Christian fiction; Future life -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction
“All that Art, ‘the handmaid of the Lord,’ can do for us, I have no
doubt will be done. Eternity will never become monotonous. Variety
without end, charms unnumbered within charms, will be devised by
Infinite ingenuity to minister to our delight. Perhaps,--this is just my
fancying,--perhaps there will be whole planets turned into galleries of
art, over which we may wander at will; or into orchestral halls where
the highest possibilities of music will be realized to singer and to
hearer. Do you know, I have sometimes had a flitting notion that music
would be the language of heaven? It certainly differs in some
indescribable manner from the other arts. We have most of us felt it in
our different ways. It always seems to me like the cry of a great, sad
life dragged to use in this world against its will. Pictures and statues
and poems fit themselves to their work more contentedly. Symphony and
song struggle in fetters. That sense of conflict is not good for me. It
is quite as likely to harm as to help. Then perhaps the mysteries of
sidereal systems will be spread out like a child’s map before us.
Perhaps we shall take journeys to Jupiter and to Saturn and to the
glittering haze of nebulæ, and to the site of ruined worlds whose
‘extinct light is yet travelling through space.’ Occupation for
explorers there, you see!”
“You make me say with little Clo, ‘O, why, I want to go!’ every time I
hear you talk. But there is one thing,--you spoke of families living
together.”
“Yes.”
“And you spoke of--your husband. But the Bible--”
“Says there shall be no marrying nor giving in marriage. I know that.
Nor will there be such marrying or giving in marriage as there is in a
world like this. Christ expressly goes on to state, that we shall be
_as_ the angels in heaven. How do we know what heavenly unions of heart
with heart exist among the angels? It leaves me margin enough to live
and be happy with John forever, and it holds many possibilities for the
settlement of all perplexing questions brought about by the relations of
this world. It is of no use to talk much about them. But it is on that
very verse that I found my unshaken belief that they will be smoothed
out in some natural and happy way, with which each one shall be
content.”
“But O, there is a great gulf fixed; and on one side one, and on the
other another, and they loved each other.”
Her face paled,--it always pales, I notice, at the mention of this
mystery,--but her eyes never lost by a shade their steadfast trust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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