And Gud came upon a paradise, its streets of hammered gold. Iridescent
fountains played beneath o'er-hanging palms, and gentle breezes, wafting
through the glistening latticery of ornate edifice, made music soft and
low that lulled of peace and quiet and eternal joy.
Here was a paradise prepared for most exacting saints. Gud strolled its
million leagues about and wondered why there was no sign of occupants.
These heavenly mansions were not newly built but rather spoke of use.
While all the major structures were intact, the minor furnishings gave
evidence of chaos and disorder. This paradise, it seemed to Gud, had
once o'erflown with life, but now was empty and abandoned.
All this puzzled Gud and worried him. He was familiar with the ruins of
many a paradise that had been smashed and broken by rebellion or by war,
but his mind could find no reason why a heaven so fine as this should be
deserted, and yet remain in such fair state of preservation.
The most likely theory which he could conceive, was that some pestilence
had raged and stripped the place of every living soul. Over this Gud
cogitated. Had it been a dwelling place of mortal flesh, a pestilence
would have left its tell-tale stench or whitening bones. But immortal
souls--how could pestilence have slain them? His theory thus became a
paradox or worse yet a dilemma, and either one is harrowing to the mind.
So Gud started out again in search of facts.
After much meandering he was rewarded by finding himself looking down
into a high-walled garden, most beautiful of any spot that he had yet
discovered. And better still, he noted signs of life. He hastened to
descend, that he might explore the garden. It was there beneath a bower
that he found a female soul most radiant. She was sitting on a gorgeous
purple rock, and singing, and knitting as she sang, while all about her,
tumbling on the grass in a most completely idiotic fashion, were little
souls at play.
"Good morning," said Gud.
The soul stared up at him in most incredulous manner and replied; "I
thought they were all dead."
With much patient questioning, Gud wrested from this soul, alone in a
vast heaven--save for the little souls that played most idiotically upon
the grass--a tale of a paradise gone wrong because of a theological
blunder.
It was a tedious tale and she who sat knitting there upon the purple
rock told it to Gud in broken fragments of narration. First she related
how the place had been peopled by all the host of souls passed over from
a certain muddy sphere, and who came to this heaven as the result of
faith in a most liberal theology that promised universal salvation to
saint alike with sinner.
And so they all in one triumphal procession came to claim the rewards
and demand the fulfillment of the promises. And yet they had not
tarried--none but she who told the tale and the bevy of little tumbling
spirits, who were none other than the souls of idiotic babes born into
their material world of long ago, deaf and blind as they were imbecile.
Gud suspected, even as the tale unfolded, that there had been some
fearful blunder in the promises; and right enough he was, for the ninth
promise of their creed had been, "Then ye shall know the truth."
So all the myriads of saved souls, who had cherished the promises, had
come to know the truth as it had been promised them. When they arose in
glittering gowns and halos bright upon that Resurrection Morn and
started singing, one by one and then by twos and tens and soon by scores
and thousands they remembered all that they had wished to know of all
their pasts and ponderings. And to their minds, reborn to omniscience of
the truth of what had been as it had really been, came also the memories
of what they thought had been.
The books of hymns had fallen from their hands, and voices lost the key
and shrieked in agony. Insane ravings, babblings and cursing smote the
air of heaven. Chaos reigned supreme and all the hosts of heaven went
raving mad and babbled as they raved.