The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. I I
the mood, I made her take off her things and
devote herself to me. My question concerned
what we call the " intermediate state."
"I have been expecting that," she said;
what about it?
"What is it?"
"Life and activity."
"We do not go to sleep, of course."
"I believe that notion is about exploded,
though clear thinkers like Whately have appeared to advocate it. Where it originated, I
do not know, unless from the frequent comparisons in the Scriptures of death with sleep,
which refer solely, I am convinced, to the
condition of body, and which are voted down
by an overwhelming majority of decided
statements relative to the consciousness, happiness, and tangibility of the life into which we
immediately pass."
"It is intermediate, in some sense, I suppose."
"It waits between two other conditions,
yes; I think the drift of what we are taught
about it leads to that conclusion. I expect to
become at once sinless, but to have a broader
Christian character many years hence; to be
happy at once, but to be happier by and by;