“Not a house?”
“Something not unlike it. In the Father’s house are many mansions. Sometimes I fancy that those words have a literal meaning which the simple men who heard them may have understood better than we, and that Christ is truly ‘preparing’ my home for me. He must be there, too, you see,—I mean John.”
I believe that gave me some thoughts that I ought not to have, and so I made no reply.
“If we have trees and mountains and flowers and books,” she went on, smiling, “I don’t see why not have houses as well. Indeed, they seem to me as supposable as anything can be which is guess-work at the best; for what a homeless, desolate sort of sensation it gives one to think of people wandering over the ‘sweet fields beyond the flood’ without a local habitation and a name. What could be done with the millions who, from the time of Adam, have been gathering there, unless they lived under the conditions of organized society? Organized society involves homes, not unlike the homes of this world.
“What other arrangement could be as pleasant, or could be pleasant at all? Robertson’s definition of a church exactly fits. ‘More united in each other, because more united in God.’ A happy home is the happiest thing in the world. I do not see why it should not be in any world. I do not believe that all the little tendernesses of family ties are thrown by and lost with this life. In fact, Mary, I cannot think that anything which has in it the elements of permanency is to be lost, but sin. Eternity cannot be—it cannot be the great blank ocean which most of us have somehow or other been brought up to feel that it is, which shall swallow up, in a pitiless, glorified way, all the little brooks of our delight. So I expect to have my beautiful home, and my husband, and Faith, as I had them here; with many differences and great ones, but mine just the same. Unless Faith goes into a home of her own,—the little creature! I suppose she can’t always be a baby.
“Do you remember what a pretty little wistful way Charles Lamb has of wondering about all this?
“‘Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here,—the “sweet assurance of a look”? Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fish, and society, ... and candle-light and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself,—do these things go out with life?’”
“Now, Aunt Winifred!” I said, sitting up straight, “what am I to do with these beautiful heresies? If Deacon Quirk should hear!”
“I do not see where the heresy lies. As I hold fast by the Bible, I cannot be in much danger.”
“But you don’t glean your conjectures from the Bible.”