You have still the gift that but one can give. Within
your animal body you hold an immortal soul. It is pliable as wax; you
can mould it by your will. As you shape that soul, so will your future
be. It is the ark that can traverse the flood. Raise it, and it will
raise you. It is all there is in yourself. Preserve that gift, and
when you die you will, I hope, start on a plane many thousands of years
in advance of me. There should be no more comparison between us than
between a person with all his senses and one that is deaf and blind.
Though you are a layman, you should, with your faith and frame of mind,
soon be but little behind our spiritual bishop."

"I supposed after death a man had rest. Is he, then, a bishop still?"

"The progress, as he told you, is largely on the old lines. As he
stirred men's hearts on earth, he will stir their souls in heaven; and
this is no irksome or unwelcome work."

"You say he WILL do this in heaven. Is he, then, not there yet?"

"He was not far from heaven on earth, yet technically none of us can be
in heaven till after the general resurrection. Then, as we knew on
earth, we shall receive bodies, though, as yet, concerning their exact
nature we know but little more than then. We are all in sheol--the
just in purgatory and paradise, the unjust in hell."

"Since you are still in purgatory, are you unhappy?"

"No, our state is very happy. All physical pain is past, and can never
be felt again. We know that our evil desires are overcome, and that
their imprints are being gradually erased. I occasionally shed an
intangible tear, yet for most of those who strove to obey their
consciences, purgatory, when essential, though occasionally giving us a
bitter twinge, is a joy-producing state. Not all the glories
imaginable or unimaginable could make us happy, were our consciences
ill at ease. I have advanced slowly, yet some things are given us at
once. After I realized I had irrevocably lost your love, though for a
time I had hoped to regain it, I became very restless; earth seemed a
prison, and I looked forward to death as my deliverer. I bore you no
malice; you had never especially tried to win me; the infatuation--that
of a girl of eighteen--had been all on my side. I lived five sad and
lonely years, although, as you know, I had much attention. People
thought me cold and heartless. How could I have a heart, having failed
to win yours, and mine being broken? Having l