The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. | Page 6

proceedings of the Government, with rare exceptions, possibly, are
based upon a fuller knowledge of all the facts relating to a special case,
than is obtained by private persons, and that its judgment is therefore
more likely to be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The
injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of
well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may
perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile
invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the
North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers
and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other
avenues, should ever be mindful that the political liberty which they
possess of free thought and free speech, has imposed upon them the
moral duty of using this wisely for the welfare of humanity, and that
they cannot be faithless to this obligation without injuring their fellow
men and incurring a heavy moral guilt.

THE BROTHERS.
AN ALLEGORY.
DEDICATION, TO ONE WHO WILL UNDERSTAND IT:
'I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, us they
turn from praise I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs,
and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all
my life!--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee dearer after death.'
The Creator still loved and guarded the earth, although its children had
departed from their early obedience. In evidence of His care, He sent,
from time to time, gifted spirits among men to aid them in developing
and elevating the souls so fallen from their primal innocence. These
spirits He clad in sensuous bodies, that they might be prepared to enter
the far country of Human Life. Earth was rapidly falling under the
merciless rule of a hopeless and crushing materialism, when He
determined upon sending among men, Anselm, the saint; Angelo, the
tone artist; Zophiel, the poet; and Jemschid, the painter. The spirits
murmured not, although they knew they were to relinquish their heaven
life for that torment of perpetual struggle which the forbidden
knowledge of Good and Evil has entailed upon all incarcerated in a
human form.
_For self-abnegation is the law of heaven!_
* * * * *
'Brothers,' said the merciful Father, 'go, and sin not, for of all things
that pass among men must a strict account be rendered. For are not
their evil deeds written upon the eternally living memory of a just God?
Evil lurks in the land of your exile; it may find its way into your own
hearts, for you are to become wholly human, and to lose for a time the
memory of your home in heaven. But even in that far country you will
find the Book of Life, which I have given for the guidance and
consolation of the fallen. For it is known even there that 'God is Love!''
* * * * *
Then the journey of the Heaven Brothers began through the blinding
clouds and trailing mists of chaos, in whose palpable gloom all
memories are obliterated. Naked, trembling, and human, they arrived
upon the shifting sands of the world of Time and Death.
A vague, shadowy sense, like a forgotten dream which we struggle

vainly to recall, often flitted through their clay-clogged souls, of a
strangely glorious life in some higher sphere; but all attempts to give
definite form to such bewildering visions ended but in fantastic reveries
of mystic possibilities or dim yearnings of unseen glories. They found
the Book of Life, but they remembered not that the Father had told
them the Word was His.
For the thread of Identity, on which are strung the pearls of Memory, in
the passage through chaos had snapped in twain!
* * * * *
Like the silver light through the storm clouds flitting over the fair face
of the moon, gleam the antenatal splendors through the gloom of the
earth life.
As Anselm wonderingly turned the pages of the Book of Life, strange
memories awoke within him. So inextricably were the dreams of his
past woven with the burning visions of the Prophets, that the darkness
of Revelation, like the heaven vault at midnight, was illumined by the
light of distant worlds; his own vague reminiscences supplying the
inner sense of the inspired but mystic leaves. What wonder that he
loved the Book, when in its descriptions of the life to come, he felt the
history of the life already _past_; and through its sternest threatenings,
like the rainbow girdling storm clouds, shone the promise of a blessed
future!
He spent the hours of exile in a