“Death! where is thy sting?—Grave!—thy victory?”
“Believing in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no longer help it, in the thrilling chorus. It was the first time since I died, that I had felt myself invited or inclined to share the occupations of others, in the life I had entered. Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my own grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into the immortal words, now for the first time comprehensible to me:
“I believe, I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”
It was not long thereafter that I received the summons to return. I should have been glad to go home once more, but was able to check my own preference without wilful protest, or an aching heart. The conviction that all was well with my darlings and myself, for life and for death, had now become an intense yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.
I went as, and where I was bidden, joyfully.
VII.
Upon reëntering the wonderful place which I had begun to call Heaven, and to which I still give that name, though not, I must say, with perfect assurance that the word is properly applied to that phase of the life of which I am the yet most ignorant recorder, I found myself more weary than I had been at any time since my change came. I was looking about, uncertain where to go, feeling, for the first time, rather homeless in this new country, when I was approached by a stranger, who inquired of me what I sought:
“Rest,” I said promptly.
“A familiar quest,” observed the stranger, smiling.