Intra Muros

by Rebecca Ruter Springer

As we passed onward, in looking down we began to see many suburban villages, similar to that in which our own happy homes were situated. Among many of them there was an unfamiliar air, and the architecture of the buildings in many respects seemed quite different from our own. I suggested to my sister that we drop downward a little. On doing so, we soon realized what caused this apparent difference in the architecture and surroundings. Where our homes were situated we were surrounded by people we had known and loved on earth, and of our own nationality. Many of these villages over which we were now passing we found were formed from what, to us, would be termed of foreign nations, and each village retained some of the peculiarities of its earth-life, and these, to us, were naturally unfamiliar. We recognized again the wisdom and goodness of the Father in thus allowing friends of the same nationality to be located near each other in heaven, as on earth.

As we still drifted onward, in passing over an exquisitely beautiful valley, between low hills of the most enchanting verdure, we saw a group of people seated upon the ground in a semicircle. They seemed to be hundreds in number, and in their midst a man was standing who, apparently, was talking to them. Something familiar, and yet unfamiliar, in the scene attracted us, and I said, "Let us go nearer, and hear, if possible, what he is saying, and see who these people are."

Upon doing this we found the people to resemble in a great measure our own Indian tribes; their dress, in a manner, corresponding to that worn upon earth, though so etherealized as to be surpassingly beautiful. But the dusky faces and the long black hair still remained. The faces, with intense interest depicted on each, were turned toward the man who, we could see, was talking to them, and, looking upon him, we saw at once that he belonged to the Anglo-Saxon race. In a whisper of surprise I said to my sister:

"Why, he is a missionary!"

As so often seemed to me to happen in that experience, when a surprise or a difficulty presented itself, there was always some one near to answer and enlighten us. And so we found on this occasion that our instructor was beside us ready to answer any surprise or question that might be asked. He said at once:

"Yes, you are right. This is a missionary who gave his life to what on earth were called the heathen. He spent many years in working for them and enlightening those who sat in darkness, with the result, as you see before you, of bringing hundreds into the kingdom of the Master. But, as you will naturally suppose, they have much to learn, and here he still gathers them about him, and day by day leads them higher and higher into the blessed life."

"Are there many such," I asked, "doing this work in this beautiful realm?"

"Many hundreds," he said. "To these poor minds, unenlightened as they were when they first came, heaven is as beautiful and happy a place as it is to any who have ascended higher, simply because we can enjoy only in the capacity to which our souls can reach. There are none of us who have not much yet to learn of this wonderful country."

In several instances, as we drifted across above the villages, we heard songs of praise arising from the temples, and from people collected in different ways. In many cases, to our surprise, the hymns and the words were those with which we had been familiar on earth, and, although sung in a strange tongue, we understood them all. That was another of the wonderful surprises of heaven. There was no language there that we could not understand.

On, and on, and on, through wonderful scenes of beauty we passed, returning finally to our own homes by a different way from that by which we had gone forth, seeming to have made almost a circle in our pleasant journeyings. When I left my sister in her own home she whispered to me as she bade me good-by for the present: