“I would say so,” answered Polwarth, “were it not that we have the story of Jesus, which, if we accept it, is surely enough to satisfy us both as to the thing itself, and as to the existence of a good reason, whether we have found one or not, for the mystery that overshadows it.” “Still I presume we are not forbidden to seek such a reason,” said the curate. The draper was glancing from the one to the other with evident anxiety. “Certainly not,” returned the gate-keeper. “For what else is our imagination given us but the discovery of good reasons that are, or the invention of good reasons that may perhaps be?” “Can you then imagine any good reason,” said Drew, “why we should be kept in such absolute ignorance of everything that befalls the parted spirit from the moment it quits its house with us?” “I think I know one,” answered Polwarth. “I have sometimes fancied it might be because no true idea of their condition could possibly be grasped by those who remain in the tabernacle of the body; that to know their state it is necessary that we also should be clothed in our new bodies, which are to the old as a house to a tent. I doubt if we have any words in which the new facts could be imparted to our knowledge, the facts themselves being beyond the reach of any senses whereof we are now in actual possession. I expect to find my new body provided with new, I mean OTHER senses beyond what I now possess: many more may be required to bring us into relation with all the facts in himself which God may have shadowed forth in properties, as we say, of what we call matter. The spaces all around us, even to those betwixt star and star, may be the home of the multitudes of the heavenly host, yet seemingly empty to all who have but our provision of senses. But I do not care to dwell upon that kind of speculation. It belongs to a lower region, upon which I grudge to expend interest while the far loftier one invites me, where, if I gather not the special barley of which I am in search, I am sure to come upon the finest of wheat.--Well, then, for my reason: There are a thousand individual events in the course of every man’s life, by which God takes a hold of him--a thousand breaches by which he would and does enter, little as the man may know it; but there is one universal and unchanging grasp he keeps upon the race, yet not as the race, for the grasp is upon every solitary single individual that has a part in it: that grasp is--death in its mystery. To whom can the man who is about to die in absolute loneliness and go he cannot tell whither, flee for refuge from the doubts and fears that assail him, but to the Father of his being?” “But,” said Drew, “I cannot see what harm would come of letting us know a little--as much at least as might serve to assure us that there was more of SOMETHING on the other side.”