It would seem, then, as though conscious of his strength, he stood up like a spiritual giant, exclaiming, “I am free! At last I am free!” There was a complete expansion of his being as he drank in the celestial air. He could not clearly understand the mysteries by which he was surrounded, but he knew that there was a latent energy in his soul, which, being more fully developed, would wrestle with these mighty problems until he made the solution his own. As year after year, marking great and important changes in human experience, rolled on, men who remembered Poe as he was, said, “Now he rests from life’s labor; now he sins and sorrows no more.” But they did not know upon what a mighty battle-field he stood, neither could they understand through what fires of purification he was passing. But there he stood, contending bravely, not once losing faith in his soul’s possibilities, and pressing earnestly forward to the desired consummation. And in this he was not alone. O, no! There was with him a whole host of moral heroes, who, conscious of their power to win the victory, and quickened by the inspirations which they received from that higher state of being, were striving, by the excelsior movement of the soul, to attain to those glory-encircled heights from whence they could look calmly down upon the plane of their earthly existence. Thus it was that, as they gradually arose higher and higher in the scale of being, he and they could perceive that all sin, and sorrow, and evil ended at length in blessing, and that truths, which were dim and indistinct, which seemed aught but truths, came out into clear and shining light, and in their heavens were stars of the first magnitude. Thus, also, as he toiled on he became versed in the mysteries of the spirit, not in mere moralities--for true religion, godliness or spirituality, is the full, free, and complete development of man’s entire being, both in the intellectual and moral. Science and literature, art and religion, have been separated by mankind, because they did not understand the true mystery of Godliness. But in that higher life one of the first lessons taught to the soul is, that all things have their uses. Even the low, animal passions, leading man into error, into sin, sensuality, and evil, will thereby teach him lessons of wisdom; will teach him to avoid the false and the untrue, and also that there were rocks and quicksands upon which his bark had almost foundered, and which in the future he must avoid. Whether it be these lower passions, or the intellectual and moral, still each must have its own appropriate manifestation. And as all these capacities for growth and perception belong not to the body but to the spirit, so the spirit, sweeping away into the great Eternity, bears up all these powers of its wondrous mechanism with it, and the vision of Ezekiel is realized; for “the living creature being lifted up, the wheels are lifted up also.”