There was a confidence in the minister's tone which gave rather unpleasant emphasis to this final prophecy. Still, I believed myself capable of the ten pages without establishing a hopelessly wakeful condition,--indeed, it was something to be guarantied against the opposite infirmity. The tea, accompanied by a few thin shavings of toast, presently arrived. The means of procuring light were also furnished us. Clifton's hand lay heavily upon the manuscript until the attendant had disappeared for the last time, and the door was locked behind him. He then opened the papers before me, and signified that the time had come. I braced myself as for a serious undertaking. Thus I accepted the task. How give words to the singular emotions which soon possessed me? As if some charm, some spell of magnetism, had been given to the paper, my whole consciousness was riveted upon it. I know not how to represent this bold, this startling attempt to establish a positive basis for metaphysical philosophy, an exact science of all things human and divine. Here was a man, perchance of more courage and conscience, perchance of more devilish recklessness, than any of his contemporaries. But how deal with what came to me from that wondrous writing in the ambiguities of common language? All thought--even supposing it embodied in a perfect form of speech--is subject to the limitations of the recipient mind. My own glimpses of the writer's meaning were necessarily most indistinct. I cannot attempt to transfer them. I was controlled by a force not my own. The shadow of a mysterious power was over me. The mists of sentimental pantheism were left far below the clear-cut summits whither the reader was invited to ascend. There was an interpretation of Revelation far more removed from the apparent letter than that of Swedenborg. Here was reaffirmed (though for a widely different purpose) what the Romish Church has ever declared,--that the Scriptures, recording spiritual truth, cannot be comprehensible to the natural understanding,--that, while the Sacred Writings contain a natural letter, it can be translated into spiritual verity only by a few exceptional men. If this scheme of philosophy was an idealism, it nevertheless manifested itself through the plainest realities. The solution of the problem seemed to come not from one point, but from all points. Certainly there was a tendency towards the supersensible; but this direction was taken through stern grappling with the actual. At one time I struggled against the august spirit that was borne in upon me; at another, I was utterly subdued by the lofty enthusiasm of the writer,--something within me capable of absolute cognition seemed responding to his appeals. But the pith and vitality of this marvel could be recognized only by long experience. And here the student was required to stake his soul upon a perilous cast. For, if not pursued and fathomed to full satisfaction, this view of things would be disturbing, paralyzing.