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INTO MAmiOUS LIQHT CHAPTER XXXIII. Since entering the room John Marsden had not spoken except to give Deveaux a courteous but brief greeting. When he began to ridicule the Word of God, John was filled with emotions which knew no words of expression. The breath came and went more quickly, his eyes seemed ablaze from some fire within, his nostrils were distended, while his hands grasped the arms of the chair in which he sat to hold himself within his seat. But at Deveaux’s lost words, wings of majesty seemed to lift him to standing, and in a voice so deep, so vibrant that his words trembled as they attempted to picture the thoughts which burst forth from his very soul, he said: “You think that in this room only the Word of God will cleave to you, do you, Julian Deveaux? Remember that ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ And ‘the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’ * * * ‘the worlds were framed by the Word of God.’ Have your wall paper torn down and other paper placed in its stead, stop up your ears, try to banish the Word from you with taunts and jeers! 0 man, in Him you live and move and have your being. The air you breathe is the breath of God, your food and drink he produces for you by the kiss of the sun and the fall of the rain. The bed upon which you lie is but a cushion to rest you within his arms. The earth upon whch you stand is but his foot stool.” “God is not a being with a human form, except as he is in Christ, His Son, sitting apart in some material heaven, millions of miles away from us. Science has become the “handmaid of religion,” and enabled us, to a greater degree than ever before in the history of man, to lift our conceptions of God up to infinity and eternity. It has done away with that crude idea—of God being a mechanic— Creator, standing above and outside of the natural world, and making all things out of nothing. We now realize that God is the life at the heart of all things. All nature is but God’s visible manifesta tion—‘his garment so to speak, or, better, his body —himself being the soul of all, the power that energizes all, the intelligence that shines through all, the will that directs all, the cause and explana tion of the whole wonderful evolutionary process that has brought into existence worlds and main.’ ” “ ‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth;’ ‘God is our Father;’ we are his children; in him we must abide for every moment of this life as well as for eternal life.” “The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains, Are not these, 0 soul, the vision of Him who reigns ? The ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this vision—were it not He? Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet— Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” “And, Julian, God is not simply that “Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed” in the physical universe alone. It is easy to be carried away with physical science and invention in this marvelous age, and come to think that these are all. In exploring the wonderful continent of matter, it is easy to lose sight of the other more wonderful continent of mind; and in the study of the latter, to go still further astray from the most The Golden Age for July 19, 1906. By LLEWELYN STEPHANS. glorious of all continents, that of Spirit. How vain men boast of their mental faculties, their keen insight, their clearness of vision, their logical pow ers of reasoning, and their infallible judgment. How I shudder when I must face a devil-possessed man who is so small i nsoul that he reflects a God smaller than himself; who has so quenched the Spirit of God born within him, that God would have to all but slay him with suffering or death, to awak en that spirit within him to the possibility of ‘see ing him who is invisible.’ ” “And, Julian Deveaux, you! you! you! are such a man. How I have wrestled with God for you, that you might come into the marvelous light of all truth as it is revealed in Christ Jesus; that you might have born within your soul the spirit of truth, and right, and love, and hope, and duty, and worship of your heavenly Father, and those things of the soul which lift man into the very heart of the Infinite God.” The moment John Marsden stood up and began speaking, Julian Deveaux was startled out of his jeering mood. When he caught the fire of John’s eyes, his own fell. By degrees his head bent lower and lower until it rested within his hands. As his spirit grew more and more humble, so his form re flected without in the lowly posture of bended knee and finally throwing himself prone upon his bed with such a groan as John had never heard from human lips. The Bible scene came to John of the man with an unclean spirit who dwelt among the tombs and whom no man could tame, but who was crying and torturing himself night and day; “but when he saw Jesus afar off, he cried with a loud voice, and said, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God. I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.” For Jesus had said unto him. “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” “Julian, I do not wonder that your soul groans in agony because of its having been so demon-pos sessed all these years. Tt seems almost beyond hu man comprehension that God could be just, at the same time, so merciful as to forgive and make pure the soul of a man so stained with sin as yours is; yet. he saved the thief on the cross; ho redeemed Paul, who said of himself that he was the chief of sinners; he released from the bonds of darkness and superstition such men to uplift fallen humanity as Luther and Calvin: and in this day in our own city has shown himself alone as the divine power that saves such mon as Jerry McAuley and Samuel 11. Hadley. Julian, instead of your being eternally damned, and becoming more and more possessed of demons who will finally drive you to insanity, in some mysterious way God is casting out these de mons who have possessed you for so many years, and by degrees is clothing you with the garment of right-mindedness. Tt is God’s own spirit who is knocking at the door of your soul. Tt is He who is putting his word before your eyes, to your oars and at vour heart. Julian, arise and lot him in.” John’s last words wore spoken in almost a whis per as ho placed a gentle hand upon Julian’s head in tender pleading. Put at John’s touch, ho sprang up as if he had be n 'i si nick by a terrible blow, exclaiming: “And oven yon are using every effort to hasten the fatal hour, instead of cheering my last mo ments. When my reason is dethroned, you would have the demon of religion to possess me wholly, and thus obtain for vonrself and vour follow fanat ics supremo hellish jov in witnessing the taunts and jeers and laughter of my gay world at mo. their chief.—when T have hoen chained in the bottom less nit trying to cover my agony in the robes and r'flmious cant of a priest. T sent for you with some fooling of tenderness, believing that what T had to tell you of my will would give you more pleasure than anything else it was in my power to do for you. But now you make of me almost a madman on the spot. Your preaching takes me back to the time I was taken from my governess, at the age of eleven years, and placed in a Diocesan Institution in Paris, in which my training for the priesthood was begun, and which training lasted fifteen years. It was not in one day or at one stop that I found myself in a hell on earth. Almost as soon as I en tered the Institution, I felt that the religious ideal my sainted mother had bequeathed to me was low ered, and my thoughts of God brought down to an inferior level. Instead of the God of heaven, I had the God of the priest, the “wafer god,” be fore which our childish knees were made to bow. Wo were forbidden to have a friend or confidant. We were obliged to go to confession at least once a month, and that was not a good school for sin cerity, nor, indeed, for morality; and I found that the Roman Catechism, with its distinctions between venial sins and mortal sins, and the classes into which lies arc divided—lies of jest, lies of duty, lies of crime—tended rather to deform than to re form the conscience. One tutor T had for a certain time, solemnly taught his pupils that every morning the Pope found a, letter from God on his window sill: and when I inquired as to the of paper upon which these communications were written, T was commanded to say ten rosaries as a punish ment for asking an unseasonable question.” *‘As T grew older my soul sickened and harden ed. Many times I planned to escape, hut no crimi nal was ever in a more guarded prison, for my father had sold me to the priesthood, I was their slave, their tool.” “The first years, T tried to hope that when I grew to understanding and when manhood had ripened my judgment, the apparent unchristian con duct and inconsistencies of almost all the prelates with whom T came in contact, would he explained and the truth become evident to me. But as the double doctrine of the church of Rome was thread by thread woven about me, and T found myself veiled in the garment whose name is “Priest of the Holy Church,” I was initiated into the inner work ings of the masterpiece of Satan, a building in which the father of lies is comfortably housed and of which nothing truly Christian remains but the facade, the inscriptions and the names. And from this well guarded building great lights are sent out —searchlights and blind lights—upon the world’s common, ignorant herd, who are held deluded prisoners and captives. When I think of the mil lions blinded and enslaved by this double-headed monster, it almost makes a roaring lion of me, and many has boon the time when T could hardly re strain myself from running through the streets and crying from the honstops, ‘come out of her, ye peo ple, and free yourselves from the serpent’s coils while ye may.’ For the papal head teaches that ecclesiastical duty is law. and moral duty is habit: that the moral habit is helpful doubtless to primi tive. simple folks, hut it is dead and lifeless in it self. and often crushes the spirit; and, moreover, that any method which serves “The Church” is not only permissible hut laudable. God’s glory and Christ’s teachings were then but the armour and shield to hide the real pretensions of the Vatican: and the Papacy, with all its promises of what “the church” will do to save lost souls, opens hut one floor to heaven,—.“the church”—anfl no one can get into “the church” without the aid of priests, anfl then when one is in the church, he is told that ho cannot approach God except through the priests again, anfl by doing what the priests command, anfl believing those things taught from the altar and the confessional box. This system at once affirms anfl denies the individual conscience, inasmuch as that conscience must ever be sought in the dogmas anfl direction of the “Institution.” (To be continued.) 11