Christian fiction; Future life -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction
It is impossible to describe this sight in any earthly tongue, to any
dwellers of the earth. I stood beneath it, as a drop stands beneath the
ocean. For a time I could only feel the surge of beauty--mere
beauty--roll above me. Then, I think, as the dew had fallen from the
leaf, so I sunk upon my knees. I prayed because it was natural to pray,
and felt God in my soul as the prism feels the primary color, while I
thanked Him that I was immortally alive. It had never been like this
before, to pray; nay, prayer itself was now one of the discoveries of
Heaven. It throbbed through me like the beat of a new heart. It seemed
to me that He must be very near me. Almost it was, as if He and I were
alone together in the Universe. For the first time, the passionate wish
to be taken into His very visible presence,--that intense desire which I
had heard of, as overpowering so many of the newly dead,--began to take
possession of me. But I put it aside, since it was not permitted, and a
consciousness of my unfitness came to me, that made the wish itself seem
a kind of mistake. I think this feeling was not unlike what we called
below a sense of sin. I did not give it that name at that time. It had
come to me so naturally and gradually, that there was no strain or pain
about it. Yet when I had it, I could no longer conceive of being without
it. It seemed to me that I was a stronger and wiser woman for it. A
certain gentleness and humility different from what I had been used to,
in my life of activity, wherein so many depended on me, and on the
decided faculties of my nature, accompanied the growing sense of
personal unworthiness with which I entered on the blessedness of
everlasting life.
I watched the rainbow of the sky till it had begun to fade--an event in
itself an exquisite wonder, for each tint of the prism flashed out and
ran in lightning across the heavens before falling to its place in the
primary color, till at last the whole spectacle was resolved into the
three elements, the red, the yellow, and the blue; which themselves
moved on and away, like a conqueror dismissing a pageant.
When this gorgeous scene had ended, I was surprised to find that though
dead and in Heaven, I was hungry. I gathered fruits which grew near, of
strange form and flavor, but delicious to the taste past anything I had
ever eaten, and I drank of the brook where the shells were, feeling
greatly invigorated thereby. I was beginning to wonder where my father
was, when I saw him coming towards me. He greeted me with his old
good-morning kiss, laying his hand upon my head in a benediction that
filled my soul.
As we moved on together, I asked him if he remembered how we used to say
below:
“What a heavenly day!”
Many people seemed to be passing on the road which we had chosen, but as
we walked on they grew fewer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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