The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

I60 The Gates Ajar. cultivators, scattering their golden gifts on wayside ground." "Now take Deacon Quirk," I suggested, when we had ridden along a little way under the low, green arches of the elms, "and put him into heaven as you proposed, just as he is, and what is he going to do with himself? He can dig potatoes and sell them without cheating, and give generously of their proceeds to foreign missions; but take away his potatoes, and what would become of him? I don't know a human being more incapacitated to live in such a heaven as he believes in." "Very true, and a good, common-sense argument against such a heaven. I don't profess to surmise what will be found for him to do, beyond this, - that it will be some very palpable work that he can understand. How do we know that he would not be appointed guardian of his poor son here, to whom I suspect he has not been all that father might be in this life, and that he would not have his body as well as his soul to look after, his farm as well as his prayers? to him might be committed the charge of the dews and the rains and the hundred unseen influences that are at work on this very potato-field."

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Title
The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Author
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911.
Canvas
Page 160
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 31, 2025.
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