At first Eline longed to tell the world of better things. She would
gladly have told the world of the glorious masonry of those noble cities
which she saw in her visions--cities where men and women moved like gods;
where sorrow and want and selfishness seemed to be unknown. She longed
to tell them of the harmonies which came to her of music which might
stir a dead world to life, thrilling all nature into blossoms and fruits
in abundance, as the music of a waterfall seems to send life into the
flowers which grow beside. She would have told them of the colors with
which nature loves to paint the sky, the mountains and valleys, sea and
land, when all is ready for the master's work. For nature paints
wherever the canvas is prepared to receive the picture, and she asks no
price for her work. Eline knew of times in the past--times that will come
again--when man did not ever strive to be rich regardless of his poorer
brothers, but each worked as he was able, all working for the whole
world's good. And she would have told them how in those times man did
not earn his living by toil unending, by ceaseless pain and sorrow, but
that nature helped him as he helped her, and the earth brought out her
stores of rich fruits for the welfare of her upgrown sons, well knowing
that they in turn with loving service would seek to make nobler and
better that which nature gave to them in charge, birds and beasts,
flowers and trees, plants and stones and all that lives--which is
everything.
Eline saw how the desire to possess more than enough, for the selfish
pleasure of saying, "It is mine!"--how the growth of selfishness in the
world; the love of killing nature's younger sons for food and pleasure
increased; how the love of ease and forgetfulness of others and of duty
to mother nature--how all these things had chilled the warmth of the one
great life that is in all things, and crippled the mother's efforts to
help her wayward sons.
Others had told these things; others had striven to show the glorious
light of life that shines behind the cold mist of sin and sorrow which
has been cast like a veil over the earth; but all had been rejected.
Some were ill-received; some were stoned; some were killed.
"How can I raise this humanity which like a great orphan has cut itself
off from its mother and now lies ignorant of the happiness that awaits
its coming?" thought Eline. "I have returned to tell them of the way,
and they will not hear. Others have returned as far as they might and
have been rejected. Others still have boldly plunged deeper yet in the
hot sea of human life and have been lost in its poisonous fumes. Even
so, I will again return, yet lower, if by chance there be a few who will
not reject my message."