I awoke at the sound, and collecting my energies--for I had been
half-asleep,--stretched out my hand to my note-book, looked up the
lecture, and with the words swaying before me, read sleepily:--

"Leave us Reason in any existence;--strip us of sight, sound, touch, and
all the external constitution of nature, clothe us with whatever
feelings and powers, place us in whatever scenes may come--but gift us
with this universal faculty, our power of knowing truth. Otherwise, with
rudder lost, we are dreamers on a drifting wreck, and where were the
Divine One, and this harmonious architecture of the universe, and all
things trustworthy, proportioned, eternal, exalting?"

"Leave us Reason, and, children of God, we may from any point start out
to see Our Father, His voice indicating from within the paths to Him
which somewhere surely lie near to everywhere. Leave us Reason, and,
brothers of men, we recognize that each Intelligence is of value equal
to ourselves, and more precious than aught else can be, and we perceive
the due relations of an orderly world."

"The voice within in simple dignity commands"--

But the lines swam before me: I could not hold my head up: the Moorish
room expanded to the height and magnificence of a Hall of Magic, the
dream of starry space returned and the pure lights circled in it singing
to me in chorus. Space itself seemed to become the veiled countenance of
a Mysterious Power, which "half-revealed and half-concealed" itself on
every hand, and out of the midst of a dark-blue sky, appeared the form
and face of Alexandra, like a Princess-Madonna, smiling, O so earnestly
and kindly.