the seraph hosts. Then we go out into the
living world, and what influences pour through us! We are "at league
with the stones of the field." The winds of the world blow radiantly
upon us as in the early time. We feel wrapt about with love, with an
infinite tenderness that caresses us. Alone in our rooms as we ponder,
what sudden abysses of light open within us! The Gods are so much nearer
than we dreamed. We rise up intoxicated with the thought, and reel out
seeking an equal companionship under the great night and the stars.

Let us get near to realities. We read too much. We think of that which
is "the goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the resting-place,
the asylum, and the Friend." Is it by any of these dear and familiar
names? The soul of the modern mystic is becoming a mere hoarding-place
for uncomely theories. He creates an uncouth symbolism, and blinds his
soul within with names drawn from the Kabala or ancient Sanskrit, and
makes alien to himself the intimate powers of his spirit, things which
in truth are more his than the beatings of his heart. Could we not speak
of them in our own tongue, and the language of today will be as sacred
as any of the past. From the Golden One, the child of the divine, comes
a voice to its shadow. It is stranger to our world, aloof from our
ambitions, with a destiny not here to be fulfilled. It says: "You are of
dust while I am robed in opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay,
I in a temple not made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must
come with me." And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the
spirit behind the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no
ending. It is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like
the angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it
stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the Friend
indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this strange,
unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by what is written,
or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness? But in vain we
store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint furniture of
thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They abide only in the
shining. No wonder that the Gods do not incarnate. We cannot say we do
pay reverence to these awful powers. We repulse the living truth by
our doubts and reasonings. We would compel the Gods to fall in with
our petty philosophy rather than trust in