It is strange, but I seem to know her more _humanly_ now than when she was here. I saw her but once or twice; she was to me as a spirit, a voice in the wilderness, to guide and to cheer. Now I feel how she wore the same robes of flesh, wearily and painfully, yet cheering and blessing household and friends by her patient, tender love. I never thought before how beautiful it would be to visit the Holy Land--to tread in the Lord’s footsteps. I had thought that the spirit-love might be dimmed by traces of the earthly; but it is not so; I have tracked the footsteps of this loving pilgrim through the Gethsemane and Olivet of her Holy Land of home, and I know her and hers more truly; I am hers, and she is mine more surely now forever.
May 10. Heaven is a _place_, a home, a rest: but it is a Spiritual habitation, Truth and Love and Peace are the pillars that support it; and it is the truthful, the loving, and the holy only who may enter in. How then, O beloved Guide, may such as I? Because Thou hast drawn me by love to Love,--hast given an “earnest” of that life even here, imparting new sympathies, hopes, and aspirations, infusing Thine own life into mine, and Thou wilt never forsake Thine own work, Thine own home! Yet so imperfectly I hear and follow Thee, so slow, so cold, so hard my nature yet,--when the summons comes, will it not find me lagging on the heavenly road, hardly at home within the beautiful gates? So many die with noble purposes half-grown into achievement, so many live but half in the light, and yet the Light is in them,--how will it be with them, and with me; how shall the stains of the mortal be put off? Death has no cleansing power, and defilement may not enter heaven. There is a mystery here which is too painful; yet we know not what that other life is, nor how hereafter, more than here, the Shepherd leads His own.
Always it is by paths they have not known; and what new and wonderful ministries may be prepared for us there, who have sought Him through all our faltering and waywardness here, He knows; and it is good to trust Him always, and for all things.
Sabbath, May 11. Esther’s letters are a constant comfort to me; they say more to me now, about some things, than they did while she was alive. I love to keep them near me--in sight. Does she know how happy she makes me every day I live, how rich I am in the inheritance of love she has left me? Ah! how little can I tell what she is doing for me now! But the “idea of her life” seems growing into all my thoughts. I could not have known her as I do if she had not gone away, to return in spirit; and I can see her, too, moulding the lives of others she loved most dearly. There is more of heaven in this Spring’s sunshine than I have seen for years.