Beyond the Gates

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

For, let me say most solemnly, that the relations made between man and woman on earth I found to be, in importance to the individual, second to nothing in the range of human experience, save the adjustment of the soul to the Personality of God Himself.

If I say that I found earthly marriage to have been a temporary expedient for preserving the form of the eternal fact; that freedom in this as in all other things became in Heaven the highest law; that the great sea of human misery, swelled by the passion of love on earth, shall evaporate to the last drop in the blaze of bliss to which no human counterpart can approach any nearer than a shadow to the sun,—I may be understood by those for whose sake alone it is worth while to allude to this mystery at all; for the rest it matters little.

Perhaps I should say, once for all, that every form of pure pleasure or happiness which had existed upon the earth had existed as a type of a greater. Our divinest hours below had been scarcely more than suggestions of their counterparts above. I do not expect to be understood. It must only be remembered that, in all instances, the celestial life develops the soul of a thing. When I speak of eating and drinking, for instance, I do not mean that we cooked and prepared our food as we do below. The elements of nutrition continued to exist for us as they had in the earth, the air, the water, though they were available without drudgery or anxiety. Yet I mean distinctly that the sense of taste remained, that it was gratified at need, that it was a finer one and gave a keener pleasure than its coarser prototype below. I mean that the soul of a sense is a more exquisite thing than what we may call the body of the sense, as developed to earthly consciousness.

So far from there being any diminution in the number or power of the senses in the spiritual life, I found not only an acuter intensity in those which we already possessed, but that the effect of our new conditions was to create others of whose character we had never dreamed. To be sure, wise men had forecast the possibility of this fact, differing among themselves even as to the accepted classification of what they had, as Scaliger who called speech the sixth sense, or our English contemporary who included heat and force in his list (also of six); or more imaginative men who had admitted the conceivability of inconceivable powers in an order of being beyond the human. Knowing a little of these speculations, I was not so much surprised at the facts as overwhelmed by their extent and variety. Yet if I try to explain them, I am met by an almost insurmountable obstacle.

It is well known that missionaries are often thwarted in their religious labors by the absence in savage tongues of any words corresponding to certain ideas such as that of purity or unselfishness. Philologists have told us of one African tribe in whose language exist six different words descriptive of murder; none whatever expressive of love. In another no such word as gratitude can be found. Perhaps no illustration can better serve to indicate the impediments which bar the way to my describing to beings who possess but five senses and their corresponding imaginative culture, the habits or enjoyments consequent upon the development of ten senses or fifteen. I am allowed to say as much as this: that the growth of these celestial powers was variable with individuals throughout the higher world, or so much of it as I became acquainted with. It will be readily seen what an illimitable scope for anticipation or achievement is given to daily life by such an evolution of the nature. It should be carefully remembered that this serves only as a single instance of the exuberance of what we call everlasting life.

Below, I remember that I used sometimes to doubt the possibility of one’s being happy forever under any conditions, and had moods in which I used to question the value of endless existence. I wish most earnestly to say, that before I had been in Heaven days, Eternity did not seem long enough to make room for the growth of character, the growth of mind, the variety of enjoyment and employment, and the increase of usefulness that practically constituted immortality.

It could not have been long after my arrival at my father’s house that he took me with him to the great music hall of our city. It was my first attendance at any one of the public festivals of these happy people, and one long to be treasured in thought. It was, in fact, nothing less than the occasion of a visit by Beethoven, and the performance of a new oratorio of his own, which he conducted in person. Long before the opening hour the streets of the city were thronged. People with holiday expressions poured in from the country. It was a gala-day with all the young folks especially, much as such matters go below. A beautiful thing which I noticed was the absence of all personal insistence in the crowd. The weakest, or the saddest, or the most timid, or those who, for any reason, had the more need of this great pleasure, were selected by their neighbors and urged on into the more desirable positions. The music hall, so-called, was situated upon a hill just outside the town, and consisted of an immense roof supported by rose-colored marble pillars. There were no walls to the building, so that there was the effect of being no limit to the audience, which extended past the line of luxuriously covered seats provided for them, upon the grass, and even into the streets leading to the city. So perfect were what we should call below the telephonic arrangement of the community, that those who remained in their own homes or pursued their usual avocations were not deprived of the music. My impressions are that every person in the city, who desired to put himself in communication with it, heard the oratorio; but I am not familiar with the system by which this was effected. It involved a high advance in the study of acoustics, and was one of the things which I noted to be studied at a wiser time.

Many distinguished persons known to you below, were present, some from our own neighborhood, and others guests of the city. It was delightful to observe the absence of all jealousy or narrow criticism among themselves, and also the reverence with which their superiority was regarded by the less gifted. Every good or great thing seemed to be so heartily shared with every being capable of sharing it, and all personal gifts to become material for such universal pride, that one experienced a kind of transport at the elevation of the public character.

I remembered how it used to be below, when I was present at some musical festival in the familiar hall where the bronze statue of Beethoven, behind the sea of sound, stood calmly. How he towered above our poor unfinished story! As we grouped there, sitting each isolated with his own thirst, brought to be slaked or excited by the flood of music; drinking down into our frivolity or our despair the outlet of that mighty life, it used to seem to me that I heard, far above the passion of the orchestra, his own high words,—his own music made articulate,—“I go to meet Death with joy.”

When there came upon the people in that heavenly audience-room a stir, like the rustling of a dead leaf upon crusted snow; when the stir grew to a solemn murmur; when the murmur ran into a lofty cry; when I saw that the orchestra, the chorus, and the audience had risen like one breathless man, and knew that Beethoven stood before us, the light of day darkened for that instant before me. The prelude was well under way, I think, before I dared lift my eyes to his face.