Chapter 7
Who shall tell the story of the Gods of heaven! Their mighty kingdoms, overspreading the whole earth! Hundreds and hundreds of them, and thousands! Their libraries of records of valorous and holy deeds! A council chamber of half a million souls! Hundreds of departments; thousands! Here a board to select young students to the colleges of messengers. Another board to select students to the colleges of arts. Another to select students to mathematics. Another for prophecy. Another for great learning. Another for factories. Another for compounding and dissolving elements. Then come the departments of the cosmogony of the stars; then, of the ethereal worlds; then, the roadways of the firmament; then, ji’ya, a’ji, and nebulae; then, se’mu; then, hi’dan and dan; then, the dawn of dan; then, histories of corporeal affairs, and of the affairs of the heavens far and near; then, genealogy of thousands of Orian Chiefs; the creation of mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. Yes, just to enumerate even half of what comes before a God and his council would itself fill a book.
Who, then, O Jehovih, shall venture to unveil the labor and wisdom of Your etherean Gods! How shall the second resurrection give up its mysteries? Shall Your recorder follow the young student for messenger, and disclose the training put upon him? How, like a carrier dove, he is taught to go from place to place, but holding the message in his head? Then follow the student in another department, and make a record of how he is taught? And of the multitude of questions that come before the Council from far-off places. Then the rites and ceremonies, and the unending variety and magnificence of the music. Can a man describe a million men, women and children? A hundred million! A billion! Five billion! Who has seen so great a man, to do this! And yet this is only Your lower heaven, O Jehovih!
A strange voice rises up from the earth, saying: Have they anything to do in heaven? O you Gods! And one half of the earth-born coming here in infancy! And the countless millions who know little more than the beasts of the field! Yet mortals are falsely taught that these unfortunates would skip off to paradise and possess great learning in the hour of death!
O that their understanding could be opened up to Your kingdoms, You All-Extending Creator! That their eyes could look upon the greatness of even Your lower heaven! To behold a thousand departments reaching as wide as the earth! And then the hundreds of thousands of branch departments, of hundreds of grades, adapted to every soul that rises up from the earth.
O that they could look into the dark places in atmospherea! That they could see a million souls, plunged into chaos by terrible war! Crazed spirits, wild and battling! Not knowing they are dead! The ceaseless toil of a million nurses and physicians, laboring day and night with them! O the darkness upon them! O the glory of Your exalted ones! Who is there, having seen the magnificence of Your glories, who will not stir himself up every moment to lift up his brother and point the way to Your throne?
O that they could see Your swift Gods of dawn! How they hear a hundred tongues at one time, and frame answers for all of them, and, by a motion of the hand, dispatch messengers to fulfill the same (answer them) in words! How they select officers, to know a hundred at a glance, and know where to place them, so that every one shall fit his place! Who is there, O Father, that can frame into words the proceedings of heaven, so that mortals can comprehend even a fraction of Your great glories!
Shall a man light a candle and say it represents the sun? How, then, can they find the affairs of mortals comparable to Your kingdoms? O that they knew the meaning of the difference between All Light and the darkness of man’s judgment!
O that they knew You, You Central Sun of All Light! They have put away Your Person, and they go in any direction. Your Great Gods are only myths to them, because of the darkness of their souls. Behold, they look for a small man with a large sword! The power of great wisdom they do not know.
O that they could observe the coming and going of thousands of messengers, from far-off kingdoms, before the throne of Your God! How he has answered their matters instantly! And all the while heeded the voices of a thousand marshals! O that man knew the glory of Order! The power of Harmony!
They have seen a clock with a hundred wheels, and the eye of its maker overseeing its every part in motion, and they call it wonderful! But how can they know Your Councils, O Jehovih? Your millions? And Your God on his throne, mantled in Your Light, overseeing a whole heaven! What majesty of words can make mortals comprehend his wisdom, and power, and great labors!