To each other they said: "If he touches us, we can die!" But the
_spirit_ was now within the Infinite, and they knew not that neither
time, nor space, nor death, existed there, and that a great gulf lay
between them, although they thought themselves beside him.

Their souls were not prepared to receive in its fulness a knowledge of
the faculties of that Life; they could have only faint and confused
perceptions of it, suited to their weakness.

Were it not so, the thunder of the _Living Word_, whose far-off tones
now reached their ears, and whose meaning entered their souls as life
unites with body,--one echo of that Word would have consumed their
being as a whirlwind of fire laps up a fragile straw.

Therefore they saw only that which their nature, sustained by the
strength of the _spirit_, permitted them to see; they heard that only
which they were able to hear.

And yet, though thus protected, they shuddered when the Voice of the
anguished soul broke forth above them--the prayer of the _Spirit_
awaiting Life and imploring it with a cry.

That cry froze them to the very marrow of their bones.

The _Spirit_ knocked at the _sacred portal_. "What wilt thou?" answered
a _choir_, whose question echoed among the worlds. "To go to God." "Hast
thou conquered?" "I have conquered the flesh through abstinence, I
have conquered false knowledge by humility, I have conquered pride by
charity, I have conquered the earth by love; I have paid my dues by