Be this as it may, from the time of my finding my settled task and
ordered place in the heavenly community the memories of my old life upon
earth began to fade from my thoughts. I could, indeed, always recall
them by an effort, but there seemed less and less inclination to do so
the more I became absorbed in my heavenly activities.
One thing I noticed in these days; it surprised me very greatly, till I
reflected that my surprise was but the consequence of the strange and
mournful blindness with regard to spiritual things in which we live
under the dark skies of earth. We have there a false idea that somehow
or other death takes all the individuality out of a man, obliterating
all the whims, prejudices, the thorny and unreasonable dislikes and
fancies, oddities, tempers, roughnesses, and subtlenesses from a
temperament. Of course there are a good many of these things which
disappear together with the body, such as the glooms, suspicions, and
cloudy irritabilities, which are caused by fatigue and malaise, and by
ill-health generally. But a man's whims and fancies and dislikes do not
by any means disappear on earth when he is in good health; on the
contrary, they are often apt to be accentuated and emphasised when he is
free from pain and care and anxiety, and riding blithely over the waves
of life.
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