The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

I44 The Gates Ajar. taken possession of by those who reverently bow to the authority of Christianity, than left open to impiety." "Very good," I said, laying down the book. "But about those trees and houses, and the rest of your'pretty things'? Are they to be like these? " " I don't suppose that the houses will be made of oak and pine and nailed together, for instance. But I hope for heavenly types of nature and of art. Something that will be to us then what these are now. That is the amount of it. They may be as'spiritual' as you please; they will answer all the purpose to us. As we are not spiritual beings yet, however, I am under the necessity of calling them by their earthly names. You remember Plato's old theory, that the ideal of everything exists eternally in the mind of God. If that is so,and I do not see how it can be otherwise, — then whatever of God is expressed to us in this world by flower, or blade of grass, or human face, why should not that be expressed forever in heaven by something corresponding to flower, or grass, or human face? I do not mean that the heavenly creation will be less real than these, but more so. Their'spirituality'

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Title
The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Author
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911.
Canvas
Page 144
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 28, 2025.
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