The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. 201
aching limbs and sleepy eyes, and nights when
the lamp goes out. Obstacles, moral and
physical, stand in the way of our knowing exactly what it may mean in the ideal of it.
" My best conception of it lies in the friendship of the man Christ Jesus. I suppose he
will bear with him, eternally, the humanity
which he took up with him from the Judean
hills. I imagine that we shall see him in visible form like ourselves, among us, yet not of
us; that he, himself, is "Gott mit ihnen";
that we shall talk with him as a man talketh
with his friend. Perhaps, bowed and hushed
at his dear feet, we shall hear from his own
lips the story of Nazareth, of Bethany, of Golgotha, of the chilly mountains where he used
to pray all night long for us; of the desert
places where he hungered; of his cry for help
- think, Mary - His! - when there was not
one in all the world to hear it, and there was
silence in heaven, while angels strengthened
him and man. forsook him. Perhaps his voice
- the very voice which has sounded whispering through our troubled life -" Could ye not
watch one hour? " -shall unfold its perplexed
meanings; shall make its rough places plain;
shall show us step by step the merciful way
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