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Wisdom of the Ages

By George A. Fuller

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Open, ye pearly gates that lead to eternal bliss! A soul imprisoned would seek the freedom of the Upper Spheres!

While yet enrobed in flesh, he fain would partake of the celestial viands and sip the nectar of the gods.

Thou art long in coming, oh, Death, and the soul, grown impatient at the delay, knocks at the gates of life eternal, demanding that they no longer keep it from its divine birthright.

Thou hast served me well, old body, moulded into most exquisite form from out the potter's clay. Through constant use and contact with the rough, wild elements of space and time thou hast grown more and more ethereal, each day reflecting more and more perfectly the workings of spirit within.

Soon thou shalt fall off from me as the leaves in autumn time fall from the trees of the forest. I would declare that thou hast been a most faithful servant, for most faithfully hast thou reflected all the fancies, caprices and imaginings of the arbitrary ruler who sits upon his throne within. I shall miss thee and drop a tear of sincere regret when the last vestige of thy form fades into the All of Nature.

Yet, whilst we two walk hand in hand together, I would peer out along that path the soul must take when we shall part company never to meet again.

Open, ye pearly gates! I knock! I knock! A soul imprisoned seeks to know the secrets of the Upper Spheres!

Silently, as the coming of the morn, the gates swing inward. A light sweeps by me in billowy waves that make all earthly light seem but shade and deepest shadow, revealing far, far off in the distance, mountains of amethyst, topaz, chrysolite, turquoise, flaming and flashing with light, leaping from peak to peak, on and on throughout the vast empyrean of heaven!

Filled with awe and reverence, my upturned eyes drink in the unspeakable glory of the celestial realms; trees with iridescent foliage; flowers that seem to express the very thought of the angels; seas of burnished gold and silver and soft greens and blues, and hanging dreamily over all fleecy clouds.

Here and there the eye beholds forms of divinest beauty, either speeding on errands of mercy and love or seeking mid the ever-changing forms about them the processes of their evolution.

Overcome with awe and reverence, the bewildered soul turns once more earthward.

For it is not yet prepared to dwell in the midst of such glory and magnificence. For it still must come the toil, the disappointments, the inharmonies of the sense-world, until all bonds are broken, all fetters loosened, and purified of all earthly dross it shall rise from sphere to sphere, ever nearer and nearer to the light ineffable that flashes on from century to century, from æon to æon, from time to eternity, the light that ever veils the countenance of the Eternal

Omn!!