The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

I 6 The Gates Ajar. as strictly as a body can ever be said to pre. serve it; and stranger things have happened. You remember the old Mohammedan belief in the one little bone which is imperishable. Prof. Bush's idea of our triune existence is suggestive, for a notion. He believed, you know, that it takes a material body, a spiritual body, and a soul, to make a man. The spiritual body is enclosed within the material, the soul within the spiritual. Death is simply the slipping off of the outer body, as a husk slips off from its kernel. The deathless frame stands ready then for the soul's untrammelled occupation. But it is a waste of time to speculate over such useless fancies, while so many remain that will vitally affect our happiness." It is singular; but I never gave a serious thought - and I have done some thinking about other matters-to my heavenly body, till that moment, while I sat listening to her. In fact, till Roy went, the Future was a miserable, mysterious blank, to be drawn on and on in eternal and joyless monotony, and to which, at times, annihilation seemed preferable. I remember, when I was a child, asking father once, if I were so good that I had to go to heaven, whether, after a hundred years, God

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Title
The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Author
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911.
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Page 116
Publication
Boston,: Fields, Osgood, & co.,
1869.

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"The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps." In the digital collection Making of America Books. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/adj0486.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 29, 2025.
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