“But why?” I persisted. “We cannot understand how there could be any more blessed place than the earth would be if it should ever reach the condition which you have pictured to us as existing here.”
“You have just stated the trouble,” Thorwald replied.
“You cannot understand. With your present capacities you think a state such as I have described would be perfection; but you—I mean, of course, your race—will come in time to see imperfections even in such a life, and will, with increasing spiritual vision, see still higher things to strive for. Let me urge you to keep your hearts attuned to the heavenly music and your minds open to divine influences.”
Here Thorwald was about to leave us, as we remained in quiet thought after his solemn and impressive words. But I kept him a moment to ask if they had solved all the mysteries of God’s moral government. “By no means,” he replied. “There are still many things unexplained in God’s dealings with us, and we think this is well. Life would lose much of its value if the time should come when there would be nothing to learn. We know much of God’s character, but are not acquainted with its full depths, and whenever we see or experience anything mysterious in his providences we are content to wait for a fuller revelation of truth in the future.
“We shall see the time when all our questions will be answered—that is, in the world to come—and, in the mean time, we try to strengthen our high and beautiful conception of God’s character by referring everything we do not understand to his loving and gracious qualities, which we know so well.”
CHAPTER XXXIX. A SUDDEN RETURN TO THE EARTH.
That night, when the doctor and I were alone, I said to him:
“Well, doctor, what do you think of it all?”