"Frank, what do you do in heaven when you want to pray?"
"We praise!" he answered.
"Then let us praise now," I said.
And standing there, with clasped hands, we lifted up our hearts and voices in a hymn of praise to God; my brother with his clear, strong voice leading, I following. As the first notes sounded, I thought the roof echoed them; but I soon found that other voices blended with ours, until the whole house seemed filled with unseen singers. Such a grand hymn of praise earth never heard. And as the hymn went on, I recognized many dear voices from the past—Will Griggs' pathetic tenor, Mary Allis' exquisite soprano, and many another voice that wakened memories of the long ago. Then as I heard sweet child-voices, and looked up, I saw above us such a cloud of radiant baby faces as flooded my heart with joy. The room seemed filled with them.
"Oh, what a life—what a divine life!" I whispered, as, after standing until the last lingering notes had died away, my brother and I returned to the veranda and sat in the golden twilight.
"You are only in the first pages of its record," he said. "Its blessedness must be gradually unfolded to us, or we could not, even here, bear its dazzling glory."
Then followed an hour of hallowed intercourse, when he led my soul still deeper into the mysteries of the glorious life upon which I had now entered. He taught me; I listened. Sometimes I questioned, but rarely. I was content to take of the heavenly manna as it was given me, with a heart full of gratitude and love.
CHAPTER IX.
Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with rapture wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child,
But a fair maiden, in her Father's Mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace,
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.
—[Henry W. Longfellow