as if I had come upon enchanted ground. Ah, sir, your sister has opened a new book for me to read in—the book of nature.”
Mr. Willet glanced, half-inquiringly, toward Flora.
“Fanny speaks with enthusiasm,” said the sister.
“What have you been talking about? What new leaf has Flora turned for you, Miss Markland?”
“A leaf on which there is much written that I already yearn to understand. All things visible, your sister said to me, are but the bodying forth in nature of things invisible, yet in harmony with immutable laws of order.”
“Reason will tell you that this is true,” remarked Mr. Willet.
“Yes; I see that it must be so. Yet what a world of new ideas it opens to the mind! The flower I hold in my hand, Flora says, is but the outbirth, or bodily form, of a spiritual flower. How strange the thought!”
“Did she not speak truly?” asked Mr. Willet, in a low, earnest voice.
“What is that?” inquired Mrs. Markland, who was not sure that she had heard her daughter correctly.
“Flora say that this flower is only the bodily form of a spiritual flower; and that, without the latter, the former would have no existence.”
Mrs. Markland let her eyes fall to the floor, and mused for some moments.
“A new thought to me,” she at length said, looking up. “Where did you find it, Flora?”
“I have believed this ever since I could remember any thing,” replied Flora.
“You have?”
“Yes, ma’am. It was among the first lessons that I learned from my mother.”
“Then you believe that every flower has a spirit,” said Mrs. Markland.
“Every flower has life,” was calmly answered.
“True.”
“And every different flower a different life. How different, may be seen when we think of the flower which graces the deadly nightshade, and of that which comes the fragrant herald of the juicy orange. We call this life the spiritual flower.”
“A spiritual flower! Singular thought!” Mrs. Markland mused for some time.
“There is a spiritual world,” said Mr. Willet, in his gentle, yet earnest way.
“Oh, yes. We all believe that.” Mrs. Markland fixed her eyes on the face of Mr. Willet with a look of interest.
“What do we mean by a world?”
Mrs. Markland felt a rush of new ideas, though seen but dimly, crowding into her mind.
“We cannot think of a world,” said Mr. Willet, “except as filled with objects, whether that world be spiritual or natural. The poet, in singing of the heavenly land, fails not to mention its fields of ‘living green,’ and ‘rivers of delight.’ And what are fields without grass, and flowers, and tender herb? If, then, there be flowers in the spiritual world, they must be spiritual flowers.”
“And that is what Flora meant?” said Mrs. Markland.
“Nothing more,” said Flora; “unless I add, that all flowers in the natural world derive their life from flowers in the spiritual world; as all other objects in nature have a like correspondent origin.”
“This comes to me as an entirely new idea,” said Mrs. Markland, in a thoughtful way. “Yet how beautiful! It seems to bring my feet to the verge of a new world, and my hand trembles with an impulse to stretch itself forth and lift the vail.”
“Do not repress the impulse,” said Mrs. Willet, laying a hand gently upon one of Mrs. Markland’s.
“Ah! But I grope in the dark.”
“We see but dimly here, for we live in the outward world, and only faint yet truthful images of the inner world are revealed to us. No effort of the mind is so difficult as that of lifting itself above the natural and the visible into the spiritual and invisible—invisible, I mean, to the bodily eyes. So bound down by mere sensual things are all our ideas, that it is impossible, when the effort is first made, to see any thing clear in spiritual light. Yet soon, if the effort be made, will the straining vision have faint glimpses of a world whose rare beauties have never been seen by natural eyes. There is the natural, and there is the spiritual; but they are so distinct from each other, that the one by sublimation, increase, or decrease, never becomes the other. Yet are they most intimately connected; so intimately that, without the latter, the former could have no existence. The relation is, in fact, that of cause and effect.”
“I fear this subject is too grave a one for our visitors,” said Mr. Willet, as his mother ceased speaking.
“It may be,” remarked the lady, with a gentle smile that softened her features and gave them a touch of heavenly beauty. “And Mrs. Markland will forgive its intrusion upon her. We must not expect that others will always be attracted by themes in which we feel a special interest.”
“You could not interest me more,” said Mrs. Markland. “I am listening with the deepest attention.”
“Have you ever thought much of the relation between your soul and body; or, as I would say, between your spiritual body and your natural body?” asked Mrs. Willet.
“Often; but with a vagueness that left the mind wearied and dissatisfied.”
“I had a long talk with Mr. Allison on that subject,” said Fanny.
“Ah!” Mrs. Willet looked toward Fanny with a brightening face. “And what did he say?”
