he replied, "talk to me from out your heart and not from out
your mind. The prophecies that come to men from Heaven, Heaven has
communicated through the emotions of the just and the pure, and not
through the perceptions. Tell me of the faith of your heart, the heart
which I know has been free of guile. Tell me of the great Hereafter and
what awaits me there."

"The Hereafter?" said the girl, and she lifted her eyes lovingly to the
face of the man. "The Hereafter is the same as Here, only larger; as
things grown are larger than things ungrown. The Future is to the
Present what the river is to the stream, what the stream is to the
fountain,--it is the flowing out and the flowing on,--the widening and
the deepening of what is."

"Is there no gap, no breakage, no chasm or gulf between the Here and the
Hereafter?" asked the man.

"No," said the girl, "there is no gap, nor chasm, nor gulf, but
continuity of progress and perfect sequence. The connections between
the Known and the Unknown are perfect. The one does not end and the
other begin. Time is the beginning of eternity; and the brief time that
men call a day is only a fraction of endlessness."

"There is no end to life, then?" queried the man.

"End to life!" exclaimed the girl. "How can life end? Life changes its
form, its embodiment, the location of its residence; but life is the
breath of God and when once breathed into the universe and it has taken
form and made for itself expression, who may annihilate it? Who may take
it out of existence? No, master, there is no end to life."

"It is a sublime faith," said the man, "and I have proclaimed it unto
many; but few have been great enough to receive the doctrine as a
verity. In theory they have received it; but their superstition has
robbed them of its mighty consolations. But if we do not die, but only
pass forward as men go out of a city's gate along a road that has no
end, what fate befalls them? Does a change of nature come to them?"

"Only such as comes through growth," answered the girl.

"Shall I be just as I am when I have passed into the great future?" he
asked.

"You will be the same," answered the girl, "only more abundantly
yourself. We are all our life looking for ourselves," continued the
girl, "and few, if any, find themselves until they die."

"I don't understand," said the man. "I know the Lord is speaking through
you, for you are uttering truths so great that at the utterance they
seem myster