PART II.
Farewellsare spoken. Thevoyageursare again a-wing. They reach the Arctic along the vast Siberian coast. There the cold is most intense, and of the frozen regions it is the wildest and grandest. A shimmering light seems to permeate it ever, even in its darkest periods. The ice presents plains, abysses, mountains. Everywhere are the débris of long-frozen animals. Over its dry waste of congealed waters, the fierce blasts, as if by frictional action on its rugged surfaces, ever generate electrical phenomena. In midwinter and darkness, scintillating flashes gleam along them in the nether air. Such was their vision.
The disembodied, as one startled, exclaims: “See yon iceberg like a mountain of glass. What is that within it? It resembles the carcass of a dead animal, but it is too huge. It is at least sixty feet long, and of elephantine proportions.”
Immortal.—“It is an ancient specimen of the behemoth (B’Hemoth) tribes. Its species is extinct. Its bulk is many times that of the mastodon. Its massive ivory tusks are similar to those of the walrus. Its remains have been frozen in there for thousands of years. Putrescence is here unknown.”
Mortal.—“What wonders! Can this be nature?”
Immortal.—“We are approaching others.”
Mortal.—“Yes, look! What a vast lizard or crocodile yonder encased—five hundred feet long! But I see fins, also.”
Immortal.—“It is of the primeval species ofsauroidfish. It has been frozen during cycles of time. This region was once warmer. Nature’s changeful developments are a curious mystery to man, but it ever unfolds in increasing knowledge.”
They wheel southward—anon traverse Chinese Tartary—sweep over the Chinese wall, and alight in Pekin. They poise themselves on a lofty pagoda.
Mortal.—“These Chinese are a mysterious people. I am curious about them. That wall was a great enterprise in its day, and a singular one.”
Immortal.—“They are a swarm from an ancienthuman hive, and have long been numerous and astute. They have been, and are superior to the average of mankind, but inferior to the more illumined and most cultivated. Their numbers and limited geographic sphere have made them feel want; yet their inventions, although multiplied, have been petty, fanciful, crude and clumsy contrivances to meet emergency, in comparison with the grander discoveries and more studied and beautiful designs of other and higher civilizations.Necessityhas stimulated their cunning, but precludes their reflection; it has pinched their faculties, as the ‘iron shoe’ has their feet. Their mental contraction has been rendered more compressive by their moral and spiritual defects. They have had no conception of a God,per se. It is the conception which most expands man!”
Mortal.—“But this pagoda (truly it is a grotesque structure!) is a temple devoted to some worship.”
Immortal.—“It is a fane of the merest idolatry, and dedicated to idols, ‘of the earth, earthly,’ not to any images which are even typical of divineessences. But of this, anon.”
Mortal.—“The Chinese have, however, a demi-god—their ‘Celestial Emperor.’”
Immortal.—“Yes, he is their immediate authority, temporal and spiritual. Yet he and his mandarins, alike with his subjects, are constrained, by the dominancy of twenty-four centuries of veneration for the great Chinese philosopher and moralist, Koong-Foo-tse, (latinized, Confucius,) to worship in the temples dedicated to that extraordinary statesman and expounder. This pagoda is one of these temples, which have been reared in all chief cities and towns. His ‘nine books’ constitute the creed and code—the bible—of the ‘Celestial Empire,’ and you will deem it a singular fact that they contain no mention of a Creator—no allusion to God.”
Mortal.—“It is indeed strange for so intelligent a people. All other peoples have some kind of a belief and worship of a Supreme Being. Hark! I hear sounds from below—I hear chants!”
Immortal.—“Yes, they are from the Emperor and his court, performing idol-service, offering fruits, wines, flowers and fancy articles, and now singing chants. We will witness their return to the palace, and then visit them.”
Soon the vision embraced a scene of Oriental pomp—a pageant, with its ceremonies, gorgeous displays and vain-glorious crudities.This narrative must dispense with the description, nor could the reader be made to receive the impression produced on the visitor from the West, while gazing on the dramas of the East.
His Celestial Majesty—“brother of the sun and cousin of the stars”—is now enthroned in his extended residence, amid princely persons, political potentates and priestly dignitaries, surrounded by every burnishment and administered to by varied flattery and all servility. Thevoyageurssuddenly appear before and among them.
Emperor.—“Ha! what means this intrusion? Chamberlain of the Palace, accursed Mandarin! you shall lose your life for this. How came these persons into the Celestial Presence without permission and the salaam reverences? Hold! they have wings! Can they be Celestial? Spirit of Koong-Foo-tse! come, protect, guard us! Let all the great gongs be beaten! let dreadful sounds frighten them away!”
The Immortal, with a gesture, awes all into silence and composure.
American to Emperor.—“Man, what mean these presumptions? What does your ridiculous and despotic power claim?”
Emperor.—“Not read the ‘Books!’ Read them. My power is immemorial and supreme. Yang and Yn, time and Koong-Foo-tse have founded it—yes, founded it on the analogy of parental authority, which they declare absolute. The nation is my family, and I am its father. I am sole entitled ruler, and I am—holy and sacred! Nor will I have contact with strangers and barbarians.”
American.—“What means he? What of Confucius?”
Immortal.—“Confucius was a Chinaman, who lived 550 years before Christ. He was a teacher of morals, rather than a founder of religion. For those dark ages, he was an extraordinary man; he was great as a philosopher, a moralist and a statesman. He made no pretence to inspiration. He inculcated the training of the physical system. The five elements, fire, water, wood, metal and earth (he called themKings) were the basis of his system of philosophy. He maintained that the universe was generated by the union of twomaterialprinciples—a heavenly and an earthly—Yang and Yn—but there is no mention of a Creator in his system. Man, he asserted, fell from purity and happiness by his own act; and by his own act he can or must recover them. His politicalsystem, which is one of pure despotism, has been give by the Emperor. Spirit of Koong-Foo-tse, come forth!”
The apparition of Confucius here takes visible shape, and startles the assembly. The other or American immaterialized human, addresses him:
“Confucius, thy soul has now learned wisdom. How is it, that in life your great reason did not perceive and conceive that there must be and was a Being, all wise, all powerful, all good, eternal, and with His infinity universally present—the God and Creator?”
Confucius.—“I had no revelation!”
Immortal.—“Creation itself suggests and proves a Creator; it is His greatest revelation. The dual-elements in man (mind and matter,) should recognize His existence and essence.”
Confucius.—“I dimly perceived that there weretwoprinciples, but not precisely those of good and evil.I did not reason sufficiently at large. I thought only of earth, not of religion; of the material, not the divine.Zoroaster surpassed me in these regards.”
American.—“Emperor, the hand-writing of destroying Fate is on your wall. The hands of hundred of millions will pull it down. God will send light, by the invading influence ofthe ‘outside barbarians’ of the far West, to scatter the darkness from your land. Your dynasty is doomed.”
The spectre of Confucius nods confirmation, and disappears.
Thevoyageurspass out, and soar into the air.
Intense cimmerian darkness now seems to prevail everywhere, and the aerialists see themselves, as it were from a distance, flying as illumined transparent shapes through it. Afar off, and in another land, there is seen a small luminous spot on the horizon.
“What is yon bright object?”
“It is the ‘Temple of the Sun.’”
The speed of thought brings them to its full view. They swoop down; and pause in riveted contemplation of the sublime pile.
What a house, built by supposed hands! It is a structure from masses of the purest crystal; a mile long; two-thirds of a mile broad; a half-mile high to its eaves. A steeple, itself of a mile’s height and of beautiful proportions, towers with a superb aplomb a mile and a half above its front base. It is radiant with a whitish internal illumination, that shoots its apex of light upward to the dark empyrean. Over a central point of thetemple, a third distance from its rear, a lofty dome uplifts in grand majesty its imposing symmetry, and from which hangs pendent within, a vast globular light resembling and sacred to the sun, permeating and illuming with its golden rays the mighty mass. The double-tinted splendor of thetout ensemble, thrilled with rapture even an immortal soul! Above the dome, and from a staff like the lightning’s streak, floated a tri-coloredoriflamme—a rainbow flag.
“One tint was of the sunbeam’s dyes,“One the blue depth of seraph’s eyes,“One, the pure spirit’s veil of white“Had robed in radiance of its light;“The three so mingled did beseem“The texture of a heavenly dream.”
“One tint was of the sunbeam’s dyes,“One the blue depth of seraph’s eyes,“One, the pure spirit’s veil of white“Had robed in radiance of its light;“The three so mingled did beseem“The texture of a heavenly dream.”
“One tint was of the sunbeam’s dyes,
“One the blue depth of seraph’s eyes,
“One, the pure spirit’s veil of white
“Had robed in radiance of its light;
“The three so mingled did beseem
“The texture of a heavenly dream.”
The occasion is a holy period to a people in southern Asia, of whom tens of thousands throng the columned interior. The flying visitors enter. Their eyes are instantly attracted upward to the high-vaulted ceiling, appearing like a slightly concaved sky, and of a deep cerulean hue, studded with stars (mystic phenomenon!) as if in deference to night.
In the centre of the vast tessellated floor is a colossal opalescent human statue, typical of and dedicated to the God of Light, seated on a purple throne bordered with plates of gold—thewhole eight hundred feet high, and the figure in a commanding attitude, and as dispensing wisdom and exacting reverence. A space around it is paled by a balustrade of sapphire. Behind it, on the wall to the East, is pictured in marvellous glory the rising sun. In its front, outside the sapphire enclosure and toward an entrance in the West, is a broad low altar of polished granite. On it are piled votive offerings of flowers—creatures of the sun.
Emblematic frescoes of light in varying hues, play over and adorn every portion of the wondrous edifice.
The countless throng pressing from many entrances, with faces turned upward to the Idol, and with odorless flambeaux aloft in their right hands, chanted,
“Fire! Genial Fire! Glorious Fire!Element of light! Hail, Father Sun!”
“Fire! Genial Fire! Glorious Fire!Element of light! Hail, Father Sun!”
“Fire! Genial Fire! Glorious Fire!
Element of light! Hail, Father Sun!”
The flying companions had already taken their station in the space reserved around the Colossus, and near his feet.
Immortal.—“This has degenerated into Fire Worship—another form of Materialism. The wretches adore the emblems, but know not their meaning. Silence! Attention!!”
The people in awe put their left hands over their eyes, and kneel with bowed heads. Allthe lights, large and small, become dim and wan; an ominous twilight prevails.
Immortal.—“Zoroaster, in the name of Light appear!”
The apparition of Zoroaster stands before them.
Immaterialized American.—“I have heard of him, but what of him?”
Immortal.—“Zoroaster or Zurdusht was a great thinker, who lived in primeval times; computed by Aristotle to be about six thousand years before the death of Plato. He was born in ancient Bactria. He was the founder of the Magian religion, which prevailed long before the Medo-Persian monarchy. His doctrines are set forth in the book calledZendavesta. Thefirst being(according to that transcript) is denominated ‘Time without bounds;’ thus showing on the part of Zurdusht a vague perception of the Eternal One. His creed maintains that from the operation of this ‘infinite Time,’ the two active principles of the universe were produced from all eternity, Ormuzd (representinggood) and Ahriman, (representingevil,) each disposed to exercise hispowersofcreationin different ways. The first formed man capable of virtue; the latter, changed intodarknessfromlight, introduced evil.”
“Zurdusht taught that, at the last day, Ormuzd would triumph.”
American.—“I see. Zoroaster compared thetwo principlesto Light and Darkness, and to each attributedcreativepower. And now that I reflect, I note that dual-elements of some kind, material or spiritual, and associated with the idea ofgoodandevil, are averred in most religious creeds. It is the great mystery!”
Immortal.—“Zurdusht, speak!”
Zoroaster.—“Death further opened my finite eyes. There are nottwo discordant essencesnorTWO CREATIVE POWERS. The One God is the One Creator. He alone can solve the inscrutability of Evil.”
The lights die out. Sounds cease. The temple disappears. Utter darkness ensues. A sudden murmured exclamation of wonder arises from countless beings, enshrouded in the night. The Heavens above have opened; an amazing glory of radiance shines through them, amid which “the great White Throne” and “He who sitteth thereon” are seen, and His resounding voice utters to the Universe:I am the Light!