Page:The Great Secret.djvu/134

 cavern, Philip saw shapes moving along, shrouded by the darkness and carrying with them smoking dishes. These also gathered round the hungry Anarchists and ministered to their wants.

"What are they—devils?"

"Yes," replied Hesperia. "They are the spirits of murderers, the ministers of blood and destruction. Sympathy has drawn them to their own kind. They are what we call nucleus spirits, late arrivals. They haunt the surface of the earth and incite mortals to crime, for that is at present their only instinct and happiness, but they cannot hurt us. Soon we will leave them behind, and they will take these new-found friends with them?"

"Where?"

"To the haunts of their former crimes, there to plot and plan other outrages in the brains of the earth-bound and flesh-controlled."

"Is there no hope for them?"

"Yes; truth and goodness are immortal principles of the soul, crime is only an earth disease; it runs its course and wears itself out in time, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter."

"But what about the soul?" inquired Philip earnestly. "Is it not affected by this contamination?"

"Not the soul—the spirit is chained by the desires of the body long after the body has been demolished, yet those desires pass also after a time, and when that moment arrives the spirit begins its upward course. Some day the worst of these devils will become angels. It does not matter much to the soul what the body does on earth with itself, as the two are as difficult to unite as oil with water. More difficult indeed, for while oil and water may become a medium in certain