Farewells are spoken. The _voyageurs_ are again a-wing. They reach the
Arctic along the vast Siberian coast. There the cold is most intense,
and of the frozen regions it is the wildest and grandest. A shimmering
light seems to permeate it ever, even in its darkest periods. The
ice presents plains, abysses, mountains. Everywhere are the débris
of long-frozen animals. Over its dry waste of congealed waters, the
fierce blasts, as if by frictional action on its rugged surfaces, ever
generate electrical phenomena. In midwinter and darkness, scintillating
flashes gleam along them in the nether air. Such was their vision.
The disembodied, as one startled, exclaims: “See yon iceberg like a
mountain of glass. What is that within it? It resembles the carcass of
a dead animal, but it is too huge. It is at least sixty feet long, and
of elephantine proportions.”
_Immortal._--“It is an ancient specimen of the behemoth (B’Hemoth)
tribes. Its species is extinct. Its bulk is many times that of
the mastodon. Its massive ivory tusks are similar to those of the
walrus. Its remains have been frozen in there for thousands of years.
Putrescence is here unknown.”
_Mortal._--“What wonders! Can this be nature?”
_Immortal._--“We are approaching others.”
_Mortal._--“Yes, look! What a vast lizard or crocodile yonder
encased--five hundred feet long! But I see fins, also.”
_Immortal._--“It is of the primeval species of _sauroid_ fish. It
has been frozen during cycles of time. This region was once warmer.
Nature’s changeful developments are a curious mystery to man, but it
ever unfolds in increasing knowledge.”
They wheel southward--anon traverse Chinese Tartary--sweep over the
Chinese wall, and alight in Pekin. They poise themselves on a lofty
pagoda.
_Mortal._--“These Chinese are a mysterious people. I am curious about
them. That wall was a great enterprise in its day, and a singular one.”
_Immortal._--“They are a swarm from an ancient human hive, and have
long been numerous and astute. They have been, and are superior to
the average of mankind, but inferior to the more illumined and most
cultivated. Their numbers and limited geographic sphere have made
them feel want; yet their inventions, although multiplied, have been
petty, fanciful, crude and clumsy contrivances to meet emergency, in
comparison with the grander discoveries and more studied and beautiful
designs of other and higher civilizations. _Necessity_ has stimulated
their cunning, but precludes their reflection; it has pinched their
faculties, as the ‘iron shoe’ has their feet. Their mental contraction
has been rendered more compressive by their moral and spiritual
defects. They have had no conception of a God, _per se_. It is the
conception which most expands man!”
_Mortal._--“But this pagoda (truly it is a grotesque structure!) is a
temple devoted to some worship.”
_Immortal._--“It is a fane of the merest idolatry, and dedicated to
idols, ‘of the earth, earthly,’ not to any images which are even
typical of divine _essences_. But of this, anon.”
_Mortal._--“The Chinese have, however, a demi-god--their ‘Celestial
Emperor.’”
_Immortal._--“Yes, he is their immediate authority, temporal and
spiritual. Yet he and his mandarins, alike with his subjects, are
constrained, by the dominancy of twenty-four centuries of veneration
for the great Chinese philosopher and moralist, Koong-Foo-tse,
(latinized, Confucius,) to worship in the temples dedicated to that
extraordinary statesman and expounder. This pagoda is one of these
temples, which have been reared in all chief cities and towns.
His ‘nine books’ constitute the creed and code--the bible--of the
‘Celestial Empire,’ and you will deem it a singular fact that they
contain no mention of a Creator--no allusion to God.”
_Mortal._--“It is indeed strange for so intelligent a people. All other
peoples have some kind of a belief and worship of a Supreme Being.
Hark! I hear sounds from below--I hear chants!”
_Immortal._--“Yes, they are from the Emperor and his court, performing
idol-service, offering fruits, wines, flowers and fancy articles, and
now singing chants. We will witness their return to the palace, and
then visit them.”
Soon the vision embraced a scene of Oriental pomp--a pageant, with
its ceremonies, gorgeous displays and vain-glorious crudities. This
narrative must dispense with the description, nor could the reader be
made to receive the impression produced on the visitor from the West,
while gazing on the dramas of the East.
His Celestial Majesty--“brother of the sun and cousin of the stars”--is
now enthroned in his extended residence, amid princely persons,
political potentates and priestly dignitaries, surrounded by every
burnishment and administered to by varied flattery and all servility.
The _voyageurs_ suddenly appear before and among them.
_Emperor._--“Ha! what means this intrusion? Chamberlain of the Palace,
accursed Mandarin! you shall lose your life for this. How came these
persons into the Celestial Presence without permission and the salaam
reverences? Hold! they have wings! Can they be Celestial? Spirit of
Koong-Foo-tse! come, protect, guard us! Let all the great gongs be
beaten! let dreadful sounds frighten them away!”
The Immortal, with a gesture, awes all into silence and composure.
_American to Emperor._--“Man, what mean these presumptions? What does
your ridiculous and despotic power claim?”
_Emperor._--“Not read the ‘Books!’ Read them. My power is immemorial
and supreme. Yang and Yn, time and Koong-Foo-tse have founded it--yes,
founded it on the analogy of parental authority, which they declare
absolute. The nation is my family, and I am its father. I am sole
entitled ruler, and I am--holy and sacred! Nor will I have contact with
strangers and barbarians.”
_American._--“What means he? What of Confucius?”
_Immortal._--“Confucius was a Chinaman, who lived 550 years before
Christ. He was a teacher of morals, rather than a founder of religion.
For those dark ages, he was an extraordinary man; he was great as
a philosopher, a moralist and a statesman. He made no pretence to
inspiration. He inculcated the training of the physical system. The
five elements, fire, water, wood, metal and earth (he called them
_Kings_) were the basis of his system of philosophy. He maintained that
the universe was generated by the union of two _material_ principles--a
heavenly and an earthly--Yang and Yn--but there is no mention of a
Creator in his system. Man, he asserted, fell from purity and happiness
by his own act; and by his own act he can or must recover them. His
political system, which is one of pure despotism, has been give by the
Emperor. Spirit of Koong-Foo-tse, come forth!”
The apparition of Confucius here takes visible shape, and startles the
assembly. The other or American immaterialized human, addresses him:
“Confucius, thy soul has now learned wisdom. How is it, that in life
your great reason did not perceive and conceive that there must be and
was a Being, all wise, all powerful, all good, eternal, and with His
infinity universally present--the God and Creator?”
_Confucius._--“_I had no revelation!_”
_Immortal._--“Creation itself suggests and proves a Creator; it is His
greatest revelation. The dual-elements in man (mind and matter,) should
recognize His existence and essence.”
_Confucius._--“I dimly perceived that there were _two_ principles, but
not precisely those of good and evil. _I did not reason sufficiently at
large. I thought only of earth, not of religion; of the material, not
the divine._ Zoroaster surpassed me in these regards.”
_American._--“Emperor, the hand-writing of destroying Fate is on your
wall. The hands of hundred of millions will pull it down. God will
send light, by the invading influence of the ‘outside barbarians’ of
the far West, to scatter the darkness from your land. Your dynasty is
doomed.”
The spectre of Confucius nods confirmation, and disappears.
The _voyageurs_ pass out, and soar into the air.
Intense cimmerian darkness now seems to prevail everywhere, and the
aerialists see themselves, as it were from a distance, flying as
illumined transparent shapes through it. Afar off, and in another land,
there is seen a small luminous spot on the horizon.
“What is yon bright object?”
“It is the ‘Temple of the Sun.’”
The speed of thought brings them to its full view. They swoop down; and
pause in riveted contemplation of the sublime pile.
What a house, built by supposed hands! It is a structure from masses
of the purest crystal; a mile long; two-thirds of a mile broad; a
half-mile high to its eaves. A steeple, itself of a mile’s height
and of beautiful proportions, towers with a superb aplomb a mile and
a half above its front base. It is radiant with a whitish internal
illumination, that shoots its apex of light upward to the dark
empyrean. Over a central point of the temple, a third distance from
its rear, a lofty dome uplifts in grand majesty its imposing symmetry,
and from which hangs pendent within, a vast globular light resembling
and sacred to the sun, permeating and illuming with its golden rays
the mighty mass. The double-tinted splendor of the _tout ensemble_,
thrilled with rapture even an immortal soul! Above the dome, and from a
staff like the lightning’s streak, floated a tri-colored _oriflamme_--a
rainbow flag.
“One tint was of the sunbeam’s dyes,
“One the blue depth of seraph’s eyes,
“One, the pure spirit’s veil of white
“Had robed in radiance of its light;
“The three so mingled did beseem
“The texture of a heavenly dream.”
The occasion is a holy period to a people in southern Asia, of whom
tens of thousands throng the columned interior. The flying visitors
enter. Their eyes are instantly attracted upward to the high-vaulted
ceiling, appearing like a slightly concaved sky, and of a deep cerulean
hue, studded with stars (mystic phenomenon!) as if in deference to
night.
In the centre of the vast tessellated floor is a colossal opalescent
human statue, typical of and dedicated to the God of Light, seated
on a purple throne bordered with plates of gold--the whole eight
hundred feet high, and the figure in a commanding attitude, and as
dispensing wisdom and exacting reverence. A space around it is paled
by a balustrade of sapphire. Behind it, on the wall to the East, is
pictured in marvellous glory the rising sun. In its front, outside
the sapphire enclosure and toward an entrance in the West, is a broad
low altar of polished granite. On it are piled votive offerings of
flowers--creatures of the sun.
Emblematic frescoes of light in varying hues, play over and adorn every
portion of the wondrous edifice.
The countless throng pressing from many entrances, with faces turned
upward to the Idol, and with odorless flambeaux aloft in their right
hands, chanted,
“Fire! Genial Fire! Glorious Fire!
Element of light! Hail, Father Sun!”
The flying companions had already taken their station in the space
reserved around the Colossus, and near his feet.
_Immortal._--“This has degenerated into Fire Worship--another form
of Materialism. The wretches adore the emblems, but know not their
meaning. Silence! Attention!!”
The people in awe put their left hands over their eyes, and kneel with
bowed heads. All the lights, large and small, become dim and wan; an
ominous twilight prevails.
_Immortal._--“Zoroaster, in the name of Light appear!”
The apparition of Zoroaster stands before them.
_Immaterialized American._--“I have heard of him, but what of him?”
_Immortal._--“Zoroaster or Zurdusht was a great thinker, who lived in
primeval times; computed by Aristotle to be about six thousand years
before the death of Plato. He was born in ancient Bactria. He was
the founder of the Magian religion, which prevailed long before the
Medo-Persian monarchy. His doctrines are set forth in the book called
_Zendavesta_. The _first being_ (according to that transcript) is
denominated ‘Time without bounds;’ thus showing on the part of Zurdusht
a vague perception of the Eternal One. His creed maintains that from
the operation of this ‘infinite Time,’ the two active principles of the
universe were produced from all eternity, Ormuzd (representing _good_)
and Ahriman, (representing _evil_,) each disposed to exercise his
_powers_ of _creation_ in different ways. The first formed man capable
of virtue; the latter, changed into _darkness_ from _light_, introduced
evil.”
“Zurdusht taught that, at the last day, Ormuzd would triumph.”
_American._--“I see. Zoroaster compared the _two principles_ to Light
and Darkness, and to each attributed _creative_ power. And now that I
reflect, I note that dual-elements of some kind, material or spiritual,
and associated with the idea of _good_ and _evil_, are averred in most
religious creeds. It is the great mystery!”
_Immortal._--“Zurdusht, speak!”
_Zoroaster._--“Death further opened my finite eyes. There are not _two
discordant essences_ nor TWO CREATIVE POWERS. The One God is the One
Creator. He alone can solve the inscrutability of Evil.”
The lights die out. Sounds cease. The temple disappears. Utter darkness
ensues. A sudden murmured exclamation of wonder arises from countless
beings, enshrouded in the night. The Heavens above have opened; an
amazing glory of radiance shines through them, amid which “the great
White Throne” and “He who sitteth thereon” are seen, and His resounding
voice utters to the Universe: I AM THE LIGHT!