Chapter XL

And Gud came upon a paradise, its streets of hammered gold. Iridescent fountains played beneath o'er-hanging palms, and gentle breezes, wafting through the glistening latticery of ornate edifice, made music soft and low that lulled of peace and quiet and eternal joy.

Here was a paradise prepared for most exacting saints. Gud strolled its million leagues about and wondered why there was no sign of occupants. These heavenly mansions were not newly built but rather spoke of use. While all the major structures were intact, the minor furnishings gave evidence of chaos and disorder. This paradise, it seemed to Gud, had once o'erflown with life, but now was empty and abandoned.

All this puzzled Gud and worried him. He was familiar with the ruins of many a paradise that had been smashed and broken by rebellion or by war, but his mind could find no reason why a heaven so fine as this should be deserted, and yet remain in such fair state of preservation.

The most likely theory which he could conceive, was that some pestilence had raged and stripped the place of every living soul. Over this Gud cogitated. Had it been a dwelling place of mortal flesh, a pestilence would have left its tell-tale stench or whitening bones. But immortal souls--how could pestilence have slain them? His theory thus became a paradox or worse yet a dilemma, and either one is harrowing to the mind. So Gud started out again in search of facts.

After much meandering he was rewarded by finding himself looking down into a high-walled garden, most beautiful of any spot that he had yet discovered. And better still, he noted signs of life. He hastened to descend, that he might explore the garden. It was there beneath a bower that he found a female soul most radiant. She was sitting on a gorgeous purple rock, and singing, and knitting as she sang, while all about her, tumbling on the grass in a most completely idiotic fashion, were little souls at play.

"Good morning," said Gud.

The soul stared up at him in most incredulous manner and replied; "I thought they were all dead."

With much patient questioning, Gud wrested from this soul, alone in a vast heaven--save for the little souls that played most idiotically upon the grass--a tale of a paradise gone wrong because of a theological blunder.

It was a tedious tale and she who sat knitting there upon the purple rock told it to Gud in broken fragments of narration. First she related how the place had been peopled by all the host of souls passed over from a certain muddy sphere, and who came to this heaven as the result of faith in a most liberal theology that promised universal salvation to saint alike with sinner.

And so they all in one triumphal procession came to claim the rewards and demand the fulfillment of the promises. And yet they had not tarried--none but she who told the tale and the bevy of little tumbling spirits, who were none other than the souls of idiotic babes born into their material world of long ago, deaf and blind as they were imbecile.

Gud suspected, even as the tale unfolded, that there had been some fearful blunder in the promises; and right enough he was, for the ninth promise of their creed had been, "Then ye shall know the truth."

So all the myriads of saved souls, who had cherished the promises, had come to know the truth as it had been promised them. When they arose in glittering gowns and halos bright upon that Resurrection Morn and started singing, one by one and then by twos and tens and soon by scores and thousands they remembered all that they had wished to know of all their pasts and ponderings. And to their minds, reborn to omniscience of the truth of what had been as it had really been, came also the memories of what they thought had been.

The books of hymns had fallen from their hands, and voices lost the key and shrieked in agony. Insane ravings, babblings and cursing smote the air of heaven. Chaos reigned supreme and all the hosts of heaven went raving mad and babbled as they raved.