My Library

related the real particulars of the association in the East. Stilling was amazed and astonished beyond measure; for he heard remarkable and extraordinary things, which are not, however, of such a nature as can be made public. I only affirm that what Stilling learnt from the gentleman had not the most remote reference to political matters. “About the same time a certain great prince wrote to Stilling, and asked him ‘How it was that he knew anything about the association in the East, for the thing was as he had described it in the “Nostolgia.”’ The answer was naturally the same as that given verbally to the abovementioned stranger. Stilling has experienced several things of this kind, in which his imagination exactly accorded with the real fact without previously having the least knowledge or presentiment of it. How it is, and why it is, God knows. Stilling makes no reflections upon the matter, but lets it stand upon its own value, and looks upon it as a direction of Providence, which purposes leading him in a distinguished manner. The development of the Eastern mystery is, however, a most important matter to him, because it has relation to the Kingdom of God. Much, indeed, remains in obscurity; for Stilling afterwards heard from another person of great consequence, something of an Oriental Alliance which was of a very different kind. It remains to be developed whether the two are