r
shades of color, so the divine personality or Ego has been broken into
countless susceptible substances. As seven darker shades melt together
in one clear pencil of light, out of the union of all these substances a
divine being would issue. The existing form of nature's fabric is the
optical glass, and all the activities of spirits are only an endless play
of colors of that simple divine ray. If it pleased Omnipotence some day
to break up this prism, the barrier between it and the world would fall
down, all spirits would be absorbed in one infinite spirit, all accords
would flow together in one common harmony, all streams would find their
end in the ocean.

The bodily form of nature came to pass through the attractive force of
the elements. The attraction of spirits, varied and developed
infinitely, would at length lead to the cessation of that separation (or
may I venture the expression) would produce God. An attraction of this
kind is love.

Accordingly, my dear Raphael, love is the ladder by which we climb up to
likeness to God. Unconsciously to ourselves, without laying claim to it,
we aim at this.

Lifeless masses are we, when we hate;
Gods, when we cling; in love to one another,
Rejoicing in the gentle bond of love.
Upwards this divinest impulse holdeth sway
Through the thousandfold degrees of creation
Of countless spirits who did not create.

Arm-in-arm, higher and still higher,
From the savage to the Grecian seer,
Who is linked to the last seraph of the ring,
We turn, of one mind, in the same magic dance,
Till measure, and e'en time itself,
Sink at death in the boundless, glowing sea.

Friendless was the great world's blaster;
And feeling this, he made the spirit world
Blessed mirrors of his own blessedness!
And though the Highest found no equal,
Yet infinitude foams upward unto Him
From the vast basin of creation's realm.

Love is, Raphael, the great secret that can restore the dishonored king
of gold from the flat, unprofitable chalk; that can save the eternal from
the temporal and transient, and the great oracle of duration from the
consuming conflagration of time.

What does all that has been said amount to?

If we perceive excellence, it is ours. Let us become intimate with the
high ideal unit, and we shall be drawn to one another in brotherly love.
If we plant beauty and joy we shall reap beauty and joy. If we think
clearly we shall lo