desire to make disciples, converts or confidants. They submit to the
obligations of life, obey all civil codes, and are blameless and
generous citizens, only preserving silence in regard to their own
private beliefs, and giving the public the benefit of their
acquirements up to a certain point, but shutting out curiosity where
they do not wish its impertinent eyes.

To this, the creed just spoken of, I, the writer of this present
narrative, belong. It has nothing whatever to do with merely human
dogma,--and yet I would have it distinctly understood that I am not
opposed to 'forms' of religion save where they overwhelm religion
itself and allow the Spirit to be utterly lost in the Letter. For
'the letter killeth,--the spirit giveth life.' So far as a 'form'
may make a way for truth to become manifest, I am with it,--but when
it is a mere Sham or Show, and when human souls are lost rather than
saved by it, I am opposed to it. And with all my deficiencies I am
conscious that I may risk the chance of a lower world's disdain,
seeing that the 'higher world without end' is open to me in its
imperishable brightness and beauty, to live in both NOW, and for
ever. No one can cast me out of that glorious and indestructible
Universe, for 'whithersoever I go there will be the sun and the
moon, and the stars and visions and communion with the gods.'

And so I will fulfil the task allotted to me, and will enter at once
upon my 'story'--in which form I shall endeavour to convey to my
readers certain facts which are as far from fiction as the sayings
of the prophets of old,--sayings that we know have been realised by
the science of to-day. Every great truth has at first been no more
than a dream,--that is to say, a thought, or an instinctive
perception of the Soul reaching after its own immortal heritage. And