region of thunder and lightning, and all the glowing armouries of the empyrean; higher, immeasureably higher than I had previously been with him, and where the earth appeared scarcely wider than a stack-yard. Having allowed me to rest awhile, he hurried me upwards a myriad miles, until the sun appeared far beneath us; through the milky way, past Pleiades, and many other stars of appalling magnitude, catching a distant glimpse of other worlds. And after journeying for a long time, we come at last to the confines of the great eternity, in sight of the two courts of the vauntful King of Death—one to the right, the other to the left, but very far apart from one another as there lay an immense void between them. I asked whether I might go and see the court on my right hand, for I observed that this was not at all like the other I had previously seen. “Thou shalt perchance,” said he, “see, somewhile, more of the difference there is between them. But now we must proceed in another direction.” At that we turned away from the little world, and across the intervening space we let ourselves descend into the Eternal Realm between the two courts, into the formless void, a boundless tract, most deep and dark, chaotic and uninhabited, at one time cold, at another hot, {69} now silent, now resounding with the roaring of cataracts falling and quenching the fires, and anon of the fire bursting out and burning up the water. Thus, there was neither order nor completeness, nor life nor form: nought but this dazing dissonance, this mysterious stupor which would have made me for ever blind, had not my friend laid bare once more his vesture of heavenly sheen. By the light he gave I saw before me to the left the Land of Oblivion, and the borders of the Wilds of Destruction; and to my right, methought, the base of the ramparts of Glory. “This is the great abysm between Abraham and Dives,” said he, “which is called Chaos: this is the land of the matter which God did first create, and here is the seed of every living thing; of these the Almighty Word created your world and all it doth contain—water, fire, air, earth, beasts, fishes, insects, birds and the human body; but your souls are of a higher and nobler origin and stock.”