Christian fiction; Future life -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction
The funeral procession departed slowly; the grave was filled; one of the
mill-girls came back and threw in some arbor vitæ and a flower or
two,--the sexton hurried her, and both went away. It grew dusk, dark. I
and my body were left alone together.
Of that solemn watch, it is not for me to chatter to any other soul.
Memories overswept me, which only we two could share. Hopes possessed me
which it were not possible to explain to another organization. Regret,
resolve, awe, and joy, every high human emotion excepting fear, battled
about us. While I knelt there in the windless night, I heard chanting
from a long distance, but yet distinct to the dead, that is to the
living ear. As I listened, the sound deepened, approaching, and a group
of singing spirits swept by in the starlit air, poised like birds, or
thoughts, above me:
“_It is sown a natural--it is raised a spiritual body._”
“_Death! where is thy sting?--Grave!--thy victory?_”
“_Believing in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live._”
I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no longer help it, in the
thrilling chorus. It was the first time since I died, that I had felt
myself invited or inclined to share the occupations of others, in the
life I had entered. Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my own
grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into the immortal words, now for
the first time comprehensible to me:
“_I believe, I believe in the resurrection of the dead._”
It was not long thereafter that I received the summons to return. I
should have been glad to go home once more, but was able to check my own
preference without wilful protest, or an aching heart. The conviction
that all was well with my darlings and myself, for life and for death,
had now become an intense yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.
I went as, and where I was bidden, joyfully.
VII.
Upon reëntering the wonderful place which I had begun to call Heaven,
and to which I still give that name, though not, I must say, with
perfect assurance that the word is properly applied to that phase of the
life of which I am the yet most ignorant recorder, I found myself more
weary than I had been at any time since my change came. I was looking
about, uncertain where to go, feeling, for the first time, rather
homeless in this new country, when I was approached by a stranger, who
inquired of me what I sought:
“Rest,” I said promptly.
“A familiar quest,” observed the stranger, smiling.
“You are right, sir. It is a thing I have been seeking for forty years.”
“And never found?”
“Never found.”
“I will assist you,” he said gently, “that is, if you wish it. What will
you have first?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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