No More Learning

I thought at the first it was gone to sleep he was. But when shaking
him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was the
falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his drugs.

FATHER JOHN.

Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond the world as
his soul is at this moment.

THOMAS.

You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!

FATHER JOHN.

No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself, the spirit, the
soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our imaginings. He is
fallen into a trance.

THOMAS.

He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields, and coming
back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like angels or
whatever they were. But I mended that.
I taught him to recognise stones
beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would never give in to
visions or to trances.

FATHER JOHN.

We who hold the faith have no right to speak against trance or vision.
Saint Elizabeth had them, Saint Benedict, Saint Anthony, Saint
Columcille. Saint Catherine of Siena often lay a long time as if dead.

THOMAS.

That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone out
of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin
Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing
the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a
good job of for the top of the coach?

FATHER JOHN [_taking up ornament_].

It is likely it was that sent him off. The flashing of light upon
it would be enough to throw one that had a disposition to it into a
trance. There was a very saintly man, though he was not of our church;
he wrote a great book called _Mysterium Magnum_ was seven days in
a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found, fell upon him like a
bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his work. It was a ray of
sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the beginning of all.