“When a man and woman are truly married, they assist each other in building the same house; for they will live together as husband and wife for ever in heaven. Sometimes persons not married in the world, are seen working together here. Such persons have strong interior affinities, unknown it may be to each other on earth, and will be united in heaven.” “Strange and beautiful!” said I. “And true!” he exclaimed, earnestly. “The true is always strange and beautiful. “If you will look closely,” he continued, “you will see many faint and shadowy forms that are earnestly assisting these men and women in carrying the heavy materials and putting everything into its proper place. These are attendant good spirits invisible to the workers themselves. When a house is finished, we know that the architect has been released from the bondage of the earth-life, and will soon occupy the same house vastly beautified and glorified in some heavenly society.” Thus are spiritual houses—houses not made with hands, eternal in the heavens—builded by our prayers, our faith, our hopes, our loving thoughts, our useful and unselfish deeds. “I see some houses,” I remarked, “upon which no one is working. They seem to be falling to decay.” “The builders have been led away into temptation by evil spirits. The work of regeneration appears to be arrested or retroceding. The Lord will lead them by ways they know not, and they will renew their labors.” While gazing at this strange scene and scrutinizing these shadowy architects of future homes, I suddenly recognized my own figure toiling along under a great beam which was to constitute one of the door-posts on the ground-floor. My house was scarcely begun. “See, brother,” said I, “I have passed into the spiritual world and my house is not finished.” “I never saw it so before,” he said. “I would say confidently from this, that your earthly mission is not ended.” While he was speaking, my attention was arrested by a woman in a black robe on the side of the hill opposite to where my own figure was. This woman was bent almost to the earth under a great block of stone, which she was bearing to put into the walls. Several shadowy forms were busy around her assisting in the difficult task. “And that woman?” said I. “Is probably your future wife.” An insatiable desire immediately seized me to behold her face. Forgetting my painful experience in the imaginary heaven of the Greeks, I thought only of Helena. “It is she,” said I, to myself. “She is a pagan. She is surrounded by evil spheres. She is unregenerate. Her regeneration will be painful and difficult. The good angels are assisting her. The foundations of our house are laid; the structure will rise; the joint work of our secretly united souls. I always knew it and felt it. It cannot be otherwise!” In this ecstasy of thought I watched the bowed figure in the black robe.