 | VI. The gates ajar |  |
6. VI.
May 9.
As I was looking over the green book last
night, Aunt Winifred came up behind me and
softly laid a bunch of violets down between
the leaves.
By an odd contrast, the contented, passionless
things fell against those two verses that
were copied from the German, and completely
covered them from sight. I lifted the flowers,
and held up the page for her to see.
As she read, her face altered strangely; her
eyes dilated, her lip quivered, a flush shot over
her cheeks and dyed her forehead up to the
waves of her hair. I turned away quickly,
feeling that I had committed a rudeness in
watching her, and detecting in her, however
involuntarily, some far, inner sympathy,
or shadow of a long-past sympathy, with the
desperate words.
“Mary,” she said, laying down the book, “I
believe Satan wrote that.”
She laughed a little then, nervously, and
paled back into her quiet, peaceful self.
“I mean that he inspired it. They are
wicked words. You must not read them
over. You will outgrow them sometime with
a beautiful growth of trust and love. Let
them alone till that time comes. See, I will
blot them out of sight for you with colors
as blue as heaven, — the real heaven, where
God will be loved the most.”
She shook apart the thick, sweet nosegay,
and, taking a half-dozen of the little blossoms,
pinned them, dripping with fragrant dew, upon
the lines. There I shall let them stay, and,
since she wishes it, I shall not lift them to
see the reckless words till I can do it safely.
This afternoon Aunt Winifred has been
telling me about herself. Somewhat more,
or of a different kind, I should imagine, from
what she has told most people. She seems to
love me a little, not in a proper kind of way,
because I happen to be her niece, but for my
own sake. It surprises me to find how
pleased I am that she should.
That Kansas life must have been very hard
to her, in contrast as it was with the smooth
elegance of her girlhood; she was very young,
of the sort to her.
“They have been the hardest and the easiest,
the saddest and the happiest, years of all
my life,” she answered.
I pondered the words in my heart, while I listened
to her story. She gave me vivid pictures
of the long, bright bridal journey, overshadowed
with a very mundane weariness of jolting
coaches and railway accidents before its close;
of the little neglected hamlet which waited
for them, twenty miles from a post-office and
thirty from a school-house; of the parsonage,
a log-hut among log-huts, distinguished and
adorned by a little lath and plastering, glass
windows, and a doorstep; — they drew in sight
of it at the close of a tired day, with a red
sunset lying low on the flats.
Uncle Forceythe wanted mission-work, and
mission-work he found here with — I should
say with a vengeance, if the expression were
exactly suited to an elegantly constructed and
reflective journal.
“My heart sank for a moment, I confess,”
she said, “but it never would do, you know, to
let him suspect that, so I smiled away as well
as I knew how, shook hands with one or two
up inside,” they said; went in by the fire, — it
was really a pleasant fire, — and, as soon as
they had left us alone, I climbed into John's
lap, and, with both arms around his neck, told
him that I knew we should be very happy.
And I said —”
“Said what?”
She blushed a little, like a girl.
“I believe I said I should be happy in
Patagonia, — with him. I made him laugh at
last, and say that my face and words were
like a beautiful prophecy. And, Mary, if they
were, it was beautifully fulfilled. In the
roughest times, — times of ragged clothes and
empty flour-barrels, of weakness and sickness
and quack doctors, of cold and discouragement,
of prairie fires and guerillas, — from trouble
to trouble, from year's end to year's end,
we were happy together, we two. As long as
we could have each other, and as long as we
could be about our Master's business, we felt
as if we did not dare to ask for anything
more, lest it should seem that we were ungrateful
for such wealth of mercy.”
It would take too long to write out here the
half that she told me, though I wish I could,
I have ever read.
After years of Christ-like toiling to help those
rough old farmers and wicked bushwhackers
to Heaven, the call to Lawrence came, and it
seemed to Uncle Forceythe that he had better
go. It was a pleasant, influential parish, and
there, though not less hard at work, they found
fewer rubs and more comforts; there Faith
came, and there were their pleasant days, till
the war. — I held my breath to hear her tell
about Quantrell's raid. There, too, Uncle
wasted through that death-in-life, consumption;
there he “fell on sleep,” she said, and
there she buried him.
She gave me no further description of his
death than those words, and she spoke them
with her far-away, tearless eyes looking off
through the window, and after she had
spoken she was still for a time.
The heart knoweth its own bitterness; that
grew distinct to me, as I sat, shut out by her
silence. Yet there was nothing bitter about
her face.
“Faith was six months old when he went,”
she said presently. “We had never named
her: Baby was name enough at first for such
had come so late, that it seemed to mean more
to us than to most to have a baby all to ourselves,
and we liked the sound of the word.
When it became quite certain that John must
go, we used to talk it over, and he said that he
would like to name her, but what, he did not
tell me.
“At last, one night, after he had lain for a
while thinking with closed eyes, he bade me
bring the child to him. The sun was setting,
I remember, and the moon was rising. He
had had a hard day; the life was all scorched
out of the air. I moved the bed up by the
window, that he might have the breath of the
rising wind. Baby was wide awake, cooing
softly to herself in the cradle, her bits of damp
curls clinging to her head, and her pink feet
in her hands. I took her up and brought her
just as she was, and knelt down by the bed.
The street was still. We could hear the frogs
chanting a mile away. He lifted her little
hands upon his own, and said — no matter
about the words — but he told me that as he
left the child, so he left the name, in my sacred
charge, — that he had chosen it for me, — that,
when he was out of sight, it might help me to
have it often on my lips.
“So there in the sunset and the moonrise,
we two alone together, he baptized her, and
we gave our little girl to God.”
When she had said this, she rose and went
over to the window, and stood with her face
from me. By and by, “It was the fourteenth,”
she said, as if musing to herself, — “the fourteenth
of June.”
I remember now that Uncle Forceythe died
on the fourteenth of June. It may have been
that the words of that baptismal blessing
were the last that they heard, either child or
mother.
May 10.
It has been a pleasant day; the air shines
like transparent gold; the wind sweeps like
somebody's strong arms over the flowers, and
gathers up a crowd of perfumes that wander
up and down about one. The church bells
have rung out like silver all day. Those
bells — especially the Second Advent at the
further end of the village — are positively
ghastly when it rains.
Aunt Winifred was dressed bright and early
for church. I, in morning dress and slippers,
sighed and demurred.
“Auntie, do you expect to hear anything
new?”
“Judging from your diagnosis of Dr. Bland,
— no.”
“To be edified, refreshed, strengthened, or
instructed?”
“Perhaps not.”
“Bored, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you expect?”
“There are the prayers and singing. Generally
one can, if one tries, wring a little devotion
from the worst of them. As to a minister,
if he is good and commonplace, young
and earnest and ignorant, and I, whom he
cannot help one step on the way to Heaven,
consequently stay at home, Deacon Quirk,
whom he might carry a mile or two, by and
by stays at home also. If there is to be a
`building fitly joined together,' each stone
must do its part of the upholding. I feel
better to go half a day always. I never compel
Faith to go, but I never have a chance, for
she teases not to be left at home.”
“I think it 's splendid to go to church most
the time,” put in Faith, who was squatted on
the carpet, counting sugared caraway seeds,
— “all but the sermon. That is n't splendid.
I don't like the gre-at big prayers 'n' things.
gives 'em to me in meeting 'cause I 'm a good
girl. Don't you wish you were a good girl,
Cousin Mary, so 's you could have some? Besides,
I 've got on my best hat and my button-boots.
Besides, there used to be a real funny
little boy up in meeting at home, and he gave
me a little tin dorg once over the top the pew.
Only mother made me give it back. O, you
ought to seen the man that preached down at
Uncle Calvin's! I tell you he was a bully old
minister, — he banged the Bible like everything!”
“There 's a devotional spirit for you!” I said
to her mother.
“Well,” she answered, laughing, “it is better
than that she should be left to play
dolls and eat preserves, and be punished
for disobedience. Sunday would invariably
become a guilty sort of holiday at that rate.
Now, caraways or `bully old ministers' notwithstanding,
she carries to bed with her a
dim notion that this has been holy time and
pleasant time. Besides, the associations of a
church-going childhood, if I can manage them
genially, will be a help to her when she is
older. Come, Faith! go and pull off Cousin
and then she 'll have to go to church. No, I
did n't say that you might tickle her feet!”
Feeling the least bit sorry that I had
set the example of a stay-at-home Christian
before the child, I went directly up stairs
to make ready, and we started after all in
good season.
Dr. Bland was in the pulpit. I observed
that he looked — as indeed did the congregation
bodily — with some curiosity into our
slip, where it has been a rare occurrence of
late to find me, and where the light, falling
through the little stained glass oriel, touched
Aunt Winifred's thoughtful smile. I wondered
whether Dr. Bland thought it was wicked
for people to smile in church. No, of course
he has too much sense. I wonder what it is
about Dr. Bland that always suggests such
questions.
It has been very warm all day, — that aggravating,
unseasonable heat, which is apt to come
in spasms in the early part of May, and which,
in thick spring alpaca and heavy sack, one
finds intolerable. The thermometer stood at
75° on the church porch; every window was
shut, and everybody's fan was fluttering.
our observant minister do, but give out as
his first hymn: “Thine earthly Sabbaths.”
“Thine earthly Sabbaths” would be a beautiful
hymn, if it were not for those lines about
the weather: —
But sacred, high, eternal noon”!
on my black bonnet. My fan was broken.
I gasped for air. The choir went over
and over and over the words, spinning them
into one of those indescribable tunes, in which
everybody seems to be trying to get through
first. I don't know what they called them, —
they always remind me of a game of “Tag.”
I looked at Aunt Winifred. She took it
more coolly than I, but an amused little
smile played over her face. She told me after
church that she had repeatedly heard that
hymn given out at noon of an intense July
day. Her husband, she said, used to save
it for the winter, or for cloudy afternoons.
“Using means of grace,” he called that.
However, Dr. Bland did better the second
time, Aunt Winifred joined in the singing,
man. I suppose he was so far lifted above
this earth, that he would not have known
whether he was preaching in Greenland's icy
mountains, or on India's coral strand.
When he announced his text, “For our conversation
is in Heaven,” Aunt Winifred and I
exchanged glances of content. We had been
talking about heaven on the way to church;
at least, till Faith, not finding herself entertained,
interrupted us by some severe speculations
as to whether Maltese kitties were mulattoes,
and “why the bell-ringer did n't jump off
the steeple some night, and see if he could n't
fly right up, the way Elijah did.”
I listened to Dr. Bland as I have not listened
for a long time. The subject was of all subjects
nearest my heart. He is a scholarly
man, in his way. He ought to know, I
thought, more about it than Aunt Winifred.
Perhaps he could help me.
His sermon, as nearly as I can recall it, was
substantially this.
“The future life presented a vast theme to
our speculation. Theories `too numerous to
mention,' had been held concerning it. Pagans
had believed in a coming state of rewards
had dimly foreshadowed, Revelation had
brought in, like a full-orbed day, with healing
on its wings.” I am not positive about the
metaphors.
“As it was fitting that we should at times
turn our thoughts upon the threatenings of
Scripture, it was eminently suitable also that
we should consider its promises.
“He proposed in this discourse to consider
the promise of heaven, the reward offered by
Christ to his good and faithful servants.
“In the first place: What is heaven?”
I am not quite clear in my mind what it
was, though I tried my best to find out. As
nearly as I can recollect, however, —
“Heaven is an eternal state.
“Heaven is a state of holiness.
“Heaven is a state of happiness.”
Having heard these observations before, I
will not enlarge as he did upon them, but
leave that for the “vivid imagination” of the
green book.
“In the second place: What will be the
employments of heaven?
“We shall study the character of God.
“An infinite mind must of necessity be eternally
The finite mind must of necessity find in such
study supreme delight. All lesser joys and
interests will pale. He felt at moments, in
reflecting on this theme, that that good
brother who, on being asked if he expected to
see the dead wife of his youth in heaven, replied,
`I expect to be so overwhelmed by the
glory of the presence of God, that it may be
thousands of years before I shall think of my
wife,' — he felt that perhaps this brother was
near the truth.”
Poor Mrs. Bland looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
“We shall also glorify God.”
He enlarged upon this division, but I have
forgotten exactly how. There was something
about adoration, and the harpers harping with
their harps, and the sea of glass, and crying,
Worthy the Lamb! and a great deal more that
bewildered and disheartened me so that I
could scarcely listen to it. I do not doubt
that we shall glorify God primarily and happily,
but can we not do it in some other way
than by harping and praying?
“We shall moreover love each other with a
universal and unselfish love.”
“That we shall recognize our friends in
heaven, he was inclined to think, after mature
deliberation, was probable. But there would
be no special selfish affections there. In this
world we have enmities and favoritisms. In
the world of bliss our hearts would glow with
holy love alike to all other holy hearts.”
I wonder if he really thought that would
make “a world of bliss.” Aunt Winifred
slipped her hand into mine under her cloak.
Ah, Dr. Bland, if you had known how that
little soft touch was preaching against you!
“In the words of an eminent divine, who
has long since entered into the joys of which
he spoke: `Thus, whenever the mind roves
through the immense region of heaven, it will
find, among all its innumerable millions, not
an enemy, not a stranger, not an indifferent
heart, not a reserved bosom. Disguise here,
and even concealment, will be unknown.
The soul will have no interests to conceal, no
thoughts to disguise. A window will be
opened in every breast, and show to every eye
the rich and beautiful furniture within!'
“Thirdly: How shall we fit for heaven?”
He mentioned several ways, among which,—
“We should subdue our earthly affections to
God.
“We must not love the creature as the Creator.
My son, give me thy heart. When he
removes our friends from the scenes of time
(with a glance in my direction), we should
resign ourselves to his will, remembering that
the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away
in mercy; that He is all in all; that He will
never leave us nor forsake us; that He can
never change or die.”
As if that made any difference with the
fact, that his best treasures change or die!
“In conclusion, —
“We infer from our text that our hearts
should not be set upon earthly happiness.
(Enlarged.)
“That the subject of heaven should be often
in our thoughts and on our lips.” (Enlarged.)
Of course I have not done justice to the
filling up of the sermon; to the illustrations,
metaphors, proof-texts, learning, and eloquence,
— for, though Dr. Bland cannot seem to think
outside of the old grooves, a little eloquence
really flashes through the tameness of his
style sometimes, and when he was talking
about the harpers, etc., some of his words were
well chosen. “To be drowned in light,” I
have somewhere read, “may be very beautiful;
given the skeleton of the discourse, and I have
given the sum of the impressions that it left
on me, an attentive hearer. It is fortunate
that I did not hear it while I was alone; it
would have made me desperate. Going hungry,
hopeless, blinded, I came back empty,
uncomforted, groping. I wanted something
actual, something pleasant, about this place
into which Roy has gone. He gave me glittering
generalities, cold commonplace, vagueness,
unreality, a God and a future at which I
sat and shivered.
Dr. Bland is a good man. He had, I know,
written that sermon with prayer. I only wish
that he could be made to see how it glides
over and sails splendidly away from wants
like mine.
But thanks be to God who has provided a
voice to answer me out of the deeps.
Auntie and I walked home without any
remarks (we overheard Deacon Quirk observe
to a neighbor: “That 's what I call a good
gospel sermon, now!”), sent Faith away to
Phœbe, sat down in the parlor, and looked at
each other.
“Well?” said I.
“I know it,” said she.
Upon which we both began to laugh.
“But did he say the dreadful truth?”
“Not as I find it in my Bible.”
“That it is probable, only probable that we
shall recognize —”
“My child, do not be troubled about that.
It is not probable, it is sure. If I could find
no proof for it, I should none the less believe
it, as long as I believe in God. He gave you
Roy, and the capacity to love him. He has
taught you to sanctify that love through love
to Him. Would it be like Him to create such
beautiful and unselfish loves, — most like the
love of heaven of any type we know, — just
for our threescore years and ten of earth?
Would it be like Him to suffer two souls to
grow together here, so that the separation of a
day is pain, and then wrench them apart for
all eternity? It would be what Madame de
Gasparin calls, `fearful irony on the part of
God.'”
“But there are lost loves. There are lost
souls.”
“How often would I have gathered you,
and ye would not! That is not his work.
He would have saved both soul and love.
of His redeemed. The object of having this
world at all, you know, is to fit us for another.
Of what use will it have been, if on passing out
of it we must throw by forever its gifts, its lessons,
its memories? God links things together
better than that. Be sure, as you are sure
of Him, that we shall be ourselves in heaven.
Would you be yourself not to recognize Roy?
— consequently, not to love Roy, for to love
and to be separated is misery, and heaven is
joy.”
“I understand. But you said you had other
proof.”
“So I have; plenty of it. If `many shall
come from the East and from the West, and
shall sit down in the kingdom of God with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' will they not be
likely to know that they are with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob? or will they think it is Shadrach,
Meshech, and Abednego?
“What is meant by such expressions as
`risen together,' `sitting together at the right
hand of God,' `sitting together in heavenly
places'? If they mean anything, they mean
recognitions, friendships, enjoyments.
“Did not Peter and the others know Moses
saw him? Yet these men were dead hundreds
of years before the favored fishermen were
born.
“How was it with those `saints which slept
and arose' when Christ hung dead there in the
dark? Were they not seen of many?”
“But that was a miracle.”
“They were risen dead, such as you and
I shall be some day. The miracle consisted
in their rising then and there. Moreover, did
not the beggar recognize Abraham? and —
Well, one might go through the Bible finding
it full of this promise in hints or assertions, in
parables or visions. We are `heirs of God,'
`joint heirs with Christ'; having suffered with
Him, we shall be `glorified together.' Christ
himself has said many sure things: `I will
come and receive you, that where I am, there
ye may be.' `I will that they be with me
where I am.' Using, too, the very type of
Godhead to signify the eternal nearness and
eternal love of just such as you and Roy, as
John and me, he prays: `Holy Father, keep
them whom Thou hast given me, that they
may be one as we are.'
“There is one place, though, where I find
that old cry wrung from the lips of
the stricken king, — `I shall go to him; but
he will not return to me.'”
“I never thought before how simple and
direct it is; and that, too, in those old blinded
days.”
“The more I study the Bible,” she said,
“and I study not entirely in ignorance of the
commentators and the mysteries, the more
perplexed I am to imagine where the current
ideas of our future come from. They certainly
are not in this book of gracious promises. That
heaven which we heard about to-day was Dr.
Bland's, not God's. `It 's aye a wonderfu'
thing to me,' as poor Lauderdale said, `the
way some preachers take it upon themselves
to explain matters to the Almighty!'”
“But the harps and choirs, the throne, the
white robes, are all in Revelation. Deacon
Quirk would put his great brown finger on the
verses, and hold you there triumphantly.”
“Can't people tell picture from substance,
a metaphor from its meaning? That book of
Revelation is precisely what it professes to be,
— a vision; a symbol. A symbol of something,
to be sure, and rich with pleasant hopes,
a large proportion of Christian church-members,
who have studied their Bible, attended
Sabbath schools, listened to sermons all their
lives, if you could fairly come at their most
definite idea of the place where they expect to
spend eternity, would own it to be the golden
city, with pearl gates, and jewels in the wall.
It never occurs to them, that, if one picture is
literal, another must be. If we are to walk
golden streets, how can we stand on a sea of
glass? How can we `sit on thrones'? How
can untold millions of us `lie in Abraham's
bosom'?”
“But why have given us empty symbols?
Why not a little fact?”
“They are not empty symbols. And why
God did not give us actual descriptions of
actual heavenly life, I don't trouble myself to
wonder. He certainly had his reasons, and
that is enough for me. I find from these symbols,
and from his voice in my own heart,
many beautiful things, — I will tell you some
more of them at another time, — and, for the
rest, I am content to wait. He loves me, and
he loves mine. As long as we love Him, He
will never separate Himself from us, or us from
each other. That, at least, is sure.”
“If that is sure, the rest is of less importance;
— yes. But Dr. Bland said an awful
thing!”
“The quotation from a dead divine?”
“Yes. That there will be no separate interests,
no thoughts to conceal.”
“Poor good man! He has found out by
this time that he should not have laid down
nonsense like that, without qualification or
demur, before a Bible-reading hearer. It was
simply his opinion, not David's, or Paul's, or
John's, or Isaiah's. He had a perfect right
to put it in the form of a conjecture. Nobody
would forbid his conjecturing that the inhabitants
of heaven are all deaf and dumb, or
wear green glasses, or shave their heads, if he
chose, provided he stated that it was conjecture,
not revelation.”
“But where does the Bible say that we shall
have power to conceal our thoughts? — and
I would rather be annihilated than to spend
eternity with heart laid bare, — the inner temple
thrown open to be trampled on by every
passing stranger!”
“The Bible specifies very little about the
minor arrangements of eternity in any way.
But I doubt if, under any circumstances, it
us that our thoughts shall continue to be
our own. The fact is patent on the face of
things. The dead minister's supposition would
destroy individuality at one fell swoop. We
should be like a man walking down a room
lined with mirrors, who sees himself reflected
in all sizes, colors, shades, at all angles and in
all proportions, according to the capacity of
the mirror, till he seems no longer to belong
to himself, but to be cut up into ellipses and
octagons and prisms. How soon would he
grow frantic in such companionship, and beg
for a corner where he might hide and hush
himself in the dark?
“That we shall in a higher life be able to
do what we cannot in this, — judge fairly of
each other's moral worth, — is undoubtedly
true. Whatever the Judgment Day may mean,
that is the substance of it. But this promiscuous
theory of refraction; — never!
“Besides, wherever the Bible touches the
subject, it premises our individuality as a
matter of course. What would be the use of
talking, if everybody knew the thoughts of
everybody else?”
“You don't suppose that people talk in
heaven?”
“I don't suppose anything else. Are we to
spend ages of joy, a company of mutes together?
Why not talk?”
“I supposed we should sing, — but —”
“Why not talk as well as sing? Does not
song involve the faculty of speech? — unless
you would like to make canaries of us.”
“Ye-es. Why, yes.”
“There are the visitors at the beautiful
Mount of Transfiguration again. Did not they
talk with each other and with Christ? Did
not John talk with the angel who `shewed him
those things'?”
“And you mean to say —”
“I mean to say that if there is such a thing
as common sense, you will talk with Roy as
you talked with him here, — only not as you
talked with him here, because there will be no
troubles nor sins, no anxieties nor cares, to
talk about; no ugly shades of cross words or
little quarrels to be made up; no fearful looking-for
of separation.”
I laid my head upon her shoulder, and
could hardly speak for the comfort that she
gave me.
“Yes, I believe we shall talk and laugh and
joke and play —”
“Laugh and joke in heaven?”
“Why not?”
“But it seems so — so — why, so wicked
and irreverent and all that, you know.”
Just then Faith, who, mounted out on the
kitchen table, was preaching at Phœbe in comical
mimicry of Dr. Bland's choicest intonations,
laughed out like the splash of a little
wave.
The sound came in at the open door, and we
stopped to listen till it had rippled away.
“There!” said her mother, “put that child,
this very minute, with all her little sins forgiven,
into one of our dear Lord's many mansions,
and do you suppose that she would be any the
less holy or less reverent for a laugh like that?
Is he going to check all the sparkle and blossom
of life when he takes us to himself? I
don't believe any such thing.
“There were both sense and Christianity
in what somebody wrote on the death of a
humorous poet: —
This man of the smile and the jest?'
fellow had gone to heaven; if not, it was bad
philosophy and worse religion.
“Did not David dance before the Lord with
all his might? A Bible which is full of happy
battle-cries: `Rejoice in the Lord! make a
joyful noise unto him! Give thanks unto
the Lord, for his mercy endureth!' — a Bible
which exhausts its splendid wealth of rhetoric
to make us understand that the coming life
is a life of joy, no more threatens to make nuns
than mutes of us. I expect that you will
hear some of Roy's very old jokes, see the
sparkle in his eye, listen to his laughing voice,
lighten up the happy days as gleefully as you
may choose; and that —”
Faith appeared upon the scene just then,
with the interesting information that she had
bitten her tongue; so we talked no more.
How pleasant — how pleasant this is! I
never supposed before that God would let
any one laugh in heaven.
I wonder if Roy has seen the President.
Aunt Winifred says she does not doubt it.
She thinks that all the soldiers must have
crowded up to meet him, and “O,” she says,
“what a sight to see!”
| VI. The gates ajar | |