The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

142 The Gates Ajar. all do about other matters. Why should we not have pretty things in heaven? If this'bright and beautiful economy' of skies and rivers, of grass and sunshine, of hills and valleys, is not too good for such a place as this world, will there be any less variety of the bright and beautiful in the next? There is no reason for supposing that the voice of God will speak to us in thunder-claps, or that it will not take to itself the thousand gentle, suggestive tongues of a nature built on the ruins of this, an unmarred system of beneficence. "There is a pretty argument in the fact that just such sunrises, such opening of buds, such fragrant dropping of fruit, such bells in the brooks, such dreams at twilight, and such hush of stars, were fit for Adam and Eve, made holy man and woman. How do we know that the abstract idea of a heaven needs imply anything very much unlike Eden? There is some reason as well as poetry in the conception of a'Paradise Regained.' A'new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.'" "But how far is it safe to trust to this kind of argument?" "Bishop Butler will answer you better than I. Let me see, - Isaac Taylor says something about that."

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Title
The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Author
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911.
Canvas
Page 142
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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