That thought had troubled me most, when I had
followed to the grave some friend or some beloved. The mouldering form,
shut into the narrow box, was thrust with a sense of shame and disgrace
into the clay, and no word or sign returned to show that the spirit
lived on, or that one would ever find that dear proximity again. How
foolish it seemed now ever to have doubted, ever to have been troubled!
Of course it was all eternal and everlasting. And then, too, came a
second thought. One had learned in life, alas, so often to separate what
was holy and sacred from daily life; there were prayers, liturgies,
religious exercises, solemnities, Sabbaths--an oppressive strain, too
often, and a banishing of active life. Brought up as one had been, there
had been a mournful overshadowing of thought, that after death, and with
God, it would be all grave and constrained and serious, a perpetual
liturgy, an unending Sabbath. But now all was deliciously merged
together. All of beautiful and gracious that there had been in religion,
all of joyful and animated and eager that there had been in secular
life, everything that amused, interested, excited, all fine pictures,
great poems, lovely scenes, intrepid thoughts, exercise, work, jests,
laughter, perceptions, fancies--they were all one now; only sorrow and
weariness and dulness and ugliness and greediness were gone.
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