t my
father; thy God is not my God! Ah, to whom shall we go? He has not the
words of eternal life, this Jesus, and the universe is dark as chaos! O
father, this thy son is good, but we need a greater son than he. Never
will thy children love thee under the shadow of this new law, that they
are not to love one another as thou lovest them!' How does that man love
God--of what kind is the love he bears him--who is unable to believe
that God loves every throb of every human heart toward another? Did not
the Lord die that we should love one another, and be one with him and
the Father, and is not the knowledge of difference essential to the
deepest love? Can there be oneness without difference? harmony without
distinction? Are all to have the same face? then why faces at all? If
the plains of heaven are to be crowded with the same one face over and
over for ever, but one moment will pass ere by monotony bliss shall have
grown ghastly. Why not perfect spheres of featureless ivory rather than
those multitudinous heads with one face! Or are we to start afresh with
countenances all new, each beautiful, each lovable, each a revelation of
the infinite father, each distinct from every other, and therefore all
blending toward a full revealing--but never more the dear old precious
faces, with its whole story in each, which seem, at the very thought of
them, to draw our hearts out of our bosoms? Were they created only to
become dear, and be destroyed? Is it in wine only that the old is
better? Would such a new heaven be a thing to thank God for? Would this
be a prospect on which the Son of Man would congratulate the mourner, or
at which the mourner for the dead would count himself blessed? It is a
shame that such a preposterous, monstrous unbelief should call for
argument.

A heaven without human love it were inhuman, and yet more undivine to
desire; it ought not to be desired by any being made in the image of
God. The lord of life died that his father's children might grow perfect
in love--might love their brothers and sisters as he loved them: is it
to this end that they must cease to know one another? To annihilate the
past of our earthly embodiment, would be to crush under the heel of an
iron fate the very idea of tenderness, human or divine.

We shall all doubtless be changed, but in what direction?--to something
less, or to something greater?--to something that is less we, which
means degradation? to something that is not we, wh