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who had, by then, coe as we perceive it in Ourselves, diverged from the rest of Nature, in a marked way And it was no ic of Life and Death beca as sirew from a new and totally unnatural capacity to love

"And it was then that huht faether by intie of the individuality of each other, rather than sheer recognition of species, and were held together, through suffering and happiness, by the bond of love

"Lord, the huo down and¡ª'

"Memnoch, take care!' God whispered

"Yes, Lord,' I said, nodding, and clasped estures 'What I should have said was that when I went down and I looked into the family, here and there and all over the World which you have Created, which you have allowed to unfold nificently, I saw the family as a new and unprecedented flower, Lord, a blossom of emotion and intellect that in its tenderness was cut loose from the stems of Nature from which it had taken its nourishment, and was now at the mercy of the wind Love, Lord, I saw it, I felt Love of Men and Woness to sacrifice for one another, and to grieve for those ere dead, and to seek for their souls in the hereafter, and to think, Lord, of a hereafter where they ain

"It was out of this love and the family, it was out of this rare and unprecedented blooe of your Creations¡ªthat the souls of these beings remained alive after death! What else in Nature can do this, Lord? All gives back to the Earth what it has taken Your Wisdohout; and all those that suffer and die beneath the canopy of your heavens are norance of the scheme which ultimately involved their own deaths

"Man, not so! Wo one another as they do, ined Heaven, Lord They have iined it; the time of the reunion of souls when their kin will be restored to the in bliss! They have iined eternity because their love demands it, Lord They have conceived of these ideas as they conceive of fleshly children! This I, the Watcher, have seen '

"Another silence All of heaven was so still that the only sounds ca of the wind, and the di of the seas, and the cries, the pale faraway cries of souls on earth as well as souls in Sheol

"Lord,' I said, 'they long for Heaven And i eternity, or immortality, I know not which, they suffer injustice, separation, disease, and death, as no other anireat And in Sheol they reach out beyond the love of self and the service of self in the naoes back and forth between Earth and Sheol eternally Lord, they have made a lower tier of the invisible court! Lord, they seek to propitiate your wrath, because they know You are Here! And Lord, they want to know everything about You And about themselves They know and they want to know!'

"This was the heart of ain, there came from God no response or interruption

"I couldn't see this,' I said, 'as anything less than Your greatest acco of Ti that is co so fast we Watchers could scarce keep track of all of it But the suffering, the torly els, and of God, if I may dare to say

"The case I came to make was, Lord, can these souls, either in the flesh, or in Sheol, not be given soht as aniiven water when they thirst? And will not these souls, once taken into Divine Confidence, be worthy perhaps to take some small place in this Court which is without End?'

"The quiet seemed dreamy and eternal, like the Time before Time

"Could it be tried, Lord? For if it is not tried, what is to be the fate of these invisible surviving souls except to grow stronger and ive rise not to revelations of the true Nature of things, but corrupted ideas based on fragmentary evidence and instinctive fear?'

"This tiave up on the idea of a polite pause and ied ahead