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."

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Title
The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Author
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911.
Canvas
Page 88
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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