Beyond the Gates

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

The stranger’s face wore a remarkable expression when I said this, as if I had deeply gratified him; and there glittered from his entire form and features such brightness as well-nigh dazzled me. It was as if, where a lesser being would have spoken, or stirred, he shone. I felt as if I conversed with him by radiance, and that living light had become a vocabulary between us. I have elsewhere spoken of the quality of reflecting light as marked among the ordinary inhabitants of this new life; but in this case I was aware of a distinction, due, I thought, to the superior order of existence to which my friend belonged. He did not, like the others, reflect; he radiated glory. More and more, as we had converse together, this impressed, until it awed me. We remained together for a long time. People who met us, greeted the angel with marked reverence, and turned upon me glances of sympathetic delight; but no one interrupted us. We continued our walk into a more retired place, by the shore of a sea, and there we had deep communion.

My friend had inquired if I were still faint, and if I preferred to turn aside for food and rest; but when he asked me the question I was amazed to find that I no longer had the need of either. Such delight had I in his presence, such invigoration in his sympathy, that glorious recuperation had set in upon my earth-caused weariness. Such power had the soul upon the celestial body! Food for the first was force to the other.

It seemed to me that I had never known refreshment of either before; and that Heaven itself could contain no nutriment that would satisfy me after this upon which I fed in that high hour.

It is not possible for me to repeat the solemn words of that interview. We spoke of grave and sacred themes. He gave me great counsel and fine sympathy. He gave me affectionate rebuke and unfathomable resolve. We talked of those inner experiences which, on earth, the soul protects, like struggling flame, between itself and the sheltering hand of God. We spoke much of the Master, and of my poor hope that I might be permitted after I had been a long time in Heaven, to become worthy to see Him, though at the vast distance of my unworthiness. Of that unworthiness too, we spoke most earnestly; while we did so, the sense of it grew within me like a new soul; yet so divinely did my friend extend his tenderness to me, that I was strengthened far more than weakened by these finer perceptions of my unfitness, which he himself had aroused in me. The counsel that he gave me, Eternity could not divert out of my memory, and the comfort which I had from him I treasure to this hour. “Here,” I thought, “here, at last, I find reproof as gentle as sympathy, and sympathy as invigorating as reproof. Now, for the first time in all my life, I find myself truly understood. What could I not become if I possessed the friendship of such a being! How shall I develop myself so as to obtain it? How can I endure to be deprived of it? Is this too, like friendship on earth, a snatch, a compromise, a heart-ache, a mirror in which one looks only long enough to know that it is dashed away? Have I begun that old pain again, here?”

For I knew, as I sat in that solemn hour with my face to the sea and my soul with him, while sweeter than any song of all the waves of Heaven or earth to sea-lovers sounded his voice who did commune with me,—verily I knew, for then and forever, that earth had been a void to me because I had him not, and that Heaven could be no Heaven to me without him.

All which I had known of human love; all that I had missed; the dreams from which I had been startled; the hopes that had evaded me; the patience which comes from knowing that one may not even try not to be misunderstood; the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the anticipation of desolate age which casts its shadow backward upon the dial of middle life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its disuse; the distrust of one’s own atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable; the growing difficulty of explaining oneself even when it is necessary, because no one being more than any other cares for the explanation; the things which a lonely life converts into silence that cannot be broken, swept upon me like rapids, as, turning to look into his dazzling face, I said: “This—all this he understands.”

But when, thus turning, I would have told him so, for there seemed to be no poor pride in Heaven, forbidding soul to tell the truth to soul,—when I turned, my friend had risen, and was departing from me, as swiftly and mysteriously as he came. I did not cry out to him to stay, for I felt ashamed; nor did I tell him how he had bereft me, for that seemed a childish folly. I think I only stood and looked at him.

“If there is any way of being worthy of your friendship,” I said below my breath, “I will have it, if I toil for half Eternity to get it.”

Now, though these words were scarcely articulate, I think he heard them, and turning, with a smile which will haunt my dreams and stir my deeds as long as I shall live, he laid his hand upon my head, and blessed me—but what he said I shall tell no man—and so departed from me, and I was left upon the shore alone, fallen, I think, in a kind of sleep or swoon.

When I awoke, I was greatly calmed and strengthened, but disinclined, at first, to move. I had the reaction from what I knew was the intensest experience of my life, and it took time to adjust my feelings to my thoughts.