“Altogether too briskly, considering that it is a preparative world, to
intend to put us from it into an idle one. What more natural than that
we shall spend our best energies as we spent them here,--in comforting,
teaching, helping, saving people whose very souls we love better than
our own? In fact, it would be very _un_natural if we did not.”
“But I thought that God took care of us, and angels, like Gabriel and
the rest, if I ever thought anything about it, which I am inclined to
doubt.”
“‘God works by the use of means,’ as the preachers say. Why not use Roy
as well as Gabriel? What archangel could understand and reach the
peculiarities of your nature as he could? or, even if understanding,
could so love and bear with you? What is to be done? Will they send Roy
to the planet Jupiter to take care of somebody else’s sister?”
I laughed in spite of myself; nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the
sacred stillness of the place. Her words were drawing away the
bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull, dead greens of the ivy
into its glow of golden color.
“But the Bible, Aunt Winifred.”
“The Bible does _not_ say a great deal on this point,” she said, “but it
does not contradict me. In fact, it helps me; and, moreover, it would
uphold me in black and white if it weren’t for one little obstacle.”
“And that?”
“That frowning ‘original Greek,’ which Gail Hamilton denounces with her
righteous indignation. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is
exactly what I want, than up hops a commentator, and says, this isn’t
according to text, and means something entirely different; and Barnes
says this, and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demonstrated the
other, and very ignorant it is in you, too, not to know it! Here the
other day I ferreted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to prove
beyond question that angels and redeemed men were the same; where the
angel says to John, you know, ‘Am I not of thy brethren the prophets?’ I
thought that I had discovered a delightful thing which all the Fathers
of the church had overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle
Calvin, to be told that something was the matter,--a noun left out, or
some other unanswerable and unreasonable horror, I don’t know what; and
that it didn’t mean that he was of thy brethren the prophets at all!
“You see, if it could be proved that the Christian dead become angels,
we could have all that we need, direct from God, about--to use the
beautiful old phrase--the communion of saints. From Genesis to
Revelation the Bible is filled with angels who are at work on earth.
They hold sweet converse with Abraham in his tent. They are intrusted to
save the soul of Lot. An angel hears the wail of Hagar. The beautiful
feet of an angel bring the good tidings to maiden Mary. An angel’s
noiseless step guides Peter through the barred and bolted gate. Angels
rolled the stone from the buried Christ, and angels sat there in the
solemn morning,--O Mary! if we could have seen them!
“Then there is that one question, direct, comprehensive,--we should not
need anything else,--‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth
to minister to the heirs of salvation?’
“But you see it never seems to have entered those commentators’ heads
that all these beautiful things refer to any but a superior race of
beings, like those from whose ranks Lucifer fell.”
“How stupid in them!”
“I take comfort in thinking so; but, to be serious, even admitting that
these passages refer to a superior race, must there not be some
similarity in the laws which govern existence in the heavenly world?
Since these gracious deeds are performed by what we are accustomed to
call ‘spiritual beings,’ why may they not as well be done by people
from this world as from anywhere else? Besides, there is another point,
and a reasonable one, to be made. The word angel in the original[A]
means, strictly, _a messenger_. It applies to any servant of God,
animate or inanimate. An east wind is as much an angel as Michael.
Again, the generic terms, ‘spirits,’ ‘gods,’ ‘sons of God,’ are used
interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you see, I fancy that I
find a way for you and Roy and me and all of us, straight into the
shining ministry. Mary, Mary, wouldn’t you like to go this very
afternoon?”
[A] ἄγγελος.
She lay back in the grass, with her face up-turned to the sky, and drew
a long breath, wearily. I do not think she meant me to hear it. I did
not answer her, for it came over me with such a hopeless thrill, how
good it would be to be taken to Roy, there by his beautiful grave, with
the ivy and the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover-leaves round
about; and that it could not be, and how long it was to wait,--it came
over me so that I could not speak.
“There!” she said, suddenly rousing, “what a thoughtless, wicked thing
it was to say! And I meant to give you only the good cheer of a cheery
friend. No, I do not care to go this afternoon, nor any afternoon, till
my Father is ready for me. Wherever he has most for me to do, there I
wish,--yes, I think I _wish_ to stay. He knows best.”
After a pause, I asked again, “Why did He not tell us more about this
thing,--about their presence with us? You see if I could _know_ it!”
“The mystery of the Bible lies not so much in what it says, as in what
it does not say,” she replied. “But I suppose that we have been told all
that we can comprehend in this world. Knowledge on one point might
involve knowledge on another, like the links of a chain, till it
stretched far beyond our capacity. At any rate, it is not for me to
break the silence. That is God’s affair. I can only accept the fact.
Nevertheless, as Dr. Chalmers says: ‘It were well for us all could we
carefully draw the line between the secret things which belong to God
and the things which are revealed and belong to us and to our children.’
Some one else,--Whately, I think,--I remember to have noticed as
speaking about these very subjects to this effect,--that precisely
because we know so little of them, it is the more important that we
‘should endeavor so to dwell on them as to make the most of what little
knowledge we have.’”
“Aunt Winifred, you are such a comfort!”
“It needs our best faith,” she said, “to bear this reticence of God. I
cannot help thinking sometimes of a thing Lauderdale said,--I am always
quoting him,--from ‘Son of the Soil,’ you remember: ‘It’s an awfu’
marvel, beyond my reach, when a word of communication would make a’ the
difference, why it’s no permitted, if it were but to keep a heart from
breaking now and then.’ Think of poor Eugénie de Guèrin, trying to
continue her little journal ‘To Maurice in Heaven,’ till the awful,
answerless stillness shut up the book and laid aside the pen.
“But then,” she continued, “there is this to remember,--I may have
borrowed the idea, or it may be my own,--that if we could speak to them,
or they to us, there would be no death, for there would be no
separation. The last, the surest, in some cases the only test of loyalty
to God, would thus be taken away. Roman Catholic nature is human nature,
when it comes upon its knees before a saint. Many lives--all such lives
as yours and mine--would become--”
“Would become what?”
“One long defiance to the First Commandment.”
I cannot become used to such words from such quiet lips. Yet they give
me a curious sense of the trustworthiness of her peace. “Founded upon a
rock,” it seems to be. She has done what it takes a lifetime for some of
us to do; what some of us go into eternity, leaving undone; what I am
afraid I shall never do,--sounded her own nature. She knows the worst of
herself, and faces it as fairly, I believe, as anybody can do in this
world. As for the best of herself, she trusts that to Christ, and he
knows it, and we. I hope she, in her sweet humbleness, will know it some
day.
“I suppose, nevertheless,” she said, “that Roy knows what you are doing
and feeling as well as, perhaps better than, he knew it three months
ago. So he can help you without harming you.”
I asked her, turning suddenly, how that could be, and yet heaven be
heaven,--how he could see me suffer what I had suffered, could see me
sometimes when I supposed none but God had seen me,--and sing on and be
happy.
“You are not the first, Mary, and you will not be the last, to ask that
question. I cannot answer it, and I never heard of any who could. I feel
sure only of this,--that he would suffer far less to see you than to
know nothing about you; and that God’s power of inventing happiness is
not to be blocked by an obstacle like this. Perhaps Roy sees the end
from the beginning, and can bear the sight of pain for the peace that he
watches coming to meet you. I do not know,--that does not perplex me
now; it only makes me anxious for one thing.”
“What is that?”
“That you and I shall not do anything to make them sorry.”
“To make them sorry?”
“Roy would care. Roy would be disappointed to see you make life a
hopeless thing for his sake, or to see you doubt his Saviour.”
“Do you think _that_?”
“Some sort of mourning over sin enters that happy life. God himself ‘was
grieved’ forty years long over his wandering people. Among the angels
there has been ‘silence,’ whatever that mysterious pause may mean, just
as there is joy over one sinner that repenteth; another of my
proof-texts that, to show that they are allowed to keep us in sight.”
“Then you think, you really think, that Roy remembers and loves and
takes care of me; that he has been listening, perhaps, and is--why, you
don’t think he may be _here_?”
“Yes, I do. Here, close beside you all this time, trying to speak to you
through the blessed sunshine and the flowers, trying to help you, and
sure to love you,--right here, dear. I do not believe God means to send
him away from you, either.”
My heart was too full to answer her. Seeing how it was, she slipped
away, and, strolling out of sight with her face to the eastern hills,
left me alone.
And yet I did not seem alone. The low branches swept with a little soft
sigh across the grave; the May-flowers wrapped me in with fragrance
thick as incense; the tiny sparrow turned her soft eyes at me over the
edge of the nest, and chirped contentedly; the “blessed sunshine” talked
with me as it touched the edges of the ivy-leaves to fire.
I cannot write it even here, how these things stole into my heart and
hushed me. If I had seen him standing by the stainless cross, it would
not have frightened or surprised me. There--not dead or gone, but
_there_--it helps me, and makes me strong!
“Mamie! little Mamie!”
O Roy, I will try to bear it all, if you will only stay!