Festus · Scene 32

XXXII

Scene⁠—The Millennial Earth.
Saints* and Angels conversing; Festus*.
Angel The Earth is all one Eden. Pity, sure, That it should ever end.
Saint I say not so; Although I have a thousand plans in hand, Some interwoven with the farthest stars⁠— Each one of which might ask a year of years To perfect.
Angel True; our Maker knoweth best What thought or deed may best belong to time Or to eternity.
Saint All prophecy Hath said the earth shall cease, and that right soon.
Festus ’Tis like enough. Beauty’s akin to Death.
Angel Behold, our sister Graces of the skies, Faith, Hope, and Love, descend! Methinks of late Ye chiefly dwell on earth.
Love Where lives and reigns The Son of God, there are we ever seen, Successive, as the seasons to the sun.
Saints Well are ye known and welcome in all worlds. Wherever lofty thought or godly deed Is lodged or compassed, there your blessings rest.
Hope How sweet, how sacred now, this earth of man’s! The prelude of a yet sublimer bliss!⁠— I marked it from the first, while yet it lay Lightless and stirless; ere the forming fire Was kindled in its bosom, or the land Lift its Volcanic breastwork up from sea. The deluge and idolatries of men I viewed, though shuddering, and with faltering eye, E’en to the incarnation of Heaven’s Lord, And dawning of His faith; that faith which was An infant and anon a giant; was A star, and grew a Heaven-fulfilling sun; Which was an outcast, and became, ere long, A dweller in all palaces; which hid Its head in dens of deserts, and sat throned, After, in richest temples high as hills; Which was poured out in mortal blood, and rose Li an immortal spirit; as a slave Was sold for gold and prostrated to power;⁠— And now that lowly bondmaid is a Queen; And lo! she is beloved in earth and Heaven; And lieth in the bosom of her Lord, The Bride of the all-worshipped, one with God.
Love We even of divinest origin In infinite progression view all worlds; And we are happy.
Faith The dead sleep as yet; But their time cometh, and the bonds of death Already slacken round the living soul; The mortal sleep of ages, which began When Time sank down into his slumberous west, Thins even now o’er the reviving eyes Gathering their Heaven-lent light, no more to wane In woe or age; never be quenched in tears Like a star in the sea. ’Tis as I ever knew; My life is to receive and to believe The Word and words of God.
Love I, who am Love And Grace and Charity, rejoice with you; Whither ye wend I with ye; whether here, Or on the utmost rim of Light’s broad reign⁠— The least and last of stars which even seems To tremble at its insignificance In presence of Infinity; where yet No angel’s wing hath waved, nor foot of fiend Left its hot imprint;⁠—still, in all do we Find fit delight and honour, as now here. Now earth and Heaven hold commune, day and night; There’s not a wind but bears upon its wing The messages of God; and not a star But knows the bliss of earth.
Festus The earth hath God Remade, and all its elements refined, Fit for sublimer Being. Flesh hath passed Its fiery baptism, and come forth clear As crystal gold: all that of vile or mean Pertained to it hath perished atomless. Earth, like a diamond, basks in her own free light; Unfed, unaided, unrequiring aught. All now is purity and power and peace. The first-born of creation, they who hail Archangels as their brethren, mountainlike Reign o’er the plains of men, converting all; Reaping the fields of immortality, Each one his sheaf, for Him the Harvest-Lord, To whom belongs earth’s whole estate and life And every world’s.
Angel And He shall gamer all. The awful tribes which have in Hades dwelt, Past count of time, await their rising. God’s Great day, the sabbath of the world’s long week, Is at high noon; and Christ hath yet to come To judge and save the living and the dead.
Saint The shadows of Eternity o’ercast Already Time’s bright towers. The Heavens shall come Down like a cloud upon a hill, and sweep Their spirit over earth, and the whole face And form of things shall be dissolved and change. Nothing shall be but essence, perfect, pure, And void of every attribute but God’s. This even is too gross for that which is To come. The holy have both earth and Heaven.
Festus Nor pain, nor toil of mind or frame, nor doubt, Nor discontent, nor enmity to God, Disturb the steady joy the spirit feels; Nor element can torture, nor time tire; Nor sea nor mountain make or bar or fear; Sickness and woe and death are things gone by; Destroyed with the destruction of the world:⁠— Shadows of things which have been, never more To waste the world’s bright hours, nor grate the heart Of mighty man; now fit for thrones and wings; Ruler of worlds, main minister of Heaven, Inheritor of all the prophecies Of God fore-uttered through the tongues of Time, Ages of ages. Evil is no more.
Archangel And does earth satisfy thee now?
Festus As earth. There is a brighter, loftier life for man Even yet, the very union with God.
Archangel God works by means. Between the two extremes Of earth and Heaven there lies a mediate state⁠— A pause between the lightning lapse of life And following thunders of eternity;⁠— Between eternity and time a lapse, To soul unconscious, though agelasting, where Spirit is tempered to its final fate; When every interfulgeht conscious state Within or between worlds, repose or bliss, Divested, man shall, mix with Deity, And the Eternal and Immortal make One Being. As in earth’s first paradise God’s Spirit walked with man, and commune made With him, so in the second, after death, Man’s spirit walks with God in an elect Existence, and a vigil of the great, The holy day which is to break in Heaven. Thither the Lord of Life went, in the hour That Hell by Earth revenged itself on Heaven, With one soul penitent accompanied;⁠— Nor long remained He there, yet long enough To cheer earth’s faithful, who received Him then Tn silent unknown blessedness of soul, With time-outwearing hope that yet in Him They should partake the Godhood of His love. And with Him rose then, in prophetic proof Of His Divinity, many a deathless ghost, Triumphant o’er that blind revenge which wrought, Hell! thy destruction⁠—thy salvation, Earth!
Festus That such will be, the just well know; and all Earth’s great events and changes tend thereto; Its fiery dissolution in the past, And supernatural recommencement now Under the universal creed of Christ. The chosen and the world-redeemed partake His personal and spiritual reign.
Archangel And this shall last, till, like the setting sun Deserting earth, He shall retire to Heaven, With all His captive victors in His train, Triumphant, and translated evermore Into the hierarchal skies. Wilt see, While yet time is, earth’s shadowy world within⁠— The inward living death she bears about Her heart, hath ever borne⁠—and, augur-like, Explore the ominous bowels of the earth? To me are given the secrets of the centre, The keys of earth, to lock and to unlock, Coffer-like. I, it was who seized and bound, At His behest who wills and it is done⁠— Even on their thrones, the mighty thou wilt see.
Festus Angel of Heaven! I would view these things.
Archangel Nor these alone, but other wonders yet. The valley where Death’s dark wings brooded o’er, A God-offending night, unvisited By sun or star, where but the fatuous fire Of man’s weak judgment wandered, till God’s Son Laid o’er the black abyss a bridge of light, And married earth to the mainland of Heaven:⁠— This shalt thou see, Death’s grave; and over him, And over it, that monument of light, Enlightening earth. The gods and fiends of old, And all the fictions of the heart of man, Imagined of the future past for aye, Thou shalt inspect. Behold this mountain! We Must pass through it; for under lie the gates Of the invisible regions whereunto We tend, for a brief season.
Festus On then!
Archangel Bare Thy marble breast, O mountain, to its depths! An angel and a man divine demand A way through these foundations.
Festus And the rocks Open like mists before thee.
Archangel Follow me!