Greetings to my brother, Lucifer, who was so roundly defeated recently by a soul of Terra, and who must, despite his angry countenance, be secretly elated:

(Strange how your thoughts hover over Terra, that little world, and cannot be free of her! Yet, it is not strange, for God chose her for His Sacrifice, as we have observed before.)

We have watched, you and I, a certain soul on Terra utterly without merit or Grace for many years, until its flesh was old and scored with living. Even on Terra it is unusual to find so abandoned a soul, so completely faithless, so totally in denial of God and man, so ruthless and depraved. In very childhood, that man was a monster of wickedness and cruelty, though endowed with superior intelligence. In very childhood he was an exploiter of the goodness or innocence of others, and rejoiced in the exploitation. In youth his mind was busy with plots for riches and powers and aggrandizement. He was among the proudest of men, the least faithful, the most cynical, the completely debased. Because of his intelligence and his native gifts, and his magnificent appearance, he found it easy to seduce and betray for his own advantage, and to gather millions of adherents who praised him even while they suffered because of him.

His parents cursed the day of his birth, his wife the hour of their marriage, and his children prayed for his death. Yet never did a man have more devoted friends, for his smile was angelic and his conversation witty and urbane. In short, he was you in miniature, Lucifer, though this remark will enrage and insult you.

The soul had never suffered want or pain or struggle in his earthly existence, had never endured injustice or betrayal or the general sorrows of mankind. Therefore, he was a veritable beast of prey, and his hardness of heart must have astounded even your own demons when they chanced on him. Is it not odd that the soul which has never endured misfortune is the least sympathetic and the least kind?

This man had never once, even in his tenderest years, acknowledged or believed in Our Father, though his parents and his mentors had tried exhaustively to penetrate that alert resistance and to inculcate faith in it. He laughed secretly at their efforts, and despised them, though in his public life he solemnly—and with a laugh in his heart—assured other men of his trust and his belief. Above all things, he was a liar of much genius and accomplishment, and he never spoke truth if he could avoid it or if it could not serve him. Though his parents after their death prayed for him, and though angels and saints when appealed to tried to permeate that adamant and vicious spirit, it seemed hopeless. This man, beloved of his fellowmen, and powerful in public affairs, seemed damned almost more completely than any other soul I have perceived in any world, not to mention Terra.

But he awoke one early morning, and did not know that he was dying. He rose and went to his windows and saw the first light and the first glow of the rising sun. He had seen ten thousand such, and never had he been stirred before. But as he saw the sun touch the height of the trees and the light flow from the sky, he was struck to the heart, and he fell on his old knees and cried aloud, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

What shaft had pierced his soul at last, what revelation of himself and Our Father? You do not know, nor do I. But he threw himself upon the floor and groaned in an awful agony of spirit and hated himself—and believed. He knew penitence such as even few of the just know it—absolute and without question. He lay in his groaning and he wept the first honest tears of his life and said to himself, “Surely I am damned, for I rejected both God and man, and I brought evil where there had been goodness, and darkness where there had been light, and sorrow where there had been joy. I am rich beyond counting, but I am truly a beggar, naked and alone. No man has ever lived more deserving of eternal hell than I, and I shall not regret it but will rejoice in its pains, for it is all I deserve. Yet—God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

As always, when a soul leaves a body we know it, you and I. But I had heard the anguish of that man’s repentance and his plea for mercy, he who had never been merciful, and I arrived beside his dying body as it lay on the floor of his chamber the instant you also arrived. You touched his flesh with your foot and said to me, “He is surely damned.” He had fallen there in the brief sleep that precedes death, and I waited.

Then his spirit crept like a larva from the flesh, cringing and wringing its hands and mourning, and the awakened eyes fell upon you and knew you fully, as he had known in life. And he said to you, “Take me, for I am your own, and give me the deepest of your torments, for I am worthy of no more.”

But I had heard the Voice of Our Father, and I said to him, “No, you have repented, and not out of fear but out of remorse and a desire to make recompense, and in loathing of yourself. You have asked for mercy, and it is given to you. Arise, and come with me.”

He looked upon your terrible grandeur in silence but not in dread, and then he looked at me and shaded his eyes with his hand. “I am not worthy,” he said. “If I may be reborn, let me live as the lowest and most contemptible animal, that I may do penance.”

Alas, you said to him, “Creature, you have always been that animal, and so I claim you.” But you knew he was beyond your power if he so willed. He hesitated, then gazed at me again and I said, “If you will, you can rise and go with me to a place of purging, for you have repented and you need but be made clean of your sins. One died for you, that you might repent your crimes and that you might know Heaven and not death. Accept His Grace and His Sacrifice, and arise.”

He stood there, trembling, and he touched my garment and said, “It is white fire, and you have a godlike face, and you must be an angel. Do with me what you will.” And he turned from you and departed with me.

You will say that is unjust, and that men far lesser in evil than he live eternally with you in your hells. But Our Father knows true justice. He will never reject the soul that prays for forgiveness and mercy and loathes his own wickedness at last, whether in the morning or the evening of his life. But it must be true repentance, and not out of fear of hell. It must be an awakening of the whole spirit. That soul is now in Purgatory, where he rejoices, knowing that in some hour he will be free to fly to the hands of God, and that he will be assigned tasks of restitution and reparation. He hungers for redeeming labor where once he hungered only for the powers of his world.

When that soul departed with me, I looked back at you and you faintly smiled and saluted me in mocking silence. Were you pleased, Lucifer, that one of your own had finally rejected you in the last moments of his life? You will never tell me. But I hope it is so. I believe it is so, for a single instant light itself touched your forehead and you raised your own eyes to Heaven.

True it is that the men of Pandara, and her sister worlds, may reject God in the future generations and deny Him, and turn to you as their god. We do not know that in surety. Only God knows, for only He sees the future. However, who knows what revelations He will give to those worlds, and what renewal, and what hope for redemption. He has done this ten thousand times ten thousand times over, and will He not do it again? We do not know. I can only hope, and trust in His love.

Doubtless, you now know—for what is there in the planets that you do not know?—that Melina, whose men you persuaded to destroy all their fellows, including themselves, has become, again, a blue garden of the Lord. Between one breath and the next He obliterated the lifeless and enormous cities, which had desecrated the land, and all the vast tangle of huge roads, and the great towers of futile learning and the conceit of statues raised in a spirit of ebullient self-congratulation. All that arrogant man had made in his folly and in his worship of man has blown away in dust, and again the new trees and the forests and the shining fields are merry with animal voices and sparkling with young eyes and gay with the frisking of happy beings. No fear is here, no creatures of prey, no death, no pain or suffering, no storms and terrors. The winds no longer are foul with pollution and fog and filth. The rivers run clean and brilliant, the lakes are like jewels, and the oceans bubble with a new creation. The opalescent mountains glitter in the strong halcyon light that flows from Arcturus, that great sun. There are no gray deserts, which man had made, no scars on the blessed earth, no uglinesses that came from the souls of men. The skies are silent and glowing, for no roar of man-made machines shatter them. The waters laugh, for no ships sail them, and no harbors mangle the shores. There is nothing but rustlings and song and the sweetness of flowered breezes, and long still shadows in the evening and the pure stateliness of the mornings. Melina is a new Eden—awaiting again the lordship of a new race of men, blossoming, fresh with sapphire trees bearing scarlet and yellow fruit, vivid with red grain. All is calmness, peace, happiness, and mirth.

I discern but one thing which gives me apprehension: on a great plain there is a stark crimson peak, lifeless and lonely, like a bleak monument. Is that to be the Forbidden Land, from which men will be warned at the peril of death and their disastrous fall? Our Father, you will remember, always creates an Area of Choice, a challenge to disobedience, a place where men can exercise their immortal privilege of free will. I look upon that peak, and I often hover over it, and I see its terror and its promise of ruin. No living creature approaches it; it appears cursed, in its isolated grandeur. But, when did men ever turn from a curse, at least in so many worlds which we have known?

I cannot ask you, as my brother, not to approach Melina in his beauty, when a new race inhabits him, for if temptation never appears how, then, shall a man exercise his free will? Yes, surely you will tempt the sons of men, however glorious they appear in their new life. I can only hope that they will resist you, that they will turn their adventurous eyes from that ghastly peak, that they will remember the Commandment, and that they will live eternally on Melina in youth, strength, courage, love and Grace, in communion with Our Father, in the smile of their guardian angel, myself.

You have often laughed at me and my guardianship, and have said to me, “You are impotent before me.” Yes, it has happened so many tens of thousands of times, and so many times without count I have had to drive men from the Garden and let them suffer their self-ordained fate. Each time I have wept and have said to the sons of men, “Shed not your tears, for you are not victims except of yourselves, and this is the fate you chose, and this is the death you willed, and this is the anguish you invoked, and this is the sorrow you embraced of your own free will. Weep for your children, for the earth is cursed in you, and weep for the innocent beasts of the fields and the mountains and the waters, to which you brought death and ravening hunger and whom you made creatures of prey. Alas, you did this, and not God.”

The few six thousands of souls—out of all those billions!—who ascended into Heaven when Melina was destroyed by men, pray for him again and give their blessing on the land and the mountains and the waters. It is they who worked with Our Father to make of Melina the gracious planet he once was, who designed the sunsets and the mornings, who suggested the creatures who live in the trees and the seas, who invented the fruits and the grains. Our Father touched the inventions with life, and He has raised His Hands upon Melina. But only He knows if Melina will fall again under your enticements and your lies. Has He planned, in that event, to give revelations to Melina—as He has done so many multitudes of times before? We do not know. And will the sons of Melina remember, and keep the faith, rejoicing? Or will they spurn the Lord again and again build their monstrous cities of infamy, and their temples of blind learning, and will they again pollute the air and the earth and leave wounded scars where loveliness now exists? I do not know. I only know one thing: there is gold in that fearsome stark monument on the lonely plain. And gold incites wars.

You do not hate me, for you are my brother, and we loved each other in Heaven. You do not hate the other archangels, and angels, who are the guardian spirits of other galaxies and other universes. You would join us—if man did not stand between us, man whom you have never forgiven for having been created.

What you destroy Our Father will re-create. What you lay waste, He will replenish. When you offer death and pride, He will offer life and humility and obedience. When you incite wars, He will strive for peace. You raise up hatred among men, and sometimes the red thunder of it drowns out the Voice of Love, and banishes it.

In the end, Our Father will prevail, and in your secret heart you know it. Why, then, do you strive? Are not the inhabitants of your hells enough for your rapacity? Why would you fatten them the more? Yes, I know all your arguments: Man is an insult to his Creator. Man is unworthy of His Creator. Man, above all, is an outrage to the angels, who must suffer him. Man calls God his Father also, and that is supremely intolerable to you, who love Him with a most terrible and prideful love and would have no human eye gaze upon Him with confidence. Flesh is not that vile, Lucifer, though you believe it is.

Flesh, too, has all the capacities of the angels, for so Our Father willed, and the souls of flesh are immortal. Flesh has its beauties, lesser than ours, to be sure, but still it has charm and tenderness. Man was not created as the angels, except for free will, but when he is majestic and obedient he is not much lower. You would deny God His infinite variety, His smaller creations, His fantasies and His delights. We do not know the meaning of man—but Our Father knows. Yet, like a possessive princely son you would surround Our Father with walls of your own creating, and limit Him to His Throne, and protect His glory, and you alone, if you had the power, would approach the Holy of Holies, and imprison the King in His own Heaven.

I often wonder: If Our Father had not created man at all would you not have warred upon us, your brothers, to keep us from Him, and hold Him as your own, only? Have you wanted Him as your adored Prisoner? Have you desired the Beatific Vision for yourself alone? As I wrote you before, I saw your ardent and jealous and angry eye when we approached Him, and your hand on your sword, which flashed like lightning even in its scabbard. Would you alone converse with Him, and keep His conversation for your own ear?

He is not the Inmate of His precious Creation! He knew your love for Him, and that is why He mourned you, and Heaven, for a pace, was darkened with His sorrow. He would have you return to Him, in grief and repentance.

How long, O Lucifer, will you deny your own nature and your own longing? Why is life abominable to you?

Your brother, Michael