The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

88 The Gates Ajar.
"I do not doubt," she went on, speaking
low, — " I cannot doubt that our absent dead
are very present with us..He said,'I am with
you alway,' knowing the need we have of him,
even to the end of the world. He must understand the need we have of them. I cannot
doubt it."
I watched her as she sat with her absent
eyes turned eastward, and her peculiar look -
I have neve'r seen it on another face - as of
one who holds a happy secret; and while I
watched I wondered.
"There is a reason for it," she said, rousing
as if from a pleasant dream, " a good sensible reason, too, it strikes me, independent of
Scriptural or other proof."
"What is that?"
"That God keeps us briskly at work in this
world."
I did not understand.
"Altogether too briskly, considering that it
is a preparative world, to intend to put us from
it into an idle one. What more natural than
that we shall spend our best energies as we
spent them here, in comforting, teaching,
helping, saving people whose very souls we
love better than our own? In fact, it would
be very unnatural if we did not."