Shadow. And rather than rise to Light again, it has made of itself a
discord opposed to the eternal Harmony. It has chosen for its
keynote Hate,--not Love! Each nation envies or despises the other,--
each man struggles against his fellow-man and grudges his neighbour
every small advantage,--and more than all, each Creed curses the
other, blasphemously calling upon God to verify and fulfil the
curse! Hate, not Love!--this is the false note struck by the pitiful
Earth-world to-day, swinging out of all concordance with spherical
sweetness!--Hate that prefers falsehood to truth, malice to
kindness, selfishness to generosity! O Sorrowful Star!--doomed so
soon to perish!--turn, turn, even in thy last moments, back to the
Divine Ascendant before it is too late!"

I listened,--and a sense of hopeless fear possessed me. I tried to
speak, and a faint whisper crept from my lips. "Why,"--I murmured to
myself, for I did not suppose anyone could or would hear me--"why
should we and our world perish? We knew so little at the beginning,
and we know so little now,--is it altogether our fault if we have
lost our way?"

A silence followed. A vague, impalpable sense of restraint and
captivity seemed closing me in on every side,--I was imprisoned, as
I thought, within invisible walls. Then all at once this density of
atmosphere was struck asunder by a dazzling light as of cloven
wings, but I could see no actual shape or even suggestion of
substance--the glowing rays were all. And the Voice spoke again with
grave sweetness and something of reproach.

"Who speaks of losing the way?" it asked--"when the way is, and has
ever been, clear and plain? Nature teaches it,--Law and Order