Religious Studies, Sketches and PoemsStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
and experience are comparatively so distant and so cold?
It is strongly in confirmation of this idea, that in the
transfiguration scene--which seems to have been intended purposely
to give the disciples a glimpse of the glorified state of their
Master--we find him attended by two spirits of earth, Moses and
Elias, "which appeared with him in glory, and spake of his death
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." It appears that these
so long departed ones were still mingling in deep sympathy with
the tide of human affairs--not only aware of the present, but also
informed as to the future. In coincidence with this idea are all
those passages which speak of the redeemed of earth as being closely
and indissolubly identified with Christ, members of his body, of his
flesh and his bones. It is not to be supposed that those united
to Jesus above all others by so vivid a sympathy and community of
interests are left out as instruments in that great work of human
regeneration which so engrosses him; and when we hear Christians
spoken of as kings and priests unto God, as those who shall judge
angels, we see it more than intimated that they are to be the
partners and actors in that great work of spiritual regeneration of
which Jesus is the head.
What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our
own departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we
in heaven a friend who knew us to the heart's core? a friend to whom
we have unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses? to whom we
have confessed our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we are to
have a ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we not memories
which correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down,
has never an invisible voice whispered, "There is lifting up"? Have
not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over
us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise?
Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things--and whence
come they? Why do the children of the pious mother, whose grave has
grown green and smooth with years, seem often to walk through perils
and dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing Mohammed's fiery
gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet walk unhurt? Ah! could we
see that attendant form, that face where the angel conceals not the
mother, our question would be answered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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