"Yes," I said, "I remember the story well. I wonder what old Carlyle would say about it now? Have you ever seen him here? or Emerson? or Richter? or Robertson of Brighton?" "Robertson!" she answered; "as yet I know only one of the many circles into which the spirit-world seems naturally to resolve it; but I suspect that if you and I could see where Robertson is, we should find him infinitely nearer to the Father-heart of the universe than I at least can for countless ages ever hope to attain!" "What do you mean by 'circles'?" I said. "Am I to understand that there is a kind of sifting and sorting process going on, by which each human soul is, on its arrival here, assigned a fitting place and level among his or her spiritual fellows?" "I don't know that I should express it quite in those words," she answered, "although I cannot think just now of a less clumsy way of putting it, but there is some such gathering of like to like as that of which you speak. The majority begin, as we did, in this lower circle, and remain here until they are fitted to move onward to a higher sphere. Others take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some few are led into the Holy Presence straightway. To die is not to close the eyes on earth merely to open them the next minute in heaven; it is not a sudden transition from darkness to light, or from light to darkness. No, it is a slow and gradual awakening, for no human soul could bear so sudden a shock. Your own transition was, comparatively speaking, an exceptionally rapid one, but I know of some who have been 'changed' for a quarter of a century, and are only now becoming conscious of the fact. Of one thing you may be certain, and that is that God is never in a hurry in the education of a human soul. He works in this world as in the natural one, not by fits and starts and sudden convulsions, but by slow and imperceptible developments, and none but Himself knows what He is going to make of us before He has done--if indeed He ever will have done, which I question. Whatever sphere of work He may assign to us here is the one for which He has all along been preparing us. Our Saviour told the disciples that in His Father's house were many mansions, not one big one where they were all to dwell together, but 'many mansions,' and that He went to prepare a place for them; and you may be positive that He would not so have spoken were not some individual preparation necessary.