f and thought have crept, though he knows
it not. He it is who uses his Bible as the pearl-fishers use their
shells, sorting out gems from refuse; he sets his pearls after his
own fashion, and he sets them well. "Do not fear," he says; "hell and
judgment are not. God is love. I know that beyond this blue sky above
us is a love as wide-spreading over all. The All-Father will show her to
you again; not spirit only--the little hands, the little feet you loved,
you shall lie down and kiss them if you will. 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. The loves, the
fears, the frailties that are born with the flesh, with the flesh they
shall die. Let them die! There is that in man that cannot die--a seed,
a germ an embryo, a spiritual essence. Higher than she was on earth, as
the tree is higher than the seed, the man than the embryo, so shall you
behold her; changed, glorified!"

High words, ringing well; they are the offering of jewels to the hungry,
of gold to the man who dies for bread. Bread is corruptible, gold is
incorruptible; bread is light, gold is heavy; bread is common, gold is
rare; but the hungry man will barter all your mines f