Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/253

 the globe, its black mountains, deep valleys, and all its silvery seas; above it twinkled the starry shield of Heaven; and afar off, on either hand, great suns looked out to see the moving panoply. And still the soul sped on; until, at last, its earthly home was in the distance, and all around the mighty Silence reigned. And still the soul swept onward! No dizziness, no faltering, from the awful sense of height, alarmed it; no fear beset its bounding, joyous, happy heart. That soul was not my own, for the reason that no man can possibly predicate ownership of a soul—the thinking-principle—Mind; for soul is himself He can speak of, and say, "my body, limbs, faculties, qualities," and so forth, with correctness and propriety; for these are his incidents, but soul is himself—that of which these incidents obtain. They are, to coin a word, the out-sphering of the inner being: the soul was me.

In a little while, the question, "What, and why is this? and whither am I going?" rose in my mind. A silvery voice breathed silently into my spirit this response: "Whoso truly willeth to know, shall know, by reason of the relationship between himself and the other two members of the great Eternal Trine, provided always that the wish is good, and its realization would be productive of Excellence and Use. "No bad man can earnestly wish and will good, while he is bad; if he does, his failure is certain: not so with the good and lofty soul! It is always welcome to the banquet of knowledge; nor is the gate of Wisdom ever closed to it. The good man can solve all mysteries; the good woman sound the depths of all Music, Love, and Beauty. Thus the saying is literally, perfectly, absolutely true, which affirms that if ye 'Seek first the