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 love ardently. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven
is perfect," says the Founder of our Faith. Weak human nature turned
pale at this command, therefore He explained himself in clearer terms:
"Love one another!"

Wisdom, with thy sunlike look,
Awful goddess! turn thee back,
And give way to Love;
Who before thee went, with hero heart,
Up the steep and stormy path
To the Godhead's very throne;
Who, unveiling the Holiest,
Showed to thee Elysium
Through the vaulted sepulchre.
Did it not invite us in?
Could we reach immortality--
Or could we seek the spirit
Without Love, the spirit's master?
Love, Love leadeth only to Nature's Father,
Only love the spirits.

I have now given you, Raphael, my spirit's confession of faith--a flying
outline of the creation I have undertaken. As you may perceive, the seed
which you scattered in my soul took root. Mock, or rejoice, or blush at
your scholar, as you please. Certain it is this philosophy has ennobled
my heart, and extended and beautified the perspective of my life. It is
possible, my excellent friend, that the entire structure of my
conclusions may have been a baseless and visionary edifice. Perhaps the
world, as I depicted it, nowhere exists, save in the brain of your
Julius. Perhaps, after the lapse of thousands on thousands of years,
when the wiser Judge promised in the future, sits on the judgment-seat,
at the sight of the true original, filled with confusion, I should tear
in pieces my schoolboy's design. All this may happen--I expect it; and
even if not a vestige of reality is found in my dream, the reality will
fill me with proportionately greater delight and wonder. Ought my ideas
to be more beautiful than those of the Creator? How so? Could we
tolerate that His exalted artistic structure should fall beneath the
expectations of a mortal connoisseur? This is exactly the fiery
probation of His great perfection, and the sweetest triumph for the
Exalted Spirit, that false conclusions and deception do not injure His
acknowledgment; that all tortuous deviations of the wandering reason at