Christ arose, and did eat and drink, so shall she
arise. The dead, all the dead, raised incorruptible! God is love. You
shall see her again."
It is a heavenly song, this of the nineteenth-century Christian. A man
might dry his tears to listen to it, but for this one thing--Waldo muttered
to himself confusedly:
"The thing I loved was a woman proud and young; it had a mother once, who,
dying, kissed her little baby, and prayed God that she might see it again.
If it had lived the loved thing would itself have had a son, who, when he
closed the weary eyes and smoothed the wrinkled forehead of his mother,
would have prayed God to see that old face smile again in the Hereafter.
To the son heaven will be no heaven if the sweet worn face is not in one of
the choirs; he will look for it through the phalanx of God's glorified
angels; and the youth will look for the maid, and the mother for the baby.
'And whose then shall she be at the resurrection of the dead?'"
"Ah, God! ah, God! a beautiful dream," he cried; "but can any one dream it
not sleeping?"
Waldo paced on, moaning in agony and longing.
He heard the Transcendentalist's high answer.
"What have you to do with flesh, the gross and miserable garment in which
spirit hides itself? You shall see her again. But the hand, the foot, the
forehead you loved, you shall see no more.
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