C. “Oh! _I_ shan’t want to sleep for ever, and when I am buried I shall
try to wake up again; and there won’t be any earth on my eyes, will
there, mamma?”
The difficulty of coupling the fact of burial with after-existence in
heaven then began to trouble him. One day (middle of eighth month) he
and his mother were passing a churchyard. He looked intently at the
gravestones and asked: “Mamma, it’s only the naughty people who are
buried, isn’t it?” Being asked why he thought so he continued: “Because
auntie said all the good people went to heaven”. On his mother telling
him that all people are buried he said: “Oh, then heaven must be under
the ground, or they couldn’t get there”. Another way by which he tried
to surmount the difficulty was by supposing that God would have to come
up through the ground to take us to heaven. He clung tenaciously to the
idea of heaven as an escape from the horror of death. That the hope of
heaven was the core of his religious belief is seen in the following
little talk between him and his mother and sister one evening at the end
of the first month.