Out of many talks together, Julius and I recovered all this. Alone
I could not understand it. Julius, moreover, believed it still
to-day. Though nominally, and in his life as well, a Christian, he
always struck me as being intensely religious, yet without a definite
religion. It was afterwards, of course, I realised this, when my
experience of modern life was larger. He was unfettered by any little
dogmas of man-made creeds, but obeyed literally the teaching of the
Sermon on the Mount, which he knew by heart. It was essential spiritual
truth he sought. His tolerance and respect for all the religions of
to-day were based upon the belief that each contained a portion of
truth at least. His was the attitude of a perfect charity--of an
“old soul,” as he phrased it later, who “had passed through all the
traditions.” His belief included certainly God and the gods, Nature and
Christ, temples of stone and hills and woods and that temple of the
heart which is the Universe itself. True worship, however, was _with_
Nature.
A vivid picture belongs to this particular “layer.” I saw the light
of a distant planet being used, apparently in some curative sense, by
human beings. It took place in a large building. Long slits in the roof
were so arranged that the planet shone through them exactly upon the
meridian. Dropping through the dusky atmosphere, the rays were caught
by an immense concave mirror of polished metal that hung suspended
above an altar where the smoke of incense rose; and, since a concave
mirror forms at its focus in the air before it an image of whatever is
reflected in its depths, a radiant image of the planet stood shining
there in the heart of the building. It was a picture of arresting
beauty and significance. Gleaming overhead, hung a mirror of still
mightier proportions that caught the reflected rays and poured them
down in a stream of intensified light upon the backs of men and women
who lay naked on the ground, waiting to receive them.
“The quality of that particular planet is what they need,” whispered
Julius, as we watched together; “the light-cures of that age have
hardly changed,” he laughed; “the principle, at least, remains the
same.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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