The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Rejoice, ye sons of earth, in the honour bestowed on man. He who was before all worlds, by Whom all things in this visible creation were made, descended to our earth as your Redeemer. Near Jerusalem, once the city where God displayed His grace, the Divine Redeemer withdrew from the multitude and sought retirement. On the side where the sun first gilds the city with its beams rises a mountain, whose summit He had oft honoured with His presence when during the solitary night He spent the hours in fervent prayer.

Gabriel, descending, stands between two perfumed cedars and addresses Jesus.

Wilt Thou, Lord, here devote the night to prayer, Or weary, dost thou seek a short repose? Permit that I for Thine immortal head A yielding couch prepare. Behold the shrubs And saplings of the cedar, far and near, Their balmy foliage already show. Among the tombs in which Thy prophets rest The cooling earth yields unmolested moss.

Jesus answered not, but regarded Gabriel with a look of divine complacency. He went up to the summit, where were the confines of heaven, and there prayed. Earth rejoiced at the renewal of her beauty as His voice resounded and penetrated the gates of the deep, but only He and the Eternal Father knew the whole meaning of the divine petition. As Jesus arose from prayer, in His face shone sublimity, love, and resignation.

Now He and the Eternal Father entered on discourse mysterious and profound, obscure even to immortals; discourse of things which in future ages should display to man the love of God. A seraph entered the borders of the celestial world, whose whole extent is surrounded by suns. No dark planet approaches the refulgent blaze.

There, central of the circumvolving suns, Heaven, archetype of every blissful sphere, Orbicular in blazing glory, swims, And circumfuges through infinitude In copious streams, the splendour of the spheres. Harmonious sounds of its revolving motion Are wafted on the pinions of the winds To circumambient suns. The potent songs Of voice and harp celestial intermingle And seem the animation of the whole.

Up to this sacred way Gabriel ascended, approaching heaven, which, in the very centre of the assemblage of suns, rises into a vast dome. When the Eternal walks forth, the harmonic choirs, borne on the wings of the wind to the borders of the sunny arch, chant His praise, joining the melody of their golden harps. During the hymn the seraph, as messenger of the Mediator, stood on one of the suns nearest heaven. The Eternal Father rewarded the choirs with a look of benignity and then beheld the Chief Seraph, whose name with God is The Chosen, and by the heavenly host is called Eloah.

The awful thunder seven times rolled forth, The sacred gloom dispelling, and the Voice Divine gently descended: "God is Love. E'er beings gently emanated I was Love.

Creating worlds, I ever was the same, And such I am in the accomplishment Of my profoundest, most mysterious deed. But in the death of the Eternal Son Ye learn to know Me wholly—God, the Judge Of every world. New adoration then Ye will to the Supreme of heaven address."

The seraph having descended to the altar of the earth, Adam, filled with eager expectation, hastened to him. A lucid, ethereal body was the radiant mansion of his blessed spirit, and his form was as lovely as the bright image in the Creator's mind when meditating on the form of man in the blooming fields of Paradise. Adam approached with a radiant smile, which suffused over his countenance an air of ineffable and sweetest dignity, and thus with impassioned accents he spoke.

Hail, blessed seraph, messenger of peace! Thy voice, resounding of thy message high, Has filled our souls with rapture. Son of God, Messiah, O that Thee I could behold, Behold Thee in the beauty of Thy manhood, E'en as this seraph sees Thee in the form Which Thy compassion prompted Thee to take My wretched progeny from death to save. Point out to me, O seraph, show to me, Where my Redeemer walked, my loving Lord; Only from far I will His step attend.

Gabriel descends again to earth, the stars silently saluting him with a universal morn. He finds Jesus placidly sleeping on a bare rock, and after long contemplation, apostrophises all nature to be silent, for her Creator sleeps.

II.—Of Satan Warring, and the Council of the Sanhedrim