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THE GRAVE BETWEEN US

M|M ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

TAL BAUER
This novel contains scenes of graphic & intense violence, gore, and mature sexual
content.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Tal
Bauer, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and
certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Edited by Alicia Z. Ramos
Copyright © 2021 Tal Bauer
Cover Art by Rocking Book Covers © Copyright 2021
Published in 2021 by Tal Bauer
United States of America
“Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or
harmful people, but it's not practical. There are no
stereotypes.”

“I just liked to kill. I wanted to kill.”

TED BUNDY
 CONTENTS

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28

Excerpt from The Night Of

Also By Tal Bauer
Stay in Touch!
Acknowledgments
 PROLOGUE

COLE SCRAPED at the dark soil, fingers sliding through the dirt. His
breath fogged in front of his face, puffs that kept time with the
frantic, terrified pants he couldn’t hold in. Mist hung between the
thick tree trunks, wet, frigid claws that scratched down his spine.
“Please, please…” he whimpered. “Please, no.”
His fingertips hit cold skin. He stilled, breath sliding from him like
the blade of a knife.
His trembling hand brushed the loose earth away from the man’s
face. He knew this face, knew it better than he knew his own. Dirt
was clumped in the corners of the eyes and stuck to the cheekbones
in long, slender lines, clinging to tear tracks. The blue lips were
parted, the tip of the tongue jutting outward.
Cole held his breath and pushed two fingers into the man’s
mouth. He knew what he’d find.
There. Pinching, he drew back. His vision blurred as he stared at
the folded paper crane.
He screamed as he fell forward, crumpling the crane in his fist as
rested his cheek against Noah’s cold lips. How many times had Noah
lain against him, and he’d felt the rise and fall of Noah’s chest or his
warm exhales against his face or his hair? Now, Noah was still, and
nothing was coming out of his lips ever again.
Bugling honks broke through the woods. He turned his head and
gazed right. Nestled in the fog was a lake, as still a mirror, almost
black beneath the leaden fog. Cranes crossed the surface, flying in a
V, their silent wings slicing the heavy forest air. He opened his palm
and stared at the paper crane he’d crushed.
He turned back to Noah. Cradled Noah’s cold cheek in his palm.
Wiped the dirt away from Noah’s tearstained temples. He pressed his
lips to Noah’s, his tears falling on Noah’s frigid skin as he wished,
with everything he had, that Noah would kiss him back, that his
arms would rise out of his shallow grave and wrap around Cole, hold
on to him like he used to.
Nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” Cole whispered against Noah’s death-pale skin.
“It’s my fault—”
Cole’s eyes burst open as he sucked in a short, sharp breath. He
was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, at the slow circles the
ceiling fan carved through the midnight stillness. He reached to the
right, groping between the bedsheets and across the mattress for his
lover.
Noah snorted as Cole grabbed his hip. He reached for Cole in his
sleep, tangling their fingers together and tugging Cole toward him.
Cole went, rolling and melting into Noah’s back, burying his face in
the short strands of hair behind Noah’s ear. His heart was galloping,
beating so hard he thought he’d wake Noah.
Noah murmured some nonsense and kissed Cole’s hand. A
moment later, he snored, boneless in Cole’s trembling hold.
Cole waited, counting the seconds and then the minutes as he
stared at their bedroom wall, not blinking. If he blinked, if he closed
his eyes for even a moment, he’d see the grave again. The woods.
The lake.
He lifted his hand, staring at his palm. He could still feel the
paper crane tickling his skin.
 CHAPTER ONE

IT HAPPENED BY ACCIDENT. One of life’s coincidences, where

inertia and circumstance connect people who are meant to be
together. It had begun years before, when he’d first met Cole in a
stifling interrogation room.
At the time, Cole’s visits had been the only bright spots in the
dreary monotony of Ian’s incarceration. He’d stared at his cell walls
day in and day out and felt them closing in. Not even replaying each
of his kills in the darkness behind his eyelids had made his heart
flutter. What was the point of fantasy if he could never wrap his
hands around another man’s neck? Never feel the life fade away, see
the panic in another man’s eyes spike and then dissipate, like mist
burning off under the sun?
Then Cole had appeared. Agent Kennedy. So young he still
seemed to fluoresce neon green. Ian wanted to crawl across the
room and pin Cole back, knock him to the ground and kneel on his
chest, get his hands in Cole’s hair and his nose and his lips on Cole’s
skin, on the delicate, paper-thin flutter of flesh between jawbone
and neck. He wanted to smell Cole, inhale the essence of him. The
smell of his fear, beneath the soap and the deodorant and the
laundry detergent. The smell the dogs tracked.
Young, eager Cole Kennedy, working on his doctorate, newly out
of Quantico. So motivated to crack the mind of the FBI’s most
intriguing serial murderer.
 How many months had they spent together? Days and nights lost
their meaning, and Cole’s eyes became the sun and the moon Ian’s
world orbited around. Cole’s voice, replaying in his mind, his
memories changing until Cole was whispering in Ian’s ears, saying
the things Ian wanted to hear more than anything else. Things Cole
would never say. At least, not willingly. What would Cole feel like
under him? He’d wondered, so many, many times.
The only drawback to his escape eight years ago was that it
ended his days with Cole.
Six months ago, he’d landed in Iowa. New hunting grounds,
where he could pick and pluck the men he needed, the perfect ones,
when he felt that buzz in his fingers, the hum in his veins. That
hunger, a desperate, howling need, the kind he quenched when he
had his hands wrapped around a throat and felt a body struggling
beneath him.
Suddenly—like a lightning strike—there Cole was again.
It had been a perfect January Saturday, the air crisp and brittle,
the taste of fresh snow from the night before on his tongue. He’d
been at the base lodge at Seven Oaks, a postage-stamp-sized ski
and snowboard hillside north of Des Moines. To others, he appeared
to be people watching, maybe waiting on a wife or a child to finish
their day frolicking in the snow.
He’d been hunting, actually. Watching the herds move on and off
the ski lifts, careen down the snowy hillsides.
He let his eyes linger on the single men. Alone. Isolated. Ledges
State Park was due south, a perfect place to take a man and a car.
Ditch the car and take the life. Only the right man, though.
Ian heard Cole’s voice before he saw him.
He’d never forget that voice. It still echoed in all his empty
places.
He searched the crowds, scanning and discarding faces left and
right, until he found the tall blond man helping a young woman on a
snowboard to her feet. He was laughing, and so was a dark-haired
man, older than Cole, standing beside him and helping the girl up as
well. They both had their hands on her elbows, steadying her. Both
had smiles stretching their ruddy cheeks. Both were laughing.
 There was something about the way they stood. Angled together,
as if they’d just broken apart to catch the girl. They’d been holding
hands. He was sure of it.
The girl’s long brunette hair was braided in pigtails, the ends
poking out from beneath a knit beanie. She was squawking,
grasping the two men with both hands as her snowboard slid out
beneath her. She was sixteen, maybe. He’d never been good at
guessing young girls’ ages. He didn’t have experience looking their
way, letting his eyes travel over their features. For a man like him,
any girl under twenty might as well have been fifteen or eleven.
Was she Cole’s daughter? No. It had only been eight years since
he’d seen Cole. Cole had been young and single back then. Painfully
single, if the hours he showed up at the prison were any indication.
No boyfriend or husband to go home to, no child he had to tuck in at
night, whisper “Sweet dreams” to as he kissed her brow.
She was the older man’s child, then.
Older man. About the same age as Ian, now. Jealousy slid up his
spine. He hissed, almost crumpling his paper coffee cup.
Tell me, do you like your men a little bit older, Cole?
Eight years where he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Cole, and on a
bright, sunny day, Cole reappeared in his life. Happy, laughing, and
with an older man and a young girl. He’d made himself a family.
Ian watched as they steadied the girl and led her back to the
bunny slope. She turned around and waved as she stood on the
moving carpet that took her up the gentle hill. Cole sagged into the
older man, who threw an arm around Cole’s shoulders and buried his
face in the crook of Cole’s neck. They were laughing again.
So happy. So fucking happy together.
Ian watched the girl bobble down the hill, arms straight out,
teetering left and right until she reached the bottom. She was
heading straight for Cole and the other man, and she clearly had no
idea how to stop. She screamed and then pitched backward, landing
on her ass in a puff of snow at their feet. And the routine of helping
her up began again.
So fucking happy.
 He’d waited for an hour, watching—
cravingyearningscreamingragingneeding—until a man coming off
the cross-country ski trails stopped at the base area. Ian’s gaze
lasered to the man, taking him in micron by micron. He felt the
quickening, the heat curling through his blood. He followed the skier
into the parking lot, ditching his coffee cup on the way and making a
show of looking for his keys. The man glanced at him and then away
as he strapped his skis to the roof of his car.
It took nothing at all to come up behind him, to subdue him and
bring him down silently. To push him into the back seat of his own
car, restrain his hands and legs in plastic ties as he lay unconscious
on the cold bench seat. Ian was out of the parking lot and driving
the man’s car south, to Ledges, in under a minute.

IT WAS ALL WRONG.

He’d started the day needing to scratch that itch. He’d needed
his moment, his hit, his rush, and instead had found the last thing—
the last man—he’d ever expected. The skier was supposed to plug
the chasm that had opened inside him when he saw Cole, like
shoving chicken bones down a drain to block the deluge.
The man didn’t sound like Cole. He didn’t whimper the way Cole
would if Ian were thrusting inside him. He’d had time to imagine
how Cole would sound, unfurl the fantasy in his mind, all those days
and nights over the past eight years.
Ian fell into the past and into the darkness as he growled, as he
thrust. The darkness of a grave, water spilling over the muddy sides,
soaking dead skin and swirling in eddies inside open eyes and
mouths. His mind kept flashing back to Cole. Haughty, arrogant Cole.
Delicious, delectable Cole. The way he’d smelled, the brief taste he’d
managed to steal that day by the lake.
Cole laughing. Cole smiling. Cole holding hands with that dark-
haired older man. Cole across the interrogation table from him,
hungry eyes searching inside Ian, trying to unlock all his secrets.
Both of Cole’s hands moving over that pencil, over wood and #2
graphite. A young man’s nerves, encased in steel but betrayed by his
fingers.
Memories shook his world, made the center of the sun tremble.
Snow puffed around the man’s face, screams rising as Ian squeezed
tighter. The universe narrowed, focused down to the rush and the
tremble of the man beneath him, a fish dying on Ian’s line. He
whispered Cole’s name into the skier’s hair, and everything went
white, his mind going nova as heat emptied from him—and for an
instant, the hunger poured out of him while the man thrashed and
weakened and then, finally, went still.
Ian breathed him in, nose buried in the sweaty hair at the nape
of the skier’s neck.
Cole.
Wrong, all wrong. That wasn’t the scent he’d held on to for eight
years. That wasn’t Cole beneath him.
His rush left as fast as it came, darkness and disgust sliding on
its heels. Not what he’d wanted. Not even close. He sighed, pushing
off the back of the man’s still head.
There was no substitute for Cole. He’d been a fool to believe
that.
What would it be like to take Cole? What would Cole’s fear taste
like? Not his youthful nerves. True fear. The slick heat of terror. The
stink of it. Ian could almost imagine it, but the true essence eluded
him, a shape in darkness or a shadow at midnight. There was
nothing he could compare to Cole.
So many different layers to fear. So many different permutations.
Different vectors that led straight to the quick. He’d poked at Cole’s
psyche all those years ago, had tried to stir those primal fears inside
his young mind.
Back then, Cole had so much less to lose.
A teen girl. A dark-haired man. So much fucking happiness.
Ian closed his eyes and imagined Cole spread in front of him.
Tied down. Pleading. Terror soaking him. Would he cry? Maybe. If
Ian was good enough, he could taste Cole’s salt.
 He stirred, his erection rising again. This time he held his breath
so the skier’s wrong scent couldn’t invade his mind, ruin the fantasy.
This time, behind his eyelids, it was Cole beneath him. He savored
the moment, running his touch up and down the cooling form. And
when he came, he breathed Cole’s name, shuddering as he pushed
his forehead between the man’s still, cold shoulder blades.
He gave himself another minute, letting the aftershocks quake
through him, before he pulled back and tucked himself away. He sat
on the skier’s legs as he pulled out a square of paper from his jacket
pocket. After so many years, he could fold these birds in seconds.
Ian grabbed the skier’s hair and lifted his face out of the snow.
His mouth was open, frozen in a scream, and it was easy to tuck the
crane inside his cold lips, deep into the dark hollow. He pushed the
jaw closed after. Rigor would take care of the rest.
Now, it was time to get to the grave.
Other documents randomly have
different content
nature. We are made joint-heirs with Christ, and sons of God by
adoption, not by nature.

There is no act conceivable without principle, medium, and end. In

the creation of man and the universe, the three persons of the holy
and indivisible Trinity concur, but in diverse respects—the Father as
principle, the Son or Word as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end
or consuminator. In the regeneration, which St. Paul calls a "new
creation," the whole Trinity also concur, the Father as principle, the
Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end, consummator, or
sanctifier; but here it is the Son in his human nature, not in his
divine nature, that is the medium; for St. Paul says, "There is one
God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The Son, in his human nature, is the medium of the whole order of
regeneration, or of our redemption, new birth, and return to God as
our final cause or last end. We must then be begotten of him in his
humanity by the Holy Ghost, as the condition of being born into the
regeneration, and becoming members of the regenerated human
race. The heterodox overlook this fact, and even when asserting
the incarnation, leave it no office in the regeneration and
sanctification of souls, or, at best, no continuous or permanent
office. According to them, the mediatorial work was completed
when Christ died on the cross, at least, when he ascended into
heaven; and now the salvation of souls is carried on by the Holy
Ghost without any medium or any participation of God in his
human nature, as if one person of the indivisible Trinity could
operate alone, without the concurrence of the other two! This, if it
were possible, would imply the denial of the unity of God, and the
assertion of the three persons of the Godhead as three Gods, not
three persons in one God. The heterodox, the supernaturalists, as
well as the naturalists, really deny the whole order of grace as
proceeding from God in his human nature, its only possible
medium, and hence the reason why they so universally shrink from
calling Mary the Mother of God, and accuse of idolatry the devotion
which Catholics pay to her. Though the eternal Word took the flesh
he assumed from her, yet, as that flesh is not in their view the
medium of our spiritual life, they cannot see in her, more than in
any other pure and holy woman, any connection with our
regeneration, and our spiritual or eternal life. They cannot see that,
in denying her claims, they virtually reject the whole Christian
order.

The difficulty, though not the mystery, disappears the moment we

recognize the sacramental principle, which it was the prime object
of the Reformers to eliminate from the Christian system. In the
definition of the church, she is said to be "the society of the faithful
baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in
the participation of the same sacraments." The sacraments are all
visible signs signifying, that is, communicating grace to the
recipient. Among these sacraments is one, which is the sacrament
of faith, the sacrament of regeneration, that is, baptism, in which
we receive the gift of faith, and are born members of Christ's body,
and united to him as our head, and as the head of the regenerated
race. In baptism we are regenerated, born into the supernatural
order, the kingdom of heaven, and have the life of Christ infused by
the Holy Ghost into us, so that henceforth we become flesh of his
flesh, bone of his bone, one with him, and one with all the faithful
in him, as really united to him in the spiritual order, as we are to
Adam in the natural order, and derive our spiritual life from him as
really as we derive from God, through Adam, our natural life. This
is what we understand St. Paul to mean when he says, "It is
written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam
a quickening spirit." The sacraments are all effective ex opere
operato, and through them the Holy Ghost infuses the grace
special to each, when the recipient opposes no obstacle to it.
Infants are incapable of offering any obstacle, and are regenerated
by baptism in Christ and joined to him. In the case of adults who
have grown up without faith, the prohibentia, or obstacles to
faith, must be removed, by reasons that convince the
understanding and produce what theologians call fides humama,
or human faith, such faith as we have in the truth of historical
events; but this faith is wholly in the natural order, although it
embraces things in the supernatural order as its material object,
and does not at all unite us to Christ as our head. It brings us,
when faithful to our convictions, to the sacrament of baptism, but
cannot introduce us into the order of regeneration; the faith that
unites us to the body of Christ, and through it with Christ himself,
or divine faith, is the gift of God, and is infused into the soul by the
Holy Ghost in the sacrament of baptism itself. [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Theologians generally teach that an act of

supernatural faith, elicited by the aid of a special
transient grace, precedes the infusion of the habit of
faith.—Ed. Catholic World.]

Hence, in her present state, only the baptized belong to the society
called the church of Christ, and only the baptized are united as one
body under Christ, their head in heaven, or under his vicar on
earth. The satisfaction or atonement made by our Lord to divine
justice, though it was made for all, and is ample for the sins of the
whole world, avails individuals, or becomes practically theirs, only
as through baptism, vel in re, vel in voto, they are really united
to Him, and are in Him as their head, as we were in Adam; and
hence the dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, judged by the
world to be so harsh and illiberal, is founded in the very nature and
design of the church, of the whole mediatorial work of Christ, and
in the very reason of the incarnation itself. To say a man can be
saved out of the church, is saying simply a man can be saved out
of Christ, without being born of Him,—as impossible as for one to
be a man and, in humanity, without being born of Adam. The
justice, the sanctity, the merits, the life of Christ, can be really
ours, only as we are really assimilated to His body, and are in Him
as our living head, our Father in the order of grace; and hence it
was not idly or inconsiderately, that St. Cyprian, one of the
profoundest of the fathers, said: "He cannot have God for his
father, who has not the church for his mother." It lies in the very
nature of the case.
The other sacraments are channels of grace from the head to the
body and its members; and are all means of sustaining or restoring
the life begotten in baptism, preserving, diffusing, or defending the
faith, bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord, augmenting
the life and compacting the union of the body of Christ, and
solacing individuals in their illnesses, and comforting and
strengthening souls in their passage through the dark valley of
death. The sacramental system is complete, and provides for all our
spiritual wants. Baptism initiates us into the life of Christ; the Holy
Eucharist nourishes that life in us; Penance restores it when lost by
sin; Confirmation gives strength and heroic courage to withstand
and repel the assaults of Satan; Orders provide priests for offering
the unbloody sacrifice, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ,
intercessors for the people, teachers, directors, and defenders, in
the name of Christ, of the Christian society; Matrimony institutes
and blesses the Christian family; and Extreme Unction heals the
sick, or sustains, strengthens, and consoles the departing. Indeed,
the sacraments meet all the necessities of the soul, in both the
natural and the supernatural orders, from its birth to its departure,
and even leave us not on the brink of the grave, but accompany us
till received into the choir of the just made perfect.

The medium of all sacramental grace is the Man Christ Jesus, the
Word made flesh, and the sacraments are the media through which
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows out from him, the
Fountain,—the grace that begets the new life, justifies, sanctifies,
and makes pleasing to God, we mean,—is infused by the Holy
Ghost into the soul, and constitutes alike the vital principle of the
individual, and of the whole body, quickening and sustaining each.
In rejecting sacramental grace, the heterodox separate the
individual soul, and also the church herself, from all real
communion or intercourse with Christ, or God in his human nature,
and accept the seminal principle of rationalism, into which we see
them everywhere falling. They dissolve Christ, and render the Word
efficient only in his divine nature. The sacraments are the media of
our union with God in his human nature, through which the
hypostatic union is, in some sort, repeated in us, or made by the
Holy Ghost practically effectual to the justice and sanctity of
believers, and the perfecting of the church, which is the body of
Christ; and as this grace, in its principle and medium, is Christ
himself, all who are born of it are born of him, and the life which
they live in and by it is the one life of God in his humanity. Looking
at the church, in what theologians call her soul, she is literally and
truly the man Christ Jesus, and looking at her as the whole
congregation of the faithful, she is the body of Christ, and related
to him as the body to the soul. It is this intimate relation of the
church to God in his human nature, that led Moehler to represent
the church as in some sort the continuation on earth, in a visible
form, of the Incarnation; and she is certainly so closely united to
his divine personality, that we may say truly, that he is her
personality, as really as he is the personality of the flesh he
assumed and hypostatically united to himself. Perrone says that, if
we exclude from this view all pantheistic conceptions, it is
scriptural, and, moreover, sustained by the fathers, especially St.
Athanasius, who says, in writing of the Incarnation, "Et cum Petrus
dicat: certissime sciat ergo omnis domus Israel, quia et Dominum
eum, et Christum fecit Deus, hunc Jesum quern vos crucifixistis:
non de divinitate ejus dicit, quod Dominum ipsum et Christum
fuerit, sed de humanitate ejus, quae est UNIVERSA ECCLESIA, quae
in ipso dominatur et regnat, postquam crucifixus ipse est: et quae
erigitur ad regnum coelorum, ut cum illa regnet, qui seipsum pro
illa exinanivit et qui induta servili forma, ipsam assumpsit."
[Footnote 72] Christ, in his humanity, is the universal church, which
rules and reigns in him. We cannot study the great fathers of the
church too assiduously, and we wish we had earlier known it. The
doctrine we are trying to set forth is there.

[Footnote 72: Edit. Maur. opp. tom. i. p. 2, p. 887; apud

Perrone, Praelect. Locis Theolog. p. I. c. 2; De Anima
Ecclesiae, Art. I.]

There is nothing here that favors pantheism:

 1. Because the hypostatic union is by the creative act of God, as
much so as the creation of Adam.
2. Because, although God is really the church, regarded in her
soul, it is God in his human, which is for ever distinct from his
divine nature, and therefore in his created nature.
3. Because the Word was incarnated in an individual, not in the
species, as some rationalists dream, save as the species was
individualized in the individual nature he assumed; and,
4. Because, though Christ is identically the soul, the informing
principle, the life of the church, the individuals affiliated to the
body of the church retain their individuality, their human
personality, and therefore their own free-will, personal identity,
activity, or their character as free moral agents.

Not all individuals apparently affiliated to the body of the church

are really assimilated to her, and vitally united to the body of
Christ. They pertain to the society externally, but not by an inward
union with Christ, the head and soul. They are, as St. Augustine
says, "in not of the church," as the dead particles of matter in the
human body which receive not, or have ceased to receive, life from
it, and are constantly flying or cast off. Gratia supponit naturam.
All the operations of grace presuppose nature, and nature has
always the power to resist grace. Without grace nature cannot
concur with grace; yet even they who have been born again, and
have entered into the order of regeneration, are always able to fall
away, or back, practically, into the natural order. Not every
individual in the church is assimilated to her, nor every one who is
assimilated to her will continue to the end. But she herself survives
their loss and remains always one and the same body of Christ.

We have dwelt at great length on this view of the church, not

because we have any special partiality or aptitude for mystic
theology, but because we have wished to show that the church is
not something purely external and arbitrary. We hold that all the
works of God are real, and have a real and solid reason of being in
the order of things which he has seen proper to create. He does
nothing in the supernatural order, any more than in the natural
order, without a reason, and a good and valid reason. We have
wished to get at the reality, and to show that Catholicity is not a
sham, a make-believe, a reputing of things to be that are not; but
a reality, as real in its own order as the order of nature itself, and,
in fact, even more so, as nature is mimetic, and Catholicity, to
borrow a term from Plato, is methexic, and participates of the
divine reality itself. All heterodox systems are shams,
unphilosophical, sophistical, and incapable of sustaining a rigid
examination. Their abettors do not, and dare not, reason on them.
The age supposes Catholicity is no better, is equally unsubstantial,
unreal, dissolving and vanishing in thin air at the first glance of
reason. We have wished to show the age its mistake, and to let it
see that Catholicity can bear the most thorough investigation, and
that it has nothing to fear from the most rigid dialectics. We do not
pretend to divest it of mysteries, or to explain the mysteries so as
to bring them within the comprehension of our feeble
understandings, but to show that the church, with all her attributes
and functions, has a reason in the divine mind and in the order of
things of which we make a part, and is a real, inward life, as well
as an outward form.

From the view of the church which we have presented, it is easy to

deduce her attributes. She is in some sort, according to St.
Athanasius, the human nature of Christ, or Christ in his humanity,
and he is her divine personality, for his humanity is inseparable
from his divine person. That she is one, follows, necessarily, from
the unity of Christ's person, from the fact that, in her soul, she is
Christ and, in her body, is his body. Her unity is the unity of Christ
himself, and the unity of the life she lives in him. There are
individual distinctions and even varieties of race or family among
men in the natural order, but all men are men only in that they are
one in the unity of the species. Jesus Christ is not only the
individual man Christ Jesus, but also in the order of regeneration
the species, as Adam was both an individual man and the entire
species in the order of genesis or generation. The church as
growing out of the incarnation, and, in some sense, continuing it,
and in her body composed of individuals born of him and affiliated
to him, must necessarily be one, one in her faith, one in her
sacraments, one in her worship, one in her love, one in the life that
flows through her, animates and invigorates her, from the one
Christ, who is her forma, or informing principle, as the soul is the
informing principle of the body—anima est forma corporis, as
the holy Council of Clermont defines. Diversity in any of these
respects breaks the unity of the body and interrupts communion
with the head, and the communion of the body with the soul,
whence is derived its life. It is therefore all Christians have always
held heresy and schism to be deadly sins, and the most deadly of
all. They not only sever those guilty of them from the body or
external communion of the church, but from her internal
communion, from Christ himself, the only source of supernatural
and divine life. There is not only the grossest ingratitude and
baseness in heresy and schism, but there is spiritual death in them.
By them we die to Christ as, in the natural order, we should die to
Adam, or lose our natural life, if we were deprived of our humanity
or cut off from communion with its natural head. It is not from
bigotry or intolerance that the church regards heresy and schism
with horror; it is because they necessarily separate the soul from
Christ, and destroy its spiritual life; because they reject Christ, and
crucify him afresh. It is so in the very nature of the case, and she
can no more make it not so, than the mathematician can make the
three angles of a triangle not equal to two right angles. It is not,
therefore, without reason that the church has always insisted that
to keep the unity of the faith is the first of Christian duties, or that
St. Paul bids St. Timothy to keep the deposit, and to hold fast the
form of sound words; for without the faith it is impossible to please
God. We know men may err without being heretics; we know that
invincible ignorance, an ignorance not culpable in its cause, excuses
from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but there is no
invincible ignorance where one may know the truth, but will not;
and invincible ignorance itself cannot regenerate the soul, and
elevate it to the supernatural order, which can be done only by
faith given in baptism.

The church is holy, holy in her doctrines, her worship, her life, and
in her living members. This follows necessarily from the fact, that in
her soul she is Christ, and her body the body of Christ. She is holy
as he is holy, and because he is holy, as she is one because he is
one. Doubtless all individuals in her communion are not holy; for
men may, as we have seen, be in the church and not of the
church. Regeneration, or the infused habits of faith, justice, and
sanctity, do not destroy one's individuality, or take away one's free-
will; men may, if they will, profane the sacraments, eat or drink
unworthily, even fall from grace, and become gross sinners against
God and criminals before the state. These are not holy, but the
reverse; yet all who are born again, and are united by a living bond
to the church, may derive, if they will, life from Christ through her,
and all who do so are holy in her holiness, as she is holy in the
holiness of Christ. His life, the life of God in his humanity, is their
life.

The attempt to disprove the sanctity of the church from the bad
conduct of some, if you will many, of her members, overlooks the
real character of the church, supposes her to be simply an
aggregation of individuals, living only the life she derives from
them; and it also starts from the false assumption that grace is
irresistible and inamissible. Poor Luther, in the morbid state into
which he fell in his convent, could find relief only in assuming that,
as he had once been in grace, he must be still in grace, and sure
of salvation; for grace, once had, can never be lost, however one
may sin after having received it. Yet this doctrine was false, and
but for his morbid, half insane state of mind, he would never have
entertained it for a moment. Protestantism sprang from the
diseased state of Luther's soul. A sad origin.

The church is visible as well as invisible. This also follows

necessarily. The internal life of the church is invisible, hidden with
God; but the body of the church is visible, as was the body of
Christ when on earth. The church is composed, as we have seen,
of body and soul, and everybody living on earth in space and time,
is by its own nature visible, and would not be body if it were not.
The body of the church is composed of individuals united in the
profession of the same faith, and in the participation of the same
sacraments, under one head, and is therefore, since the individuals
are visible, a visible body. The whole analogy of the case supposes
her to be both invisible and visible, as are all the sacraments, which
are visible signs or media of invisible grace. The church is the
medium through which the soul is regenerated and comes into
communion with Christ, the head, and derives life from his life; and
how if not visible could we know where to find her, or be able to
approach her sacraments, and through them be born again, and be
united in the supernatural order to Christ, as in the natural order
we are united to Adam? No: the church is as a city set on a hill,
and cannot be hidden; and is set on a hill, made visible, that all
may behold her, and flock within her walls.

The church is indefectible. This follows from the fact that Christ
himself whose body she is, is indefectible, and dies no more, but
ever liveth and reigneth. No matter whether you call the rock on
which he said he would build his church, and against which the
gates of hell shall not prevail, Peter, the truth that Peter confessed,
or Christ himself, her indefectibility is equally asserted. He himself
in every case, is the chief corner-stone, is, in the last analysis, the
rock; and the church cannot fail, not because men may not fail, but
because he who is her support, her life, cannot fail, since he is
God, and as truly God in his human nature as in his divine nature.
The heterodox of all shades, however they may err as to what she
is, hold, as we have seen, that the church is, in some form,
indefectible.

The church is authoritative. Her authority is the authority of Christ;

and his authority is the authority of God in his human nature. "All
power is given unto me," he said, "in heaven and in earth," and
therefore is he exalted to be "King of kings and Lord of lords," so
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. The church is
Christ in his humanity, and his authority is hers, for it is in and
through her that he exercises his authority. To resist her, is to resist
him, and to resist him is to resist God. "He that despiseth you,
despiseth me, and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent
me." This is no arbitrary authority, or authority resting solely on an
external commission or appointment. It is internal and real in the
church, as the body of Christ, because he is in her, lives in her, and
governs in and through her. It is, then, no light thing to resist the
authority of the church; for to do so, is not to resist the authority
of fallible men, but the authority of God—is to resist the authority
of the Holy Ghost himself. The age feels it, and seeks to justify
itself in rejecting the church by denying the Divine sovereignty, or
that God has any rightful authority over the creatures he has made.
It demands liberty, and M. Proudhon, a man of iron logic,
maintained that to assert liberty in the sense this age asserts it, we
must dethrone God, and annihilate belief in his existence. "Once
admit the existence of God," he said, "and you must admit the
authority claimed by the church, the papal despotism and all." We
have met this denial of the Divine sovereignty in the essay on
Rome and the World, in the current volume of the Magazine,
and proved, we think conclusively, that God is sovereign Lord and
Proprietor of all his works. Very few people are willing to avow
themselves atheists, however atheistic may be their speculations;
and most people have, after all, a lurking belief that God is
sovereign, and has plenary authority over all the creatures he has
made. Concede this, and the authority of the Son is conceded; and
if the authority of the Son is conceded, that of the church cannot
be denied or questioned.

The church is infallible. This follows necessarily, if our Lord himself

is infallible, which it were impious to doubt. Our Lord is God in his
human nature indeed; but God in his human nature is God no less
than in his divine nature. In this is the mystery of the incarnation—
that God should humble himself, assume the form of a servant,
annihilate himself, as it were, become man, and be obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross, and yet be God, have all the
fulness of the Godhead dwell in him bodily; this is a mystery that
only God himself can fathom. We know from revelation the fact,
and can understand its relation to our redemption, justification,
sanctification, and glorification; but it remains a fact before which
we do, and always must, stand in awe and wonder. If Christ is God,
God in his humanity and also in his divinity, for he includes both
natures in the unity of his divine person. He has all the attributes
of divinity, while he has also all the attributes of humanity, what the
fathers mean when they say, "he is perfect God and perfect man."
He knows all things, and can do all things, and can neither deceive
nor be deceived. He is the divine personality of the church, who is
not the individual man, but the human nature hypostatically united
to himself, as we have seen from St. Athanasius. His life is her life,
and she must, therefore, be infallible as he is infallible. He who is
infallible as God is infallible lives in her, and she lives, breathes,
moves, and acts by him and in him. How then, can she be not
infallible? How could she err? She could no more err as to the truth
that lives and speaks in her than God himself, for she is all in him,
and in her soul indistinguishable from him. She is not infallible by
external appointment or commission alone, but really so in herself,
in her own life and intelligence. We speak of the soul of the church,
but as her soul and body are not separated or separable, she must
be equally infallible in her body, or as the body of Christ, who is
the life and informing principle of the body. The body of the
church, by virtue of its union with Christ is, and must be, infallible.
But the body of the church is a society of individuals; and is it
meant that all individuals in the communion of the church are
infallible? There is in the church regenerated humanity which,
though it subsists not without individualization, is not individual.
This regenerated humanity is united to Christ, its regenerator, and
derives its life from him. In all the individuals affiliated or
assimilated to the body of the church, there is both this
regenerated humanity and their own individuality. As regenerated
humanity, no one can err, but in their individuality all individuals do
or may err more or less. Reason is in all men, and reason within its
sphere is infallible; but all men are not infallible in their
understanding of what is reason, or what reason teaches.
Individuals who are in the communion of the church, so far as
made one with her body and one with the indwelling Christ, are
infallible in his infallibility; but in their individuality they are not
infallible. Hence, when it is said the church is infallible, the meaning
is, that she is infallible in the universal, not in the particular, or in
the sense in which she is one, not in the sense in which she is
many. Our faith as individual believers is infallible only in believing
with the church, what she in her unity and integrity believes and
teaches.

The church, we should have said before, is catholic. This follows

from her unity and completeness. Catholic means the whole, or
universal; and since the church is one, and is the body of Christ,
who is "the way, the truth, and the life," she cannot but be
catholic. She is catholic, in the words of the catechism, "because
she subsists in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all
truth." She is catholic because in her soul she is Christ himself;
because in her body she is the body of Christ; because she is the
whole regenerated human race in their head, the second Adam.
Having Christ, who, in the order of regeneration, is at once
universal and individual, she has the whole, has the universal life of
Christ, has all truth, for he is the truth itself and in itself, and is the
only way of salvation; for there is no other name given under
heaven among men whereby we can be saved—neither is there
salvation in another. She subsists in all ages, prior to the
incarnation, as we have seen, by prophecy and promise; since the
incarnation, in fact and reality; and has authority to teach all
nations, and is set to make all the kingdoms of this world the
kingdom of God and his Christ. Whatever is outside of her is
outside of Christ, and is necessarily non-catholic.

The church is apostolic. This means that she is endowed with

authority to teach and govern, not merely that she descends in the
direct line from the apostles, the chief agents in founding and
building her up, though, of course, that is implied in her unity and
catholicity in time no less than in space. It means that she is
clothed with apostolic authority; that is, authority in doctrine and
discipline. This authority is distinguishable from the sacerdotal
character conferred in the sacrament of orders. Men may have valid
orders, be real priests, and actually consecrate in schism, or even
heresy, as is the case with the clergy of the schismatic Greek
Church and some of the Oriental sects. But these schismatic or
heretical priests have no apostolic authority, no authority to teach
or govern in the church, no authority in doctrine or discipline, and
all their sacerdotal acts are irregular and illicit. This authority, which
we have seen the church derives from the indwelling Christ, and
possesses as his body, we call the apostolate. It is inherent in
Christ himself, and is and can be exercised only in his name by his
vicar, the supreme pontiff, and the pastors of the church under him
and in communion with him. All the arguments that prove the
visibility of the church prove equally the visibility of the apostolate,
or, as Saint Cyprian calls it, the episcopate; all the arguments that
prove the unity of the church prove the unity of the apostolate or
episcopate; and, therefore, with those which prove the visibility of
the church, prove a visible centre of authority, in which the
episcopate takes its rise, or from which the whole teaching and
governing authority under Christ radiates and pervades the whole
body. The visible church being one, demands a visible head; for if
she had no visible head, she would lack visible unity; and would be,
as to her teaching and governing authority, not visible, but invisible.
Hence Saint Cyprian, after asserting the episcopate or apostolate,
held by all the bishops in solido, says, that the unity might be
made manifest, or the apostolate be seen to take its rise from one,
our Lord established one cathedra and gave the primacy to Peter.
Saint Cyprian evidently assumes the necessity of a visible centre of
authority, so that we may as individual members of the church, or
as persons outside the church seeking to ascertain and enter her
communion, know what is her authority and where to find it. Hence
in the definition of the church we began by saying she is defined to
be "the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the
same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same
sacraments, and in the true worship of God, under Christ the head
in heaven, and under his vicar, the supreme pontiff on earth." The
papacy is the visible origin and centre of the apostolate, as Christ is
himself its invisible origin and centre, and is as essential to the
being of the visible church as are any of the attributes we have
seen to be hers. To make war on the supreme pontiff is to make
war on the church, and to make war on the church is to make war
on Christ, and to make war on Christ is to make war on God and
man.

It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the constitution of

the hierarchy or external organization of the church, which, to a
certain extent, is and must be a matter of positive law, and which,
though having its reason in the very nature and design of the
church as founded by the incarnation, lies too deep in that mystery
of mysteries for us to be able to ascertain it by way of logical
deduction. The idea of one living God includes the three persons in
the Godhead; the idea of the incarnation includes the church; and
the idea of the church includes unity, sanctity, catholicity, visibility,
indefectibility, infallibility, apostolicity; and the idea of apostolicity
includes authority in its unity and visibility; and, therefore, the
papacy is the visible origin and centre of the authority of the
church as the visible body of Christ. So far we can go by reasoning
from the ideas, principles, or data supplied by revelation. The rest
depends on authority, and is not ascertainable by theological
reason.

We know from the New Testament that our Lord has set in his
church some to be apostles, some to be pastors, etc.; but these
are all included in the supreme pontiff, who possesses the
priesthood, the episcopate, the apostolate, the pastorate, in their
plenitude; and all, except what is conferred in the sacrament of
orders, is derived directly or indirectly from him, as its origin and
source under Christ, whose vicar he is. This is enough for our
present purpose, and it is worthy of remark that always has the
papacy been the chief point of attack by the enemies of the
church; for they have had the sagacity to perceive that it is the
keystone of the arch, and that if it can be displaced, the whole
edifice will fall of itself. It is the pope that heresy and schism today
war against, and the whole non-catholic world seek to deprive him
of the last remains of his temporal authority, because they foolishly
imagine that the destruction of the prince will involve the
annihilation of the pontiff. It is the pontificate, and Garibaldi avows
it, not the principality, that they seek to get rid of. But they may
despoil the prince; they cannot touch the pontificate. He who is
King of kings and Lord of lords has pledged his omnipotence to
sustain it. Our Lord has prayed for Peter that his faith fail not.

It were easy for us to cite the commission of our Lord to the

teaching church, and from that to argue her authority to govern
under him, and her infallibility in teaching; but we have had
another purpose in view. We have wished, by setting forth the
relation of the church to the incarnation, and deducing from that
relation her essential attributes, to show how the church can be
holy and yet individual Catholics can be unholy, and how
individuals, all individuals in their individuality, can be fallible and
err, and yet she be infallible. The heterodox argue against the
church from the misconduct of individual Catholics. They ransack
history and collect a long list of misdeeds, crimes, and sins, of
which Catholics have been guilty, and then ask, How can a church
who has done such things be holy or be the church of God? In the
first place, we answer, none of the things alleged have been
committed by the church, but, if committed at all, it has been by
individuals in the church; and in the second place, even rebirth in
baptism does not, as we have seen, destroy the personality of the
individual, or take away his free-will. He can sin after grace as well
as before, and glorification is promised only to those who persevere
to the end. The church is holy by her union with Christ, as his
body; individuals are so by their assimilation to her, and by living
through her the life of Christ.
It is asked again how, if the church is infallible, can individuals be
fallible; and if individuals are fallible, and do not unfrequently err,
how can the church be infallible? How from any possible number of
fallibles get an infallible? The answer is in principle the same. The
church is infallible, for he who assumed human nature, and whose
body she is, is her personality, for she is individualized in the
individual human nature he assumed; but the individual is not in
himself infallible, for he retains his own personality with all its
limitations and imperfections. The infallibility is in Christ, and
proceeds from him to the regenerated race, not to the individual
member in his individuality. Our Lord assumed human nature
without its human personality, though human nature individualized;
but individuals assimilated to Christ through the church retain their
proper human personality, and are infallible only in the church, only
so far as they think and speak her thoughts, and believe what she
believes and teaches. The pope himself is not personally infallible,
but at most only when speaking ex cathedra, in union with the
mind of the church, and declaring her faith. Hence some
theologians maintain that the papal definitions themselves are
reformable till expressly or tacitly accepted by the universal church,
though we do not agree with them; for we regard the pope as the
vicar of Christ in teaching as well as in governing, and, therefore,
as expressing, when speaking officially, the infallible faith of the
universal church. For us, in the language of St. Ambrose, ubi
Petrus, ibi ecclesia. Whenever the church speaks, she speaks the
words of her Lord, and is infallible and authoritative; whenever the
individual speaks in his own individuality, he is fallible, and his
words, as his, have no authority. The church can then be infallible
and individuals fallible. Consequently, any arguments drawn from
the errors and misdeeds of individuals have no weight against the
church.

If non-Catholics would pay attention to this, they would write fewer

books, publish fewer essays, and preach fewer sermons, against
the church, for they have hitherto alleged little or nothing against
her but the errors and bad conduct of churchmen. When they wish
for examples of the purest and most heroic sanctity, they are
obliged to seek them in her communion, and the most anti-Catholic
among them feel that they may assert without proof any doctrine
they happen to like, if the church has taught and teaches it. It is
remarkable with what confidence and mental relish they assert
particular doctrines for which they feel that they have her authority.
Is it because a secret conviction of her infallibility lurks in the minds
of all who are Catholic by their reminiscences? and would they not
be far less enraged against what they call "the seductions of
Rome," if it were not so, if they did not feel themselves constantly
tempted to return to her communion? They resist her influence, in
fact, only by a constant effort, by main strength.

But it is time to bring our remarks to a close. We have opened a

vast subject, one to which we could do scant justice in a magazine
article, even if we were otherwise able, as we are not, to treat it
not altogether unworthily. No mortal can speak worthily of the
church of Christ, in which the power, the wisdom, the justice, the
love, and the mercy of God, of the indivisible and ever Blessed
Trinity, in all their infinitude are, so to speak, embodied and
displayed. Even God himself cannot do more or better than he has
done in the church, for he gives in her himself, and more than
himself even he cannot give. How great, how glorious, how awful is
the church! How great, how exceeding great, the loving-kindness of
God, who permits us to call her our mother, to draw life from her
breasts, and to rest on her bosom! We love the church, who is to
us the sum of all things good and holy, and we grieve daily over
those who know her not; we grieve when her own children seem to
treat her with levity or indifference; we are pained to the heart
when we hear men, who have souls to save, for whom Christ died,
and whom she longs to clasp to her loving bosom, railing against
her, calling her "the mystery of iniquity," and her chief pontiff "the
man of sin." We seem to see our Lord crucified afresh on Calvary,
and to hear her sweet voice pleading, "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."
 Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter IV.

Four years are past since the incidents above related took place.
The scene is neither at Athens nor at Corinth, but at Nauplia.
[Footnote 73] Here, suddenly, a new school had been opened by a
lady, which attracts a vast concourse of disciples. The lady is
young, eloquent, beautiful, and the favor she meets with is almost
unbounded. Powerful protectors are around her; and philosophy
and science bow to her, though they hardly as yet determine to
what school the doctrines she propounds belong. Among those who
are attracted by her fame is a lady, just arrived from Athens to be
enrolled among the followers of the new Aspasia, or Leontium as
she is more generally called. Lotis is herself no mean or obscure
daughter of those muses which this new professor has worshipped
to such advantage. But Lotis is disappointed in her expectations;
the entrance to the academy is guarded with such jealous care,
that admission is not easy; in vain she sends her name as daughter
of a citizen of Athens of some distinction in the philosophic world;
strangers, and above all those from Athens, are carefully excluded.
Yet the city continues to derive new lustre from this new
propounder of exalted themes; and those who were fortunate
enough to gain admission to her lectures, rang with applauses of
the lucid doctrines taught; they compared her eloquence to that of
Plato, her music to that of Amphion; and contended that, while all
other sects were tending to the destruction of ancient truth, this
lady demonstrated its existence in every nation, and brought it
home to the heart and feelings. Lotis heard of nothing throughout
the city but praises of the new exponent of wisdom who had
travelled throughout the earth, and had learnt to harmonize the
teachings of all philosophies.

[Footnote 73: The Napoli di Romania.]

"'Tis strange she will not admit you," said Lydon, a young disciple,
to whom Lotis was complaining of her exclusion; "and the more to
be regretted as she is preparing for departure; it seems she did not
intend to stay so long at Nauplia in the first place; she was waiting
for her protector, who had business at Athens. They will both set
out for Rome when he returns."

"And is he expected soon?"

"It is not easy to say. Magas is uncertain in his movements; he

often acts from mere caprice. He may be here shortly."

"Magas!"

"Yes, do you know him?"

"I knew one of that name formerly. He was of noble birth; of

Athens."

"Likely it is the same. He has been travelling for these few years
past, and in his travels picked up this philosopheress, who has so
enchanted him."

"Is she really so beautiful as they say?"

"Words cannot describe her. She has the attractions of Venus with
the majesty of Minerva. When in repose, her calm dignity demands
our homage; but when she speaks, her features are lighted up with
an expression which defies description; her eyes, deeply set as they
are, dazzle with the intensity of their fire; she does not declaim,
she speaks in a low yet in a distinct and earnest tone which all
hear, words which seem to have been gathered at the very fount of
wisdom. There is an indescribable melody in her voice, which melts
the heart, and communicates the persuasion that she knows more
than she says; that she holds back something as fearing the light
would be too bright for our unaccustomed eyes: she infuses the
desire to know the truth, the certainty that there is a truth; yet
somehow, on reflection, the truth itself seems withheld, and we
hope next time to hear a fuller exposition of that which no one
doubts she possesses."

"What is her doctrine?"

"It would take herself to expound it, in the clear, musical,

irresistible manner with which she enforces conviction. I am afraid I
should only spoil her discourse by repeating it."

"Try, nevertheless."

"She teaches that truth is one—an immutable, eternal essence,

containing within itself all good, all beauty, all harmony, all being;
and that in it resides the creative power.

"She says this creative power is an emanation of the Deity, or

rather the Deity himself made manifest. It is termed the Word.

"And the Word or creative power made the universe—made all

those orbs which we see move around us by night and by day; and
moreover, breathed life and intelligence into organic forms, that
they might become conscious of, and enjoy existence. But for man
she claims a higher life; she says he was created in harmony with
the eternal essence, that he might know and enjoy a higher life
than that of animals, but that he disregarded the conditions on
which this higher life was held, and by violating them brought the
disorder into the world which now oppresses it. Man is the only
animal unfaithful to his instincts; the only one who does not trust
his own nature; the only one who is unhappy in the non-realization
of his aspirations."
"But what remedy does she propose?"

"She does not propose one; she declares one. She says the Word
became flesh, to communicate to man the Holy Spirit he had lost,
and by losing which his misery was occasioned. This Holy Spirit
comes alike from the Eternal Essence, and from the Word which is
its manifestation, and purifies the heart of man, and so restores it
to its primal state, or to a more holy one yet."

"But how is this to be effected for ourselves?"

"That is just where she disappoints us. She gives glowing

descriptions of truth, beauty, beneficence in every sort of
manifestation, material and mental, and shows how the aspirations
of the poets prove that a sublime ideal raises man above the
practical existence we see him lead every day; but how to obtain
this Holy Spirit we have not yet learnt."

"Has she given no rule?"

"None but material ones; and according to her, material rules are
only types of spiritual ideas. She says, as the body has assumed
too much sway, it must be subdued by violence—that is, by
maceration, fasting, and such like. She says passion must give way
to reason, and the affections be rightly governed. This we knew
before; but what we want is 'power' to carry out in practice the
precepts we admire; or as she would say, 'how to obtain that Holy
Spirit which is to live in us and direct us.'"

"And you think she knows how?"

"I feel satisfied she does; we all feel satisfied she does. Her words
come forth as oracles; we question not—we believe. She has been
in India, in Cathay, in Tartary; and everywhere she says the same
truth lies hidden under some material form, and needs but the light
of the Holy Spirit to pierce through the veil and make itself
manifest."
"Would I could see her!"

"You would be carried out of yourself. Yesterday she spoke on

Light. Material light, with her, is but a type of a far higher light,
which penetrates the spirit with beauty, harmony, and love, and
makes it pure, holy, eternal, and capable of receiving true
knowledge. Light, material light, was created at the same moment
that intelligences and harmonies of a high spiritual order sprang to
life, to enjoy it. She went off into something of this strain;
God said: Let there be light!
Effulgent light!
As the wild watery mass chaotic lay;
While o'er it did the Holy Spirit move.
Obedient to the WORD, the glorious day
Sprang into being; and effulgent light,
Intelligence all bright
Of seraph holy and of angel sweet,
In glorious ecstasy their Maker greet,
And the deep bliss of their creation prove.

Spirits of beauty, spirits of power

Then wakened to welcome the wonderful hour
That gave them existence, with light for their dower!
All dazzling the brightness illuming space,
Investing all matter with beauty and grace—
All lustrous the beauty, the grandeur divine
That did in full glory resplendently shine:
The Truth—though revealed—
As in Type, yet concealed.
The rays of the sun are less dazzling to sight,
Than the sparkles begemming the pinions so bright
Of the spirits who bowed at that mystical shrine,
When first with an impulse or instinct divine
They blent their sweet voices throughout every sphere,
To worship in love that doth worship endear.

Entrancing and entranced in love to greet,

These beauteous spirits kindled into glow,
And shed their lustre all that chaos through.
And as those rays the harder mediums greet,
The sleeping atoms wake as from a trance;
The sparks electric shoot in mystic dance,
Rousing the power inert to onward move;
Impelled by rays of light, create by love,