“Go forth! go on, with solemn song,Short is the way; the rest is long!”
“Go forth! go on, with solemn song,Short is the way; the rest is long!”
“Go forth! go on, with solemn song,Short is the way; the rest is long!”
At the grave they sang:—
“Softly now the light of day,”
“Softly now the light of day,”
“Softly now the light of day,”
since my mother had asked for one of the oldhymns; and besides the usual Scriptural Burial Service, a friend, who was dear to me, read Mrs. Browning’s “Sleep.”
It was all as I would have had it, and I looked on peacefully. If I could have spoken I would have said: “You have buried me cheerfully, as Christians ought, as a Christian ought to be.”
I was greatly touched, I must admit, at the grief of some of the poor, plain people who followed my body on its final journey to the village church-yard. The woman who sent the magenta geranium refused to be comforted, and there were one or two young girls whom I had been so fortunate as to assist in difficulties, who, I think, did truly mourn. Some of my boys from the Grand Army were there, too,—some, I mean, whom it had been my privilege to care for in the hospitals in the old war days. They came in uniform, and held their caps before their eyes. It did please me to see them there.
When the brief service at the grave was over, I would have gone home with my mother,feeling that she needed me more than ever; but as I turned to do so, I was approached by a spirit whose presence I had not observed. It proved to be my father. He detained me, explaining that I should remain where I was, feeling no fear, but making no protest, till the Will governing my next movement might be made known to me. So I bade my mother good-by, and Tom, as well as I could in the surprise and confusion, and watched them all as they went away. She, as she walked, seemed to those about her to be leaning only upon her son. But I beheld my father tenderly hastening close beside her, while he supported her with the arm which had never failed her yet, in all their loving lives. Therefore I could let her go, without distress.
The funeral procession departed slowly; the grave was filled; one of the mill-girls came back and threw in some arbor vitæ and a flower or two,—the sexton hurried her, and both went away. It grew dusk, dark. I and my body were left alone together.
Of that solemn watch, it is not for me tochatter to any other soul. Memories overswept me, which only we two could share. Hopes possessed me which it were not possible to explain to another organization. Regret, resolve, awe, and joy, every high human emotion excepting fear, battled about us. While I knelt there in the windless night, I heard chanting from a long distance, but yet distinct to the dead, that is to the living ear. As I listened, the sound deepened, approaching, and a group of singing spirits swept by in the starlit air, poised like birds, or thoughts, above me:
“It is sown a natural—it is raised a spiritual body.”
“Death! where is thy sting?—Grave!—thy victory?”
“Believing in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no longer help it, in the thrilling chorus. It was the first time since I died, that I had felt myself invited or inclined to share the occupations of others, in the life I had entered.Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my own grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into the immortal words, now for the first time comprehensible to me:
“I believe, I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”
It was not long thereafter that I received the summons to return. I should have been glad to go home once more, but was able to check my own preference without wilful protest, or an aching heart. The conviction that all was well with my darlings and myself, for life and for death, had now become an intense yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.
I went as, and where I was bidden, joyfully.
Uponreëntering the wonderful place which I had begun to call Heaven, and to which I still give that name, though not, I must say, with perfect assurance that the word is properly applied to that phase of the life of which I am the yet most ignorant recorder, I found myself more weary than I had been at any time since my change came. I was looking about, uncertain where to go, feeling, for the first time, rather homeless in this new country, when I was approached by a stranger, who inquired of me what I sought:
“Rest,” I said promptly.
“A familiar quest,” observed the stranger, smiling.
“You are right, sir. It is a thing I have been seeking for forty years.”
“And never found?”
“Never found.”
“I will assist you,” he said gently, “that is, if you wish it. What will you have first?”
“Sleep, I think, first, then food. I have been through exciting scenes. I have a touch—a faint one—of what below we called exhaustion. Yet now I am conscious in advance of the rest which is sure to come. Already I feel it, like the ebbing of the wave that goes to form the flow of the next. How blessed to know that onecan’tbe ill!”
“How do you know that?” asked my companion.
“On the whole, I don’t know that I do,” I answered, with embarrassment, “I suppose it is a remnant of one’s old religious teaching: ‘The inhabitant shall not say I am sick.’ Surely there were such words.”
“And you trusted them?” asked the stranger.
“The Bible was a hard book to accept,” I said quickly, “I would not have you overestimate my faith. I tried to believe that it was God’s message. I think Ididbelieve it. But the reason was clear to me. I could not get past that if I wished to.”
“What, then, was the reason,” inquired my friend, solemnly, “why you trusted the message called the Word of God, as received by the believing among His children on earth?”
“Surely,” I urged, “there is but one reason. I refer to the history of our Lord. I do not know whether all in this place are Christians; but I was one.—Sir! I anticipate your question. I was a most imperfect, useless one—to my sorrow and my shame I say it—but, so far as I went, I was an honest one.”
“Did you love Him?—Him whom you called Lord?” asked the stranger, with an air of reserve. I replied that I thought I could truly say that He was dear to me.
I began to be deeply moved by this conversation. I stole a look at the stranger, whom I had at first scarcely noticed, except as one among many passing souls. He was a man of surpassing majesty of mien, and for loveliness of feature I had seen no mortal to vie with him. “This,” I thought, “must be one of the beings we called angels.” Astonishing brightness rayed from him at every motion, and hisnoble face was like the sun itself. He moved beside me like any other spirit, and condescended to me so familiarly, yet with so unapproachable a dignity, that my heart went out to him as breath upon the air. It did not occur to me to ask him who he was, or whither he led me. It was enough that he led, and I followed without question or reply. We walked and talked for a long time together.
He renewed the conversation by asking me whether I had really staked my immortal existence upon the promise of that obscure, uneducated Jew, twenty centuries in his grave,—that plain man who lived a fanatic’s life, and died a felon’s death, and whose teachings had given rise to such bigotry and error upon the earth. I answered that I had never been what is commonly called a devout person, not having a spiritual temperament, but that I had not held our Master responsible for the mistakes of either his friends or his foes, and that the greatest regret I had brought with me into Heaven was that I had been so unworthy to bear His blessed name. He next inquired ofme, if I truly believed that I owed my entrance upon my present life to the interposition of Him of whom we spoke.
“Sir,” I said, “you touch upon sacred nerves. I should find it hard to tell you how utterly I believe that immortality is the gift of Jesus Christ to the human soul.”
“I believed this on earth,” I added, “I believe it in Heaven. I do notknowit yet, however. I am a new-comer; I am still very ignorant. No one has instructed me. I hope to learn ‘syllable by syllable.’ I am impatient to be taught; yet I am patient to be ignorant till I am found worthy to learn. It may be, that you, sir, who evidently are of a higher order of life than ours, are sent to enlighten me?”
My companion smiled, neither dissenting from, nor assenting to my question, and only asked me in reply, if I had yet spoken with the Lord. I said that I had not even seen Him; nay, that I had not even asked to see Him. My friend inquired why this was, and I told him frankly that it was partly becauseI was so occupied at first—nay, most of the time until I was called below.
“I had not much room to think. I was taken from event to event, like a traveler. This matter that you speak of seemed out of place in every way at that time.”
Then I went on to say that my remissness was owing partly to a little real self-distrust, because I feared I was not the kind of believer to whom He would feel quickly drawn; that I felt afraid to propose such a preposterous thing as being brought into His presence; that I supposed, when He saw fit to reveal Himself to me, I should be summoned in some orderly way, suitable to this celestial community; that, in fact, though I had cherished this most sweet and solemn desire, I had not mentioned it before, not even to my own father who conducted me to this place.
“I have not spoken of it,” I said, “to any body but to you.”
The stranger’s face wore a remarkable expression when I said this, as if I had deeply gratified him; and there glittered from his entireform and features such brightness as well-nigh dazzled me. It was as if, where a lesser being would have spoken, or stirred, he shone. I felt as if I conversed with him by radiance, and that living light had become a vocabulary between us. I have elsewhere spoken of the quality of reflecting light as marked among the ordinary inhabitants of this new life; but in this case I was aware of a distinction, due, I thought, to the superior order of existence to which my friend belonged. He did not, like the others, reflect; he radiated glory. More and more, as we had converse together, this impressed, until it awed me. We remained together for a long time. People who met us, greeted the angel with marked reverence, and turned upon me glances of sympathetic delight; but no one interrupted us. We continued our walk into a more retired place, by the shore of a sea, and there we had deep communion.
My friend had inquired if I were still faint, and if I preferred to turn aside for food and rest; but when he asked me the question I was amazed to find that I no longer had theneed of either. Such delight had I in his presence, such invigoration in his sympathy, that glorious recuperation had set in upon my earth-caused weariness. Such power had the soul upon the celestial body! Food for the first was force to the other.
It seemed to me that I had never known refreshment of either before; and that Heaven itself could contain no nutriment that would satisfy me after this upon which I fed in that high hour.
It is not possible for me to repeat the solemn words of that interview. We spoke of grave and sacred themes. He gave me great counsel and fine sympathy. He gave me affectionate rebuke and unfathomable resolve. We talked of those inner experiences which, on earth, the soul protects, like struggling flame, between itself and the sheltering hand of God. We spoke much of the Master, and of my poor hope that I might be permitted after I had been a long time in Heaven, to become worthy to see Him, though at the vast distance of my unworthiness. Of that unworthiness too, wespoke most earnestly; while we did so, the sense of it grew within me like a new soul; yet so divinely did my friend extend his tenderness to me, that I was strengthened far more than weakened by these finer perceptions of my unfitness, which he himself had aroused in me. The counsel that he gave me, Eternity could not divert out of my memory, and the comfort which I had from him I treasure to this hour. “Here,” I thought, “here, at last, I find reproof as gentle as sympathy, and sympathy as invigorating as reproof. Now, for the first time in all my life, I find myself truly understood. What could I not become if I possessed the friendship of such a being! How shall I develop myself so as to obtain it? How can I endure to be deprived of it? Is this too, like friendship on earth, a snatch, a compromise, a heart-ache, a mirror in which one looks only long enough to know that it is dashed away? Have I begun that old pain again,here?”
For I knew, as I sat in that solemn hour with my face to the sea and my soul with him,while sweeter than any song of all the waves of Heaven or earth to sea-lovers sounded his voice who did commune with me,—verily I knew, for then and forever, that earth had been a void to me because I had him not, and that Heaven could be no Heaven to me without him.
All which I had known of human love; all that I had missed; the dreams from which I had been startled; the hopes that had evaded me; the patience which comes from knowing that one may not even try not to be misunderstood; the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the anticipation of desolate age which casts its shadow backward upon the dial of middle life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its disuse; the distrust of one’s own atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable; the growing difficulty of explaining oneself even when it is necessary, because no one being more than any other cares for the explanation; the things which a lonely life converts into silence that cannot be broken, swept upon me like rapids, as, turning tolook into his dazzling face, I said: “This—allthis he understands.”
But when, thus turning, I would have told him so, for there seemed to be no poor pride in Heaven, forbidding soul to tell the truth to soul,—when I turned, my friend had risen, and was departing from me, as swiftly and mysteriously as he came. I did not cry out to him to stay, for I felt ashamed; nor did I tell him how he had bereft me, for that seemed a childish folly. I think I only stood and looked at him.
“If there is any way of being worthy of your friendship,” I said below my breath, “I will have it, if I toil for half Eternity to get it.”
Now, though these words were scarcely articulate, I think he heard them, and turning, with a smile which will haunt my dreams and stir my deeds as long as I shall live, he laid his hand upon my head, and blessed me—but what he said I shall tell no man—and so departed from me, and I was left upon the shore alone, fallen, I think, in a kind of sleep or swoon.
When I awoke, I was greatly calmed and strengthened, but disinclined, at first, to move. I had the reaction from what I knew was theintensest experience of my life, and it took time to adjust my feelings to my thoughts.
A young girl came up while I sat there upon the sands, and employed herself in gathering certain marvelous weeds that the sea had tossed up. These weeds fed upon the air, as they had upon the water, remaining fresh upon the girl’s garments, which she decorated with them. She did not address me, but strolled up and down silently. Presently, feeling moved by the assurance of congeniality that one detects so much more quickly in Heaven than on earth, I said to the young girl:—
“Can you tell me the name of the angel—you must have met him—who has but just left me, and with whom I have been conversing?”
“Do you then truly not know?” she asked, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking off in the direction my friend had taken; then back again, with a fine, compassionate surprise at me.
“Indeed I know not.”
“That was the Master who spoke with you.”
“What did yousay?”
“That was our Lord Himself.”
Afterthe experience related in the last chapter, I remained for some time in solitude. Speech seemed incoherence, and effort impossible. I needed a pause to adapt myself to my awe and my happiness; upon neither of which will it be necessary for me to dwell. Yet I think I may be understood if I say that from this hour I found that what we call Heaven had truly begun for me. Now indeed for the first time I may say that I believed without wonder in the life everlasting; since now, for the first time, I had a reason sufficient for the continuance of existence. A force like the cohesion of atoms held me to eternal hope. Brighter than the dawn of friendship upon a heart bereft, more solemn than the sunrise of love itself upon a life that had thought itself unloved, stole on the power of the Presence to which I had been admitted in so surprising, andyet, after all, how natural a way! Henceforth the knowledge that this experience might be renewed for me at any turn of thought or act, would illuminate joy itself, so that “it should have no need of the sun to lighten it.” I recalled these words, as one recalls a familiar quotation repeated for the first time on some foreign locality of which it is descriptive. Now I knew what he meant, who wrote: “The Lamb is the Light thereof.”
When I came to myself, I observed the young girl who had before addressed me still strolling on the shore. She beckoned, and I went to her, with a new meekness in my heart. What will He have me to do? If, by the lips of this young thing, He choose to instruct me, let me glory in the humility with which I will be a learner!
All things seemed to be so exquisitely ordered for us in this new life, all flowed so naturally, like one sound-wave into another, with ease so apparent, yet under law so superb, that already I was certain Heaven containedno accidents, and no trivialities; as it did no shocks or revolutions.
“If you like,” said the young girl, “we will cross the sea.”
“But how?” I asked, for I saw no boat.
“Can you not, then, walk upon the water yet?” she answered. “Many of us do, as He did once below. But we no longer call such things miracles. They are natural powers. Yet it is an art to use them. One has to learn it, as we did swimming, or such things, in the old times.”
“I have only been here a short time,” I said, half amused at the little celestial “airs” my young friend wore so sweetly. “I know but little yet. Can you teach me how to walk on water?”
“It would take so much time,” said the young girl, “that I think we should not wait for that. We go on to the next duty, now. You had better learn, I think, from somebody wiser than I. I will take you over another way.”
A great and beautiful shell, not unlike a nautilus, was floating near us, on the incomingtide, and my companion motioned to me to step into this. I obeyed her, laughing, but without any hesitation. “Neither shall there be any more death,” I thought as I glanced over the rose-tinted edges of the frail thing into the water, deeper than any I had ever seen, but unclouded, so that I looked to the bottom of the sea. The girl herself stepped out upon the waves with a practiced air, and lightly drawing the great shell with one hand, bore me after her, as one bears a sledge upon ice. As we came into mid-water we began to meet others, some walking, as she did, some rowing or drifting like myself. Upon the opposite shore uprose the outlines of a more thickly settled community than any I had yet seen.
Watching this with interest that deepened as we approached the shore, I selfishly or uncourteously forgot to converse with my companion, who did not disturb my silence until we landed. As she gave me her hand, she said in a quick, direct tone:
“Well, Miss Mary, I see that you do not know me, after all.”
I felt, as I had already done once or twice before, a certain social embarrassment (which in itself instructed me, as perpetuating one of the minor emotions of life below that I had hardly expected to renew) before my lovely guide, as I shook my head, struggling with the phantasmal memories evoked by her words. No, I did not know her.
“I am Marie Sauvée. Ihopeyou remember.”
She said these words in French. The change of language served instantly to recall the long train of impressions stored away, who knew how or where, about the name and memory of this girl.
“Marie Sauvée!You—HERE!” I exclaimed in her own tongue.
At the name, now, the whole story, like the bright side of a dark-lantern, flashed. It was a tale of sorrow and shame, as sad, perhaps, as any that it had been my lot to meet. So far as I had ever known, the little French girl, thrown in my way while I was serving in barracks at Washington, had baffled every effort Ihad made to win her affection or her confidence, and had gone out of my life as the thistle-down flies on the wind. She had cost me many of those precious drops of the soul’s blood which all such endeavor drains; and in the laboratory of memory I had labelled them, “Worse than Wasted,” and sadly wondered if I should do the same again for such another need, at just such hopeless expenditure, and had reminded myself that it was not good spiritual economy, and said that I would never repeat the experience, and known all the while that I should.
Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air of Heaven, “without spot or any such thing”—here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to Him, perhaps, than I—herewas Marie Sauvée.
“I do not know how to apologize,” I said, struggling with my emotion, “for the way in which I spoke to you just now. Why should you not be here? Why, indeed? Why am I here? Why”—
“Dear Miss Mary,” cried the girl, interrupting me passionately, “but for you it might never have been as it is. Or never for ages—I cannot say. I might have been a ghost, bound yet to the hated ghost of the old life. It was your doing, at the first—down there—all those years ago. Miss Mary, you were the first person I ever loved. You didn’t know it. I had no idea of telling you. But I did, I loved you. After you went away, I loved you; ever since then, I loved you. I said, I will be fit to love her before I die. And then I said, I will go where she is going, for I shall never get at her anywhere else. And when I entered this place—for I had no friend or relative here that I knew, to meet me—I was more frightened than it is possible for any one like you to understand, and wondered what place there could be for one like me in all this country, and how I could ever get accustomed to their ways, and whether I should shock and grieve them—youcan’tunderstandthat; I dreaded it so, I was afraid I should swear after I got to Heaven; I was afraid I might saysome evil word, and shame them all, and shame myself more than I could ever get over. I knew I wasn’t educated for any such society. I knew there wasn’t anything in me that would be at home here, but just”—
“But just what, Marie?” I asked, with a humility deeper than I could have expressed.
“But just my love for you, Miss Mary. That was all. I had nothing to come to Heaven on, but loving you and meaning to be a better girl because I loved you. That was truly all.”
“That is impossible!” I said quickly. “Your love for me never brought you here of itself alone. You are mistaken about this. It is neither Christianity nor philosophy.”
“There is no mistake,” persisted the girl, with gentle obstinacy, smiling delightedly at my dogmatism, “I came here because I loved you. Do you not see? In loving you, I loved—for the first time in my life I loved—goodness. I really did. And when I got to this place, I found out that goodness was the same as God. And I had been gettingthe love of God into my heart, all that time, in that strange way, and never knew how it was with me, until—Oh, Miss Mary, who do you think it was,WHO, that met me within an hour after I died?”
“It was our Master,” she added in an awe-struck, yet rapturous whisper, that thrilled me through. “It was He Himself. He was the first, for I had nobody, as I told you, belonging to me in this holy place, to care for a wretch like me.—Hewas the first to meetme! And it was He who taught me everything I had to learn. It was He who made me feel acquainted and at home. It was He who took me on from love of you, to love of Him, as you put one foot after another in learning to walk after you have had a terrible sickness. And it wasHewho never reminded me—never once reminded me—of the sinful creature I had been. Never, by one word or look, from that hour to this day, has He let me feel ashamed in Heaven. That is whatHeis!” cried the girl, turning upon me, in a little sudden, sharp way she used to have; her face andform were so transfigured before me, as she spoke, that it seemed as if she quivered with excess of light, and were about to break away and diffuse herself upon the radiant air, like song, or happy speech, or melting color.
“Die for Him!” she said after a passionate silence. “If I could die everlastingly and everlastingly and everlastingly, to give Him any pleasure, or to save Him any pain— But then, that’s nothing,” she added, “I love Him. That is all that means.—And I’ve only got to live everlastingly instead. That is the way He has treated me—me!”
Theshore upon which we had landed was thickly populated, as I have said. Through a sweep of surpassingly beautiful suburbs, we approached the streets of a town. It is hard to say why I should have been surprised at finding in this place the signs of human traffic, philanthropy, art, and study—what otherwise I expected, who can say? My impressions, as Marie Sauvée led me through the city, had the confusion of sudden pleasure. The width and shining cleanliness of the streets, the beauty and glittering material of the houses, the frequent presence of libraries, museums, public gardens, signs of attention to the wants of animals, and places of shelter for travelers such as I had never seen in the most advanced and benevolent of cities below,—these were the points that struck me most forcibly.
The next thing, which in a different mood might have been the first that impressed me was the remarkable expression of the faces that I met or passed. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe, in any throng, the preponderant look of unrest and dissatisfaction in the human eye. Nothing, to a fine vision, so emphasizes the isolation of being, as the faces of people in a crowd. In this new community to which I had been brought, that old effect was replaced by a delightful change. I perceived, indeed, great intentness of purpose here, as in all thickly-settled regions; the countenances that passed me indicated close conservation of social force and economy of intellectual energy; these were people trained by attrition with many influences, and balanced with the conflict of various interests. But these were men and women, busy without hurry, efficacious without waste; they had ambition without unscrupulousness, power without tyranny, success without vanity, care without anxiety, effort without exhaustion,—hope, fear, toil, uncertainty it seemed, elation it was sure—but a repose that it was impossible to call by any other name than divine, controlled their movements, which were like the pendulum of a golden clock whose works are out of sight. I watched these people with delight. Great numbers of them seemed to be students, thronging what we should call below colleges, seminaries, or schools of art, or music, or science. The proportion of persons pursuing some form of intellectual acquisition struck me as large. My little guide, to whom I mentioned this, assented to the fact, pointing out to me a certain institution we had passed, at which she herself was, she said, something like a primary scholar, and from which she had been given a holiday to meet me as she did, and conduct me through the journey that had been appointed for me on that day. I inquired of her what her studies might be like; but she told me that she was hardly wise enough as yet to explain to me what I could learn for myself when I had been longer in this place, and when my leisure came for investigating its attractions at my own will.
“I am uncommonly ignorant, you know,” said Marie Sauvée humbly, “I have everything to learn. There is book knowledge and thought knowledge and soul knowledge, and I have not any of these. I was as much of what you used to call a heathen, as any Fiji-Islander you gave your missionaries to. I have so much to learn, that I am not sent yet upon other business such as I should like.”
Upon my asking Marie Sauvée what business this might be, she hesitated. “I have become ambitious in Heaven,” she answered slowly. “I shall never be content till I am fit to be sent to the worst woman that can be found—no matter which side of death—I don’t care in what world—I want to be sent to one that nobody else will touch; I think I might know how to save her. It is a tremendous ambition!” she repeated. “Preposterous for the greatest angel there is here! And yet I—Imean to do it.”
I was led on in this way by Marie Sauvée, through and out of the city into the western suburbs; we had approached from the east,and had walked a long distance. There did not occur to me, I think, till we had made the circuit of the beautiful town, one thing, which, when I did observe it, struck me as, on the whole, the most impressive that I had noticed. “I have not seen,” I said, stopping suddenly, “I have not seen a poor person in all this city.”
“Nor an aged one, have you?” asked Marie Sauvée, smiling.
“Now that I think of it,—no. Nor a sick one. Not a beggar. Not a cripple. Not a mourner. Not—and yet what have we here? This building, by which you are leading me, bears a device above the door, the last I should ever have expected to findhere.”
It was an imposing building, of a certain translucent material that had the massiveness of marble, with the delicacy of thin agate illuminated from within. The rear of this building gave upon the open country, with a background of hills, and the vision of the sea which I had crossed. People strolled about the grounds, which had more than the magnificenceof Oriental gardens. Music came from the building, and the saunterers, whom I saw, seemed nevertheless not to be idlers, but persons busily employed in various ways—I should have said, under the close direction of others who guided them. The inscription above the door of this building was a word, in a tongue unknown to me, meaning “Hospital,” as I was told.
“They are the sick at heart,” said Marie Sauvée, in answer to my look of perplexity, “who are healed there. And they are the sick of soul; those who were most unready for the new life; they whose spiritual being was diseased through inaction,theyare the invalids of Heaven. There they are put under treatment, and slowly cured. With some, it takes long. I was there myself when I first came, for a little; it will be a most interesting place for you to visit, by-and-by.”
I inquired who were the physicians of this celestial sanitarium.
“They who unite the natural love of healing to the highest spiritual development.”
“By no means, then, necessarily they who were skilled in the treatment of diseases on earth?” I asked, laughing.
“Such are oftener among the patients,” said Marie Sauvée sadly. To me, so lately from the earth, and our low earthly way of finding amusement in facts of this nature, this girl’s gravity was a rebuke. I thanked her for it, and we passed by the hospital—which I secretly made up my mind to investigate at another time—and so out into the wider country, more sparsely settled, but it seemed to me more beautiful than that we had left behind.
“There,” I said, at length, “is to my taste the loveliest spot we have seen yet. That is the most homelike of all these homes.”
We stopped before a small and quiet house built of curiously inlaid woods, that reminded me of Sorrento work as a great achievement may remind one of a first and faint suggestion. So exquisite was the carving and coloring, that on a larger scale the effect might have interfered with the solidity of the building, but somodest were the proportions of this charming house, that its dignity was only enhanced by its delicacy. It was shielded by trees, some familiar to me, others strange. There were flowers—not too many; birds; and I noticed a fine dog sunning himself upon the steps. The sweep of landscape from all the windows of this house must have been grand. The wind drove up from the sea. The light, which had a peculiar depth and color, reminding me of that which on earth flows from under the edge of a breaking storm-cloud at the hour preceding sunset, formed an aureola about the house. When my companion suggested my examining this place, since it so attracted me, I hesitated, but yielding to her wiser judgment, strolled across the little lawn, and stood, uncertain, at the threshold. The dog arose as I came up, and met me cordially, but no person seemed to be in sight.
“Enter,” said Marie Sauvée in a tone of decision. “You are expected. Go where you will.”
I turned to remonstrate with her, but thegirl had disappeared. Finding myself thus thrown on my own resources, and having learned already the value of obedience to mysterious influences in this new life, I gathered courage, and went into the house. The dog followed me affectionately, rather than suspiciously.
For a few moments I stood in the hall or ante-room, alone and perplexed. Doors opened at right and left, and vistas of exquisitely-ordered rooms stretched out. I saw much of the familiar furniture of a modest home, and much that was unfamiliar mingled therewith. I desired to ask the names or purposes of certain useful articles, and the characters and creators of certain works of art. I was bewildered and delighted. I had something of the feeling of a rustic visitor taken for the first time to a palace or imposing town-house.
Was Heaven an aggregate of homes like this? Did everlasting life move on in the same dear ordered channel—the dearest that human experiment had ever found—the channel of family love? Had one, after death, theold blessedness without the old burden? The old sweetness without the old mistake? The familiar rest, and never the familiar fret? Was there always in the eternal world “somebody to come home to”? And was there always the knowledge that it could not be the wrong person? Was allthateliminated from celestial domestic life? Did Heaven solve the problem on which earth had done no more than speculate?
While I stood, gone well astray on thoughts like these, feeling still too great a delicacy about my uninvited presence in this house, I heard the steps of the host, or so I took them to be; they had the indefinable ring of the master’s foot. I remained where I was, not without embarrassment, ready to apologize for my intrusion as soon as he should come within sight. He crossed the long room at the left, leisurely; I counted his quiet footsteps; he advanced, turned, saw me—I too, turned—and so, in this way, it came about that I stood face to face with my own father.
... I had found the eternal life full of the unexpected, but this was almost the sweetest thing that had happened to me yet.
Presently my father took me over the house and the grounds; with a boyish delight, explaining to me how many years he had been building and constructing and waiting with patience in his heavenly home for the first one of his own to join him. Now, he too, should have “somebody to come home to.” As we dwelt upon the past and glanced at the future, our full hearts overflowed. He explained to me that my new life had but now, in the practical sense of the word, begun; since a human home was the centre of all growth and blessedness. When he had shown me to my own portion of the house, and bidden me welcome to it, he pointed out to me a certain room whose door stood always open, but whose threshold was never crossed. I hardly feel that I have the right, in this public way, to describe, in detail, the construction or adornment of this room. I need only say that Heaven itself seemed to have been ransacked to bring together the daintiest, the most delicate, thepurest, thoughts and fancies that celestial skill or art could create. Years had gone to the creation of this spot; it was a growth of time, the occupation of that loneliness which must be even in the happy life, when death has temporarily separated two who had been one. I was quite prepared for his whispered words, when he said,—
“Your mother’s room, my dear. It will be all ready for her at any time.”
This union had been amarriage—not one of the imperfect ties that pass under the name, on earth. Afterwards, when I learned more of the social economy of the new life, I perceived more clearly the rarity and peculiar value of an experience which had in it the elements of what might be called (if I should be allowed the phrase) eternal permanency, and which involved, therefore, none of the disintegration and redistribution of relations consequent upon passing from temporary or mistaken choices to a fixed and perfect state of society.
Later, on that same evening, I was calledeagerly from below. I was resting, and alone;—I had, so to speak, drawn my first breath in Heaven; once again, like a girl in my own room under my father’s roof; my heart at anchor, and my peace at full tide. I ran as I used to run, years ago, when he called me, crying down,—
“I’m coming, Father,” while I delayed a moment to freshen my dress, and to fasten it with some strange white flowers that climbed over my window, and peered, nodding like children, into the room.
When I reached the hall, or whatever might be the celestial name for the entrance room below, I did not immediately see my father, but I heard the sound of voices beyond, and perceived the presence of many people in the house. As I hesitated, wondering what might be the etiquette of these new conditions, and whether I should be expected to play the hostess at a reception of angels or saints, some one came up from behind me, I think, and held out his hand in silence.
“St. Johns!” I cried, “Jamie St. Johns! The last time I sawyou”—
“The last time you saw me was in a field-hospital after the battle of Malvern Hills,” said St. Johns. “I died in your arms, Miss Mary. Shot flew about you while you got me that last cup of water. I died hard. You sang the hymn I asked for—‘Ye who tossed on beds of pain’—and the shell struck the tent-pole twenty feet off, but you sang right on. I was afraid you would stop. I was almost gone. But you never faltered. You sang my soul out—do you remember? I’ve been watching all this while for you. I’ve been a pretty busy man since I got to this place, but I’ve always found time to run in and ask your father when he expected you.
“I meant to be the first all along; but I hear there’s a girl got ahead of me. She’s here, too, and some more women. But most of us are the boys, to-night, Miss Mary,—come to give you a sort of house-warming—just to say we’ve never forgotten!... and you see we want to say ‘Welcome home at last’ toourarmy woman—God bless her—as she blessed us!
“Come in, Miss Mary! Don’t feel bashful. It’s nobody but your own boys. Here we are. There’s a thing I remember—you used to read it. ‘For when ye fail’—you know I never could quote straight—‘they shall receive you into everlasting habitations’—Wasn’t that it? Now here. See! Count us!Not one missing, do you see? You said you’d have us all here yet—all that died before you did. You used to tell us so. You prayed it, and you lived it, and you did it, and, by His everlasting mercy, here we are. Look us over. Count again. I couldn’t make a speech on earth and I can’t make one in Heaven—but the fellows put me up to it.Comein, Miss Mary!DearMiss Mary—why, we want to shake hands with you, all around! We want to sit and tell army-stories half the night. We want to have some of the old songs, and—What! Crying, Miss Mary?—You?We never saw you cry in all our lives. Your lip used to tremble. You got pretty white; but you weren’t that kind of woman. Oh, see here!CryinginHeaven?”—
Fromthis time, the events which I am trying to relate began to assume in fact a much more orderly course; yet in form I scarcely find them more easy to present. Narrative, as has been said of conversation, “is always but a selection,” and in this case the peculiar difficulties of choosing from an immense mass of material that which can be most fitly compressed into the compass allowed me by these few pages, are so great, that I have again and again laid down my task in despair; only to be urged on by my conviction that it is more clearly my duty to speak what may carry comfort to the hearts of some, than to worry because my imperfect manner of expression may offend the heads of others. All I can presume to hope for this record of an experience is, that it may have a passing value to certain of my readers whose anticipations of what they call“the Hereafter” are so vague or so dubious as to be more of a pain than a pleasure to themselves.
From the time of my reception into my father’s house, I lost the sense of homelessness which had more or less possessed me since my entrance upon the new life, and felt myself becoming again a member of an organized society, with definite duties as well as assured pleasures before me.
These duties I did not find astonishingly different in their essence, while they had changed greatly in form, from those which had occupied me upon earth. I found myself still involved in certain filial and domestic responsibilities, in intellectual acquisition, in the moral support of others, and in spiritual self-culture. I found myself a member of an active community in which not a drone nor an invalid could be counted, and I quickly became, like others who surrounded me, an exceedingly busy person. At first my occupations did not assume sharp professional distinctiveness, but had rather the character of such as would belong to one intraining for a more cultivated condition. This seemed to be true of many of my fellow-citizens; that they were still in a state of education for superior usefulness or happiness. With others, as I have intimated, it was not so. My father’s business, for instance, remained what it had always been—that of a religious teacher; and I met women and men as well, to whom, as in the case of my old neighbor, Mrs. Mersey, there had been set apart an especial fellowship with the spirits of the recently dead or still living, who had need of great guidance. I soon formed, by observation, at least, the acquaintance, too, of a wide variety of natures;—I met artisans and artists, poets and scientists, people of agricultural pursuits, mechanical inventors, musicians, physicians, students, tradesmen, aerial messengers to the earth, or to other planets, and a long list besides, that would puzzle more than it would enlighten, should I attempt to describe it. I mention these points, which I have no space to amplify, mainly to give reality to any allusions that I shall make to my relations in the heavenly city, and to let it be understoodthat I speak of a community as organized and as various as Paris or New York; which possessed all the advantages and none of the evils that we are accustomed to associate with massed population; that such a community existed without sorrow, without sickness, without death, without anxiety, and without sin; that the evidences of almost incredible harmony, growth, and happiness which I saw before me in that one locality, I had reason to believe extended to uncounted others in unknown regions, thronging with joys and activities the mysteries of space and time.
For reasons which will be made clear as I approach the end of my narrative, I cannot speak as fully of many high and marvelous matters in the eternal life, as I wish that I might have done. I am giving impressions which, I am keenly aware, have almost the imperfection of a broken dream. I can only crave from the reader, on trust, a patience which he may be more ready to grant me at a later time.
I now began, as I say, to assume regular duties and pleasures; among the keenest of thelatter was the constant meeting of old friends and acquaintances. Much perplexity, great delight, and some disappointment awaited me in thesedénouementsof earthly story.
The people whom I had naturally expected to meet earliest were often longest delayed from crossing my path; in some cases, they were altogether missing. Again, I was startled by coming in contact with individuals that I had never associated, in my conceptions of the future, with a spiritual existence at all; in these cases I was sometimes humbled by discovering a type of spiritual character so far above my own, that my fancies in their behalf proved to be unwarrantable self-sufficiency. Social life in the heavenly world, I soon learned, was a series of subtle or acute surprises. It sometimes reminded me of a simile of George Eliot’s, wherein she likened human existence to a game of chess in which each one of the pieces had intellect and passions, and the player might be beaten by his own pawns. The element of unexpectedness, which constitutes the first and yet the most unreliable charm of earthly society, hadhere acquired a permanent dignity. One of the most memorable things which I observed about heavenly relations was, that people did not, in the degree or way to which I was accustomed, tire of each other. Attractions, to begin with, were less lightly experienced; their hold was deeper; their consequences more lasting. I had not been under my new conditions long, before I learned that here genuine feeling was never suffered to fall a sacrifice to intellectual curiosity, or emotional caprice; that here one had at last the stimulus of social attrition without its perils, its healthy pleasures without its pains. I learned, of course, much else, which it is more than difficult, and some things which it is impossible, to explain. I testify only of what I am permitted.
Among the intellectual labors that I earliest undertook was the command of the Universal Language, which I soon found necessary to my convenience. In a community like that I had entered, many nationalities were represented, and I observed that while each retained its own familiar earthly tongue, and one had the pleasantopportunity of acquiring as many others as one chose, yet a common vocabulary became a desideratum of which, indeed, no one was compelled to avail himself contrary to his taste, but in which many, like myself, found the greatest pleasure and profit. The command of this language occupied much well-directed time.
I should not omit to say that a portion of my duty and my privilege consisted in renewed visits to the dearly-loved whom I had left upon the earth. These visits were sometimes matters of will with me. Again, they were strictly occasions of permission, and again, I was denied the power to make them when I most deeply desired to do so. Herein I learned the difference between trial and trouble, and that while the last was stricken out of heavenly life, the first distinctly remained. It is pleasant to me to remember that I was allowed to be of more than a little comfort to those who mourned for me; that it was I who guided them from despair to endurance, and so through peace to cheerfulness, and the hearty renewal of daily human content. These visits were for a longtime—excepting the rare occasions on which I met Him who had spoken to me upon the sea-shore—the deepest delight which was offered me.
Upon one point I foresee that I shall be questioned by those who have had the patience so far to follow my recital. What, it will be asked, was the political constitution of the community you describe? What place in celestial society has worldly caste?
When I say, strictly none at all, let me not be misunderstood. I observed the greatest varieties of rank in the celestial kingdom, which seemed to me rather a close Theocracy than a wild commune. There were powers above me, and powers below; there were natural and harmonious social selections; there were laws and their officers; there was obedience and its dignity; there was influence and its authority; there were gifts and their distinctions. I may say that I found far more reverence for differences of rank or influence than I was used to seeing, at least in my own corner of the earth. The main point wasthat the basis of the whole thing had undergone a tremendous change. Inheritance, wealth, intellect, genius, beauty, all the old passports to power, were replaced by one so simple yet so autocratic, that I hardly know how to give any idea at once of its dignity and its sweetness. I may call this personal holiness. Position, in the new life, I found depended upon spiritual claims. Distinction was the result of character. The nature nearest to the Divine Nature ruled the social forces. Spiritual culture was the ultimate test of individual importance.
I inquired one day for a certain writer of world-wide—I mean of earth-wide—celebrity, who, I had learned, was a temporary visitor in the city, and whom I wished to meet. I will not for sufficient reasons mention the name of this man, who had been called the genius of his century, below. I had anticipated that a great ovation would be given him, in which I desired to join, and I was surprised that his presence made little or no stir in our community. Upon investigating the facts, I learned that his public influence was, so far, but a slight one,though it had gradually gained, and was likely to increase with time. He had been a man whose splendid powers were dedicated to the temporary and worldly aspects of Truth, whose private life was selfish and cruel, who had written the most famous poem of his age, but “by all his searching” had not found out God.
In the conditions of the eternal life, this genius had been obliged to set itself to learning the alphabet of spiritual truth; he was still a pupil, rather than a master among us, and I was told that he himself ardently objected to receiving a deference which was not as yet his due; having set the might of his great nature as strenuously now to the spiritual, as once to the intellectual task; in which, I must say, I was not without expectation that he would ultimately outvie us all.
On the same day when this distinguished man entered and left our city (having quietly accomplished his errand), I heard the confusion of some public excitement at a distance, and hastening to see what it meant, I discovered that the object of it was a plain, I thought inher earthly life she must have been a poor woman, obscure, perhaps, and timid. The people pressed towards her, and received her into the town by acclamation. They crowned her with amaranth and flung lilies in her path. The authorities of the city officially met her; the people of influence hastened to beseech her to do honor to their homes by her modest presence; we crowded for a sight of her, we begged for a word from her, we bewildered her with our tributes, till she hid her blushing face and was swept out of our sight.
“But who is this,” I asked an eager passer, “to whom such an extraordinary reception is tendered? I have seen nothing like it since I came here.”
“Is it possible you do not know —— ——?”
My informant gave a name which indeed was not unfamiliar to me; it was that of a woman who had united to extreme beauty of private character, and a high type of faith in invisible truths, life-long devotion to an unpopular philanthropy. She had never been called a “great” woman on earth. Her influence had not been large. Her cause had never beenthe fashion, while she herself was living. Society had never amused itself by adopting her, even to the extent of a parlor lecture. Her name, so far as it was familiar to the public at all, had been the synonym of a poor zealot, a plain fanatic, to be tolerated for her conscientiousness and—avoided for her earnestness. Since her death, the humane consecration which she represented had marched on like a conquering army over her grave. Earth, of which she was not worthy, had known her too late. Heaven was proud to do honor to the spiritual foresight and sustained self-denial, as royal as it was rare.
I remember, also, being deeply touched by a sight upon which I chanced, one morning, when I was strolling about the suburbs of the city, seeking the refreshment of solitude before the duties of the day began. For, while I was thus engaged, I met our Master, suddenly. He was busily occupied with others, and, beyond the deep recognition of His smile, I had no converse with Him. He was followed at a little distance, as He was apt to be, by a group of playing children; but He was inclose communion with two whom I saw to be souls newly-arrived from the lower life. One of these was a man—I should say he had been a rough man, and had come out of a rude life—who conversed with Him eagerly but reverently, as they walked on towards the town. Upon the other side, our Lord held with His own hand the hand of a timid, trembling woman, who scarcely dared raise her eyes from the ground; now and then she drew His garment’s edge furtively to her lips, and let it fall again, with the slow motion of one who is in a dream of ecstasy. These two people, I judged, had no connection with each other beyond the fact that they were simultaneous new-comers to the new country, and had, perhaps, both borne with them either special need or merit, I could hardly decide which. I took occasion to ask a neighbor, an old resident of the city, and wise in its mysteries, what he supposed to be the explanation of the scene before us, and why these two were so distinguished by the favor of Him whose least glance made holiday in the soul of any one of us. It was then explainedto me, that the man about whom I had inquired was the hero of a great calamity, with which the lower world was at present occupied. One of the most frightful railway accidents of this generation had been averted, and the lives of four hundred helpless passengers saved, by the sublime sacrifice of this locomotive engineer, who died (it will be remembered) a death of voluntary and unique torture to save his train. All that could be said of the tragedy was that it held the essence of self-sacrifice in a form seldom attained by man. At the moment I saw this noble fellow, he had so immediately come among us that the expression of physical agony had hardly yet died out of his face, and his eye still blazed with the fire of his tremendous deed.
“But who is the woman?” I asked.
“She was a delicate creature—sick—died of the fright and shock; the only passenger on the train who did not escape.”
I inquired why she too was thus preferred; what glorious deed had she done, to make her so dear to the Divine Heart?
“She? Ah, she,” said my informant, “was only one of the household saints. She had been notable among celestial observers for many years. You know the type I mean—shy, silent—never thinks of herself, scarcely knows she has a self—toils, drudges, endures, prays; expects nothing of her friends, and gives all; hopes for little, even from her Lord, but surrenders everything; full of religious ideals, not all of them theoretically wise, but practically noble; a woman ready to be cut to inch pieces for her faith in an invisible Love that has never apparently given her anything in particular. Oh, you know the kind of woman: has never had anything of her own, in all her life—not even her own room—and a whole family adore her without knowing it, and lean upon her like infants without seeing it. We have been watching for this woman’s coming. We knew there would be an especial greeting for her. But nobody thought of her accompanying the engineer. Come! Shall we not follow, and see how they will be received? If I am not mistaken, it will be a great day in the city.”
Amongthe inquiries that must be raised by my fragmentary recital, I am only too keenly aware of the difficulty of answering one which I do not see my way altogether to ignore. I refer to that affecting the domestic relations of the eternal world.
It will be readily seen that I might not be permitted to share much of the results of my observation in this direction, with earthly curiosity, or even earthly anxiety. It is not without thought and prayer for close guidance that I suffer myself to say, in as few words as possible, that I found the unions which go to form heavenly homes so different from the marriage relations of earth, in their laws of selection and government, that I quickly understood the meaning of our Lord’s few revealed words as to that matter; while yet I do not find myself at liberty to explain either the words or the facts.I think I cannot be wrong in adding, that in a number of cases, so great as to astonish me, the marriages of earth had no historic effect upon the ties of Heaven. Laws of affiliation uniting soul to soul in a relation infinitely closer than a bond, and more permanent than any which the average human experience would lead to if it were socially a free agent, controlled the attractions of this pure and happy life, in a manner of which I can only say that it must remain a mystery to the earthly imagination. I have intimated that in some cases the choices of time were so blessed as to become the choices of Eternity. I may say, that if I found it lawful to utter the impulse of my soul, I should cry throughout the breadth of the earth a warning to the lightness, or the haste, or the presumption, or the mistake that chose to love for one world, when it might have loved for two.
For, let me say most solemnly, that the relations made between man and woman on earth I found to be, in importance to the individual, second to nothing in the range of human experience,save the adjustment of the soul to the Personality of God Himself.
If I say that I found earthly marriage to have been a temporary expedient for preserving the form of the eternal fact; that freedom in this as in all other things became in Heaven the highest law; that the great sea of human misery, swelled by the passion of love on earth, shall evaporate to the last drop in the blaze of bliss to which no human counterpart can approach any nearer than a shadow to the sun,—I may be understood by those for whose sake alone it is worth while to allude to this mystery at all; for the rest it matters little.
Perhaps I should say, once for all, that every form of pure pleasure or happiness which had existed upon the earth had existed as a type of a greater. Our divinest hours below had been scarcely more than suggestions of their counterparts above. I do not expect to be understood. It must only be remembered that, in all instances, the celestial life develops the soul of a thing. When I speak of eating and drinking, for instance, I do not mean that wecooked and prepared our food as we do below. The elements of nutrition continued to exist for us as they had in the earth, the air, the water, though they were available without drudgery or anxiety. Yet I mean distinctly that the sense of taste remained, that it was gratified at need, that it was a finer one and gave a keener pleasure than its coarser prototype below. I mean that thesoul of a senseis a more exquisite thing than what we may call the body of the sense, as developed to earthly consciousness.
So far from there being any diminution in the number or power of the senses in the spiritual life, I found not only an acuter intensity in those which we already possessed, but that the effect of our new conditions was to create others of whose character we had never dreamed. To be sure, wise men had forecast the possibility of this fact, differing among themselves even as to the accepted classification of what they had, as Scaliger who called speech the sixth sense, or our English contemporary who included heat and force in his list(also of six); or more imaginative men who had admitted the conceivability of inconceivable powers in an order of being beyond the human. Knowing a little of these speculations, I was not so much surprised at the facts as overwhelmed by their extent and variety. Yet if I try to explain them, I am met by an almost insurmountable obstacle.
It is well known that missionaries are often thwarted in their religious labors by the absence in savage tongues of any words corresponding to certain ideas such as that of purity or unselfishness. Philologists have told us of one African tribe in whose language exist six different words descriptive of murder; none whatever expressive of love. In another no such word as gratitude can be found. Perhaps no illustration can better serve to indicate the impediments which bar the way to my describing to beings who possess but five senses and their corresponding imaginative culture, the habits or enjoyments consequent upon the development of ten senses or fifteen. I am allowed to say as much as this: that the growthof these celestial powers was variable with individuals throughout the higher world, or so much of it as I became acquainted with. It will be readily seen what an illimitable scope for anticipation or achievement is given to daily life by such an evolution of the nature. It should be carefully remembered that this serves only as a single instance of the exuberance of what we call everlasting life.
Below, I remember that I used sometimes to doubt the possibility of one’s being happy forever under any conditions, and had moods in which I used to question the value of endless existence. I wish most earnestly to say, that before I had been in Heaven days, Eternity did not seem long enough to make room for the growth of character, the growth of mind, the variety of enjoyment and employment, and the increase of usefulness that practically constituted immortality.
It could not have been long after my arrival at my father’s house that he took me with him to the great music hall of our city. It was my first attendance at any one of the publicfestivals of these happy people, and one long to be treasured in thought. It was, in fact, nothing less than the occasion of a visit by Beethoven, and the performance of a new oratorio of his own, which he conducted in person. Long before the opening hour the streets of the city were thronged. People with holiday expressions poured in from the country. It was a gala-day with all the young folks especially, much as such matters go below. A beautiful thing which I noticed was the absence of all personal insistence in the crowd. The weakest, or the saddest, or the most timid, or those who, for any reason, had the more need of this great pleasure, were selected by their neighbors and urged on into the more desirable positions. The music hall, so-called, was situated upon a hill just outside the town, and consisted of an immense roof supported by rose-colored marble pillars. There were no walls to the building, so that there was the effect of being no limit to the audience, which extended past the line of luxuriously covered seats provided for them, upon the grass, andeven into the streets leading to the city. So perfect were what we should call below the telephonic arrangement of the community, that those who remained in their own homes or pursued their usual avocations were not deprived of the music. My impressions are that every person in the city, who desired to put himself in communication with it, heard the oratorio; but I am not familiar with the system by which this was effected. It involved a high advance in the study of acoustics, and was one of the things which I noted to be studied at a wiser time.
Many distinguished persons known to you below, were present, some from our own neighborhood, and others guests of the city. It was delightful to observe the absence of all jealousy or narrow criticism among themselves, and also the reverence with which their superiority was regarded by the less gifted. Every good or great thing seemed to be so heartily shared with every being capable of sharing it, and all personal gifts to become material for such universal pride, that one experienceda kind of transport at the elevation of the public character.
I remembered how it used to be below, when I was present at some musical festival in the familiar hall where the bronze statue of Beethoven, behind the sea of sound, stood calmly. How he towered above our poor unfinished story! As we grouped there, sitting each isolated with his own thirst, brought to be slaked or excited by the flood of music; drinking down into our frivolity or our despair the outlet of that mighty life, it used to seem to me that I heard, far above the passion of the orchestra, his own high words,—his own music made articulate,—“I go to meet Death with joy.”
When there came upon the people in that heavenly audience-room a stir, like the rustling of a dead leaf upon crusted snow; when the stir grew to a solemn murmur; when the murmur ran into a lofty cry; when I saw that the orchestra, the chorus, and the audience had risen like one breathless man, and knew that Beethoven stood before us, the light of daydarkened for that instant before me. The prelude was well under way, I think, before I dared lift my eyes to his face.
The great tide swept me on. When upon earth had he created sound like this? Where upon earth had we heard its like? There he is, one listening nerve from head to foot, he who used to stand deaf in the middle of his own orchestra—desolate no more, denied no more forever, all the heavenly senses possible to Beethoven awake to the last delicate response; all the solemn faith in the invisible, in the holy, which he had made his own, triumphant now; all the powers of his mighty nature in action like a rising storm—there stands Beethoven immortally alive.
What knew we of music, I say, who heard its earthly prototype? It was but the tuning of the instruments before the eternal orchestra shall sound. Soul! swing yourself free upon this mighty current. Of what will Beethoven tell us whom he dashes on like drops?
As the pæan rises, I bow my life to understand. What would he with us whom Godchose to make Beethoven everlastingly? What is the burden of this master’s message, given now in Heaven, as once on earth? Do we hear aright? Do we read the score correctly?
“Holy—holy”—
A chorus of angel voices, trained since the time when morning stars sang together with the sons of God, take up the words:
“Holy,holy,HOLYis the Lord.”
. . . . . . . . .
When the oratorio has ended, and we glide out, each hushed as a hidden thought, to his own ways, I stay beneath a linden-tree to gather breath. A fine sound, faint as the music of a dream, strikes my ringing ears, and, looking up, I see that the leaf above my head is singing. Has it, too, been one of the great chorus yonder? Did he command the forces of nature, as he did the seraphs of Heaven, or the powers of earth?
The strain falls away slowly from the lips of the leaf: