France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; French fiction -- Translations into English
At this prayer a veil fell. Whether it were that the hidden force which
held the Seers had momentarily annihilated their physical bodies, or
that it raised their spirits above those bodies, certain it is that they
felt within them a rending of the pure from the impure.
The tears of the _Seraph_ rose about them like a vapor, which hid the
lower worlds from their knowledge, held them in its folds, bore them
upwards, gave them forgetfulness of earthly meanings and the power of
comprehending the meanings of things divine.
The True Light shone; it illumined the Creations, which seemed to them
barren when they saw the source from which all worlds--Terrestrial,
Spiritual, and Divine-derived their Motion.
Each world possessed a centre to which converged all points of its
circumference. These worlds were themselves the points which moved
toward the centre of their system. Each system had its centre in great
celestial regions which communicated with the flaming and quenchless
_motor of all that is_.
Thus, from the greatest to the smallest of the worlds, and from the
smallest of the worlds to the smallest portion of the beings who compose
it, all was individual, and all was, nevertheless, One and indivisible.
What was the design of the Being, fixed in His essence and in His
faculties, who transmitted that essence and those faculties without
losing them? who manifested them outside of Himself without separating
them from Himself? who rendered his creations outside of Himself fixed
in their essence and mutable in their form? The pair thus called to the
celestial festival could only see the order and arrangement of created
beings and admire the immediate result. The Angels alone see more. They
know the means; they comprehend the final end.
But what the two Elect were granted power to contemplate, what they were
able to bring back as a testimony which enlightened their minds forever
after, was the proof of the action of the Worlds and of Beings; the
consciousness of the effort with which they all converge to the Result.
They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming one living
melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty
respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined
themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre,
issued all things and recalled all things to Himself.
This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of
the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age to age.
Wilfrid and Minna were enabled to understand some of the mysterious
sayings of Him who had appeared on earth in the form which to each of
them had rendered him comprehensible,--to one Seraphitus, to the other
Seraphita,--for they saw that all was homogeneous in the sphere where he
now was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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