"But Abe laughed an' shook his heead. 'Nay, lad,' he said, 'we haven't gotten no 'isms i' heaven. We've gotten shut o' all that sort o' thing. There's no argifying i' heaven. There's plenty o' discipline, but it's what we call self-discipline; an' I reckon that's t' only sort o' discipline that's worth owt.'
"'That'll niver do for me, Abe,' I said. 'If it were a case o' self-discipline, I reckon I'd niver do a stroke o' wark.'
"'Nay, lad,' he said; 'thou'll think different now thou's coom to heaven. Thou'll hark to t' inner voice an' do what it tells thee.'
"'Inner voice,' I said; 'what's that?'
"'It's a new sort o' boss,' says Abe; 'an' a gooid 'un an' all. When thou wants to know what to do or how to do it, thou just sets thisen down, an' t' inner voice starts talkin' to thee an' keeps on talkin', while thou gets agate o' doin' what it tells thee.'"
Job's story was gripping my imagination as nothing had done before. Heaven was a place of activity and not of rest; a place where the labours of earth were renewed at the point at which they had ceased on earth, but under ideal conditions; so that labour, under the guidance of self-discipline, became service. Job's account of his conversation with Abe made all this as clear as sunlight, but I was still somewhat puzzled by the story of the inner voice.
"What do you think Abe meant by the inner voice?" I asked.
"Nay," replied Job, "I can't tell. But what he said were true. I'm sure o' that. There were a look in his een that I'd niver seen theer afore; 'twere as if t' inner voice were speakin' through his een as well as through his mouth."
"It's something more than conscience," I went on, speaking as much to myself as to Job. "Conscience tells a man what it is his duty to do, but conscience does not teach him how to do things."
We were both silent for a few moments, pondering over the problem of the inner voice. Then a thought flashed through my mind and, rising from my seat, I went to my bookshelves and took down a volume of Browning's poems. I eagerly turned over the pages of Paracelsus, read a few verses to myself, and then exclaimed: