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