Said Bertram, "The earth has not a spectacle more fraught with meaning
than this; the acknowledged monarch of terrestrial things bowing in
dread--a dread of what? of that voice in his breast which, being silent,
is yet the loudest thing he knows? Why is the innocence of that
sacrificial lamb so pathetic to my sight? Why should religious rites in
which I do not participate move me strangely and deeply?"

"These things are a shadow," said Atmâ, "and a shadow is created by a
fact."

"I join in your prayer," said Bertram. "'Lead me from shadowy things to
things that be.' Types are not for him who believes that the horizon of
his sight bounds the possible."

"No," replied Atmâ, "better reject the image than accept it as the end
of our desire. The faith of my fathers, which grasped after Truth,
teaches me that if the outward semblance of divine verities lead captive
not only my senses, to which its appeal is made, but my heart's
allegiance, I am guilty of idolatry."

"How fair," said Bertram, "must be the thing imaged by earth's loveliest
pageantry! What must be the song of whose melody broken snatches and
stray notes reach us in the golden speech of those endowed with hearing
to catch its echoes! What harmony of beatitude is taught by the mystery
of heavenly colour! How dull must be our faculties, or how distant the
bliss for which our souls yearn as from behind a lattice, seeing only as
in a mirror of burnished silver, which, though it be never so bright,
reflects but dimly! How unutterable are our transitory glimpses of
eternal possibilities!"