Mercy was silent for a moment, then said, "It would be horribly wearisome." "It would indeed be wearisome! But how do you think it would affect your nature, your being?" Mercy held the peace which is the ignorant man's wisdom. "We should have known nothing of astronomy," said Christina. "True; and the worst would have been, that the soul would have had no astronomy--no notion of heavenly things." "There you leave me out again!" said Mercy. "I mean," said Ian, "that it would have had no sense of outstretching, endless space, no feeling of heights above, and depths beneath. The idea of space would not have come awake in it." "I understand!" said Christina. "But I do not see that we should have been much the worse off. Why should we have the idea of more than we want? So long as we have room, I do not see what space matters to us!" "Ah, but when the soul wakes up, it needs all space for room! A limit of thousands of worlds will not content it. Mere elbow-room will not do when the soul wakes up!" "Then my soul is not waked up yet!" rejoined Christina with a laugh. Ian did not reply, and Christina felt that he accepted the proposition, absurd as it seemed to herself. "But there is far more than that," he resumed. "What notion could you have had of majesty, if the heavens seemed scarce higher than the earth? what feeling of the grandeur of him we call God, of his illimitation in goodness? For space is the body to the idea of liberty. Liberty is--God and the souls that love; these are the limitless room, the space, in which thoughts, the souls of things, have their being. If there were no holy mind, then no freedom, no spiritual space, therefore no thoughts; just as, if there were no space, there could be no things." Ian saw that not even Alister was following him, and changed his key. "Look up," he said, "and tell me what you see.--What is the shape over us?" "It is a vault," replied Christina. "A dome--is it not?" said Mercy. "Yes; a vault or a dome, recognizable at the moment mainly by its shining points. This dome we understand to be the complement or completing part of a correspondent dome on the other side of the world. It follows that we are in the heart of a hollow sphere of loveliest blue, spangled with light. Now the sphere is the one perfect geometrical form. Over and round us then we have the one perfect shape. I do not say it is put there for the purpose of representing God; I say it is there of necessity, because of its nature, and its nature is its relation to God. It is of God's thinking; and that half-sphere above men's heads, with influence endlessly beyond the reach of their consciousness, is the beginning of all revelation of him to men. They must begin with that. It is the simplest as well as most external likeness of him, while its relation to him goes so deep that it represents things in his very nature that nothing else could."