"Sweet child of a weird land and a strange people! She was one of those
whose spotless souls need not the purifying fire of a long earthly life.
For Pym, now and later, the sorrow and the yearning void; for her, only
an earlier advancement.
"Pym's mind was shocked; but behind the shock he felt the awful anguish
of such a separation. Was this the end? Could it be the end? For him,
truly that day his last hope for this life died. But hereafter? Surely
this was not to be the end of all! A few more years of grovelling on the
clay bosom of the cold, selfish earth, and then--only oblivion? No, no:
he would not, he could not believe it.
"As Pym stood there, where many, many other men have stood, and millions
yet will stand, did his soul rise into the heavenly atmosphere, or did
it question God's decrees and sink to rise no more? This I cannot
answer.
"After such a loss, oh, the weary weight of unutterable woe; the awful
sense that hope is dead, whilst the mourner can only stand with
streaming eyes and bleeding heart, forever chained to the ghastly corpse
of every dear ambition, of every joy, and all that our universe of
feeling builds on hope. But we should learn from such a loss a lesson,
for the lesson if learned insures our own advancement: such losses are
but the purposes of God unfolding for those we love and for ourselves an
eternity of blissful harmony.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282