; of my hopes and fears; of my deep humiliations and my ecstatic triumphs. It let me into the presence of angels. It was like the voice of God calling to little Samuel in the dead of night.

This remarkable man was Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

After satisfying himself that I had been thirty years in prison and that I was really Lazarus whom Christ raised from the dead, he became very animated and communicative.

It seemed that all my friends supposed I had been burned as one of the Christian candles, on the eventful night of the death of Magistus. My sisters and the disciples had mourned for me as one of the first martyrs of the new faith. Mary and Martha had arrived safely in Gaul, and had founded a beautiful church with a convent and Christian schools at Marseilles. Their wealth had contributed immensely to the spread of Christianity. They were devoted and holy women, and Paul was eloquent in praise of their zeal and piety.

“And Mary Magdalen?” said I, with a slight tremor at pronouncing the name of a woman who had of late taken ardent possession of my thoughts.

“The humblest, sweetest, gentlest creature in the world! She always wears her black veil and devotes herself to the most menial offices. She is the grandest type I have yet seen of the purifying and sanctifying influence of the religion of Christ.”

I felt a sweet glow of satisfaction at this announcement; and old man as I was, something like a blush mounted to my cheeks.

I learned from the great apostle the history of the Church from its infancy to the present time. He was modest and even depreciating in narrating his own share in the stupendous labors of the early disciples. I was not slow in detecting, from what he said, the immense changes in thought and spirit which had taken place in the Christian commonwealth since I had been withdrawn from its sphere.

Jesus Christ had left them a religion; Paul had made it a theology.

Paul drew from me a narration of my experiences in the spiritual world. I was very explicit and enthusiastic, for I deemed my revelations of the utmost importance to the Church and the world. He listened with interest, but with evident incredulity. We exchanged ideas at some length on all the leading questions of theology. I became more and more anxious to impress him with the truth of what I was saying.

“Remember,” said I, “that the germs which you now plant in the Church, will expand in the form and direction you give them for hundreds and may be thousands of years. The slightest deviations now from the genuine truth, will grow into gigantic errors.

“If you teach the destructibility of this physical globe and the resurrection of our dead bodies from the dust, the Church will not have a true conception of the spiritual world, nor of the relation of that world to this.

“If you teach the separate and distinct personality of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the proper or supreme divinity of Jesus Christ will not be understood, and the germ of polytheism will take root in your creed.

“If you ignore the great judgment executed by Christ in the world of spirits, you will fail to comprehend the true object of his incarnation; and you will commit the sad mistake of supposing that the next and last judgment predicted, will take place in the world of nature.

“If you speak, as you did just now, of the blood of Christ cleansing from sin, your hearers may fall into the error of supposing that the material blood shed upon the cross is what cleanses and saves from sin; whereas the truth is, that the blood shed for the remission of sins, is the wine of the New Testament—the spiritual truth and spiritual life which flow forth from the Divine Man for the healing of the nations.”

So I went on, reiterating all the grand points of doctrine which distinguished the teachings of the angels I had conversed with, from the teachings of Paul. He became more and more restive under my impetuous torrent of argument, and at last rose to depart. He excused himself on the plea of urgent business and short time. He said he would call again if possible, and would interest the Church in Antioch to labor for my release.

He left me with a pleasant smile. He passed into a gallery where he met the governor of the prison. They were conversing as they walked slowly along beneath a window at which I had stopped. I heard Paul say,

“He is evidently insane.”

“I wish the world was full of such madmen,” was the bluff answer of the governor.

And that was the result of my interview with the great thinker, the leading spirit of the Christian world!

Insane!

This visit of Paul was of immense service to me. It helped me to subdue one of the strongest points of my selfhood. I still cherished the dream that my spiritual knowledge had been entrusted to me for the special benefit of the Christian Church. My only reason for wishing to get out of prison, was that I might communicate the Doctrine of Christ, as it appears to the angels, to my fellow-men.

After mature reflection upon my conversation with Paul and its results, I came to the conclusion that I had labored under a great mistake and had cherished an impossible hope. There are certain successive steps in the grand evolution of the general human mind, which make one revelation of truth necessary and proper at one time and another at another. The world and the Church were not ready for the knowledges which had been given to me. The transition from Jewish darkness to angelic light was too great, too sudden. A long period of twilight must intervene—a period of literal interpretations, of janglings and wranglings and schisms. In the fullness of time, perhaps, and after another judgment in the world of spirits, another church may be instituted capable of receiving without adulteration the sublime verities of the spiritual world.

So I abandoned my mission. God knew better than I did, and I was satisfied.

It is strange what a new, sweet, beautiful life sprung up in my soul after I discovered that I had no mission in this world to fulfill, but to spread cement between stones, to plant flowers, to read the Psalms and to nurse my sick fellow-prisoners. I was a new creature.

I then entered upon what I have designated as the third state or era of my spiritual life. And this state was so marvelous, so exceptional to all the experiences of my fellow-men, that I shall not dwell long upon it. It may be a thousand or two thousand years before Providence repeats the phenomenon and produces another case like mine; and although in the far-off perfection of the world they will be common enough, the story of it will for centuries fall upon the ears of men as an idle dream.

The first intimation I had of a further change of state, was received while I was reading the Scriptures. The good Christians of Antioch, it seems, failed in procuring my release; but they contrived to send me a copy of the ancient Scriptures and the Gospel of Matthew. These were priceless jewels to an old man and a prisoner dead to all things except the life of religion.

One day when reading in the Psalms and applying the thoughts to my own individual experience, I became suddenly aware, by a kind of interior illumination, that the secret soul-life of the Lord Jesus Christ in his combats with the powers of hell, was embodied and concealed in the sacred pages. They contain more wonderful things than all the heights and depths of this external nature which we so much admire. They contain the mysteries of life and death.

These things were not invented by my imagination. They were not discovered by my ingenuity. They pre-existed in the Scriptures, but are invisible to the mind which rests in the mere sense of the letter. Their existence was revealed to me by an interior light, the operation of which I did not comprehend. I learned also that this wonderful spiritual sense of the Divine Word was clearly understood in heaven, and was the mental food of angels.

The Gospel of Matthew contains similar spiritual mysteries enfolded in the literal story of our Lord. The Epistles of Paul, however,—glowing, eloquent, devout, impressive as they are—contain no interior or spiritual signification. I saw at once that they had no organic connection with the heavens; in other words, that they were not divinely inspired. They were simply the earnest, saintly utterances of a great and good man to his brethren.

“And yet,” said I to myself, “so potent has this zealous and eloquent apostle been in organizing the Church, and so dense is the darkness of the natural mind, that it would not surprise me, if in the far future the words of Paul are reckoned of equal value with the history of Jesus, or with the Law and the Prophets.”

The peace and joy inspired by the spiritual perception of the Word, were ineffable. My mind was in a state of continual felicity. I began also to have the most exquisite and beautiful dreams. I was frequently awakened by strains of the most heavenly music, and the darkness of my little cell was illumined by flashes of light, auroral and rainbow colors darting and twinkling here and there in the most surprising manner. I felt that some organic change in my spiritual constitution was impending.

One Sabbath morning when I was reading in the Prophets, I became suddenly aware of a presence in my room; and lifting my eyes I beheld my father standing before me. He was as youthful and beautiful as ever. He was clad in shining garment, and said with a beaming smile:

“Do you understand what you read?”

“Better than I ever did before. But, O father! how is it that you have descended into the natural world?”

“Have you so soon forgotten your instructions in the world of spirits? I have not descended into the world of nature. I see nothing material which surrounds you. I am invisible to all eyes but yours. The change is in yourself. Your spiritual sight has been partially opened into the world of spirits where I am—enough to see my form, but not my surroundings. You seem to come to me, while I seem to come to you. You see me with your spiritual eyes and your material surroundings with your natural eyes.”

“Your case,” said my father, “so strange and exceptional at present, is a proof of the possibilities of the human spirit. As long as the powers of hell reign on earth, it will be fearfully dangerous for man to have communication with spirits; and the Lord in his mercy will, as far as may be possible, keep each world a secret from the other. When He comes again with an open Word and his angelic hosts in the far-off ages of terrestrial time, such cases as yours may occur not unfrequently, and will announce the approaching conjunction of heaven and earth.”

This double life, this wheel within a wheel, is no part of my earthly autobiography. I must draw the veil over its mysteries. I am permitted, however, to tell my readers that my uncle Beltrezzor was revealed to my eyes. He appeared as a young man of unspeakable beauty, clad in a purple robe of dazzling splendor. He had become a member of a heavenly society situated nearest to the Sun of the spiritual world. The atmosphere in which they live is a tissue of golden light, and the emblem of their spiritual love is a flame of sacred fire.

Would you call that a convict’s cell or the gate of paradise, which was brightened by the halo of such presences?

The old man who thus lived in both worlds, at once escaping the common limitations of time and space, was not withdrawn from the practical discharge of his homely and difficult duties. Never in his life was he more faithful, more zealous, more careful in the little every-day affairs which really make the happiness or the misery of life.

One day I was working on the walls of a new palace. The chief architect, a man of noble character and great influence, happened to approach very near me in one of his rounds of inspection. He said in a pleasant tone:

“You spread your cement with very great care.”

“So it ought to be,” said I, “for the cement is the brotherly love which binds the hearts of the brethren together.”

He lifted his hand and made a certain signal.

I responded to it with another.

“I discover,” he said, “that you are a member of that venerable and secret order instituted by king Solomon and Hiram Abiff, the widow’s son.”

“Yes—for more than forty years.”

“And has it been of service to you?”

“Oh yes! I have discovered in it a mine of spiritual treasures. Its symbols and ceremonies embody a system of universal philosophy unknown even to its members. It is an epitome of the spiritual mysteries of the universe.”

“How comes it,” said he, “that a disciple of the square and compass, who has stood upon the tesselated pavement, is confined at hard labor as a criminal?”

“Ah sir! I was quite a youth when I came here. I was innocent, but I had none to defend me.”

“Is it possible!” said he, and walked toward the governor of the prison, with whom he entered into conversation.

The next day I received a full discharge from my sentence, and a handsome present of money from the chief architect.

I was free!