CHAPTER IV.
EARTH AS OTHERS SEE IT.
It was a solemn yet a sublime moment when I was called on to address the wisest and noblest of the inhabitants of our world, and tell them of my visit to the earth. The assembly was vast, millions were gathered along the ledges of the cliffs, and on the slopes, and on the lower plain of the ring crater wherein the assembly was gathered. I stood by the prince of our city and sundry of the great leaders of our nation, upon the central platform, where, amidst the insignia of our cities, I looked down on the gathered host. Around me were the rings of microphones and telephones to carry my voice to the uttermost circle of that multitude. The host, with all their robes of varied tints, made a gorgeous spectacle, while the grand natural scenery of the crater and its many cliffs was adorned in every part by banners and insignia. I had never seen such a spectacle since the Prince of the Sun came with his message to us. When the assembly gathered, the signal was given, by the sound of cannon, for the opening hymn (for every national or general assembly was commenced by a tribute of praise to the Most High). Then from a million voices burst the long and mighty pæan of praise, with the soft music of ten thousand harps and trumpets. My spirit was moved to its depths as I looked down on the vast host before me, and thought of God's love to me in giving me so bright and glorious a world to live in. What a contrast to the earth—torn by strife, desolated by sin, stained by sorrow, suffering, misery! What a still greater contrast to the miserable dead world I had just left!
Then, as the majestic song of a million voices died away, the prince of our nation arose and waved his sceptre, and bade silence, and all was still as though no living being were in that huge crater. Then he spake: —
"Citizens of the bright world, listen! Aleriel, our brother, has come back from earth by divine permission. The awful journey through space has been achieved. Our prayers have been heard. Welcome him home."
He spake, and then from a million voices came the chanted song: "Aleriel, welcome home." I cannot tell you the thrill of that loving welcome. You cannot understand it now; but yet you may in a future state know the sweet welcome to a realm of bliss by angel voices.
Then he said aloud that all might hear:—
"Aleriel, tell us of your journey."
I was moved in spirit, and yet I rose and spoke.
"Thanks, comrades of a happy land. Be grateful for God's love to you. The story of my journey is very long, for I have seen so many million things which you hardly know of, for to me they were unknown until I saw them. I have been in that strange planet that so often lightens our evenings, when we see the outer skies through openings in the silvery mists. I have seen it; I have walked on it; I have twice travelled round it; I have visited its cities, traversed its oceans, crossed its continents, ascended its mountains. Man I have seen also—the ruling intelligence of that world. I have beheld man in his various races, in his struggles for higher things, in his sorrows, in his agonies, in his death. I have seen some noble things on earth, very many wretched and miserable things; not a few, very terrible—to us inconceivably terrible. I have beheld men struggling against their misery, and in vain; I have witnessed starvation, want, disease in a thousand loathsome forms of death. I have seen the wretched selfishness of men grasping for self only; the weak crushed by the strong, and the strong still insatiate. It is a world in which there are many terrible, and horrible, and despicable things, and a few noble or glorious. Yet, as to the world itself, it is, like all God's work, good of itself. Nature on earth is often very beautiful. In some things it rivals in loveliness our world. In the evenings often the silvery light of the satellite gives it a mysterious and soft beauty, such as we have not, and by day even many a scene is grand and brilliant. That green gem-like island south of the great continent[1] is very beautiful, and so in colder regions are many parts of the fair isles west of the great continent. The regions round the equator are full of splendid scenes. Even colder realms, in their frequent changes, have great variety—some silvery in whiteness, when the moist rain falls frozen to the earth in flakes; or in spring, green; or in summer, of many hues, growing more sober as winter comes. The oceans are grand also, and the storms, when the blue waters are silvered with foam. Yes, God made all things good—even on earth. It is only man that makes them vile. How strange it seems that bond of man to evil—that clinging to the bad, even of those who wish to be good and to love the good! It seems like an evil nature, a secret spiritual power, marring God's creation on earth, which over us has never had any influence. Yet men who conquer this evil, how noble they grow, how majestic in spirit! The very struggle makes them nobler, stronger in spirit, grander even than we are. Such souls as good men have are fitted for a higher existence, not only than earth, but even than our lovely world can offer. Our natures are soft, and gentle, and simple; but we have never known the struggle against sin and sorrow that men know.
"I have seen many things that you never can see on our world. I have seen the hospital—men and women struggling with death in dying agony. I have seen misery such as you cannot fancy—thousands, tens of thousands, without enough of light or air, in smoky, dingy, dirty dens, lingering on a weary life to make others rich. I have seen debauchery and sins, such as we have, happily, no name for. I have seen wickedness triumphant, proud, rich, self-sufficient; and I have seen men and women struggling almost against hope—save that one blessed anchor of the human soul, the expectation of a joyful resurrection. I have seen untold misery such as you cannot conceive, and I have seen what is far worse than misery, human souls carried on to ruin by the mad thirst for pleasure. O sad earth! beautiful and glorious though thy God has made thee! what an untold depth of woe is to be seen on thy fair lands!"
The vast assembly seemed moved to sorrow by my words; a sympathetic thrill went through them. I noticed it and changed the subject, struck at how much my fellow-beings felt for and pitied men who were not as happy as they were.
"In that world the forms of life akin to our lower nature are humble, small, weak, stupid, soulless. The earth cannot develope the flying type of life to a great size or intelligence. The beings akin to us are smaller than men, and of low sense; as the beings akin to man (i.e. the creatures who climb the trees) are in our world feeble and despised. The mountains of earth are not as ours. Even the Himalayas and the Alps—those white spots you see on the great continent—are mere hills compared with the ring mountains of our world. Man cannot even yet fly, but sometimes as a great feat he risks his earth-life by floating on a huge gas ball in the air, carried by every current. All on earth clings to the surface, and ever has so clung. Even in the ages long gone by before the days of man, the huge beings of primeval time crawled in the marshes. Only a few birds soar a mile or so in the air, and those birds are thought wonderful, the ensigns and heraldic signs of earth's greatest monarchies. Earth is one vast prison-house, where all are bound to the surface.
"What the destiny of earth is to be I cannot say. Men, the most thoughtful and most holy of mankind, believe it is to be destroyed, to be wrapped in some vast cataclysm, and in the great crash of doom be ruined utterly and eternally. Better, methinks, it should be so. It has its work to do in training up brave souls to endure hardness, to develope in the spiritual combat their hidden nobleness. When that work is done and enough human souls have struggled, striven, conquered in the agony of that great combat, better that earth should pass away and be broken up and crushed in atoms, and then there will be an end to earth and to the earth-life of man, and the strong souls that once were men in the higher life of other worlds will glory in their victory. For their souls are immortal, and, if they cannot obtain their destiny on earth, they will in higher and happier spheres."
- ↑ Celyon