His amazement increased; what worth in all this if he possessed no free will? Compulsory virtue is of no avail. He wondered what purpose they served floating about like butterflies on a summer breeze; and if it was any particular pleasure to the Lord of All to behold them gyrate? Oh dear! And did He never tire of even the Great White Throne? He thought, with a chill of repulsion, that the Perfect One, who did nothing but sit on a throne to be worshiped, was a less beautiful expression of the Deity than the flowers of the field, or the birds that wing their glad flight through the ether; also, that the incessant twanging of harps was not so sweet a music, or so filled with worship, as the babbling of the brook, or the whisper of the wind, to Him who created them. He was so weary of it all, even to the vapory, melodious voices of the shadowy choir; he wondered if they never rested; also, if it was because of the taint of his humanity that he could not appreciate the beauty and sublimity of it. He remembered that from childhood he had been taught that heaven was as he now saw it, and whenever he had been given a hard task it had appeared to him that the height of enjoyment would be in having nothing to do; and that heaven was a place of eternal rest, had ever been held out as an inducement to exalted virtue, and—excessive labor. He found the inactivity terribly irksome, it reminded him of worldly _ennui_; then, the unreality bewildered him—it was like pressing the fingers upon the eyelids—persons, places and things are vividly seen, and yet we know that it is but a chimera of the brain; a vision of the intelligence. So he grew to doubt the reality of everything. He could not keep his spirituality keyed up to the proper pitch; his intelligence would wander back to earth and mortal love. The purely spiritual seemed to him to be lacking. It is only given to humanity to burn hot and cold; to reach the heights of bliss and the depths of despair; even that which we call despair has its amelioration, for never yet was it so dark but, given a little time, humanity looks upward to where the sun is shining, and hopes and strives to reach the illuminated summit; but here—there could be but this endless sameness through all eternity, without even the pleasure of striving, “thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” He rebelled madly; he preferred the trials and the pains of the body, with the power to control his actions, to the spiritual and no will of his own. Eternal leisure has its unpleasant features, though many seem to suppose that eternal leisure and eternal felicity are synonymous.