WOMEN IN HEAVEN. 



229 



Do not imagine, my friend, that the great trials of your 

 life, the strifes and agonizings which you have gone 

 through, are peculiar. In some sense they may be so, 

 and every heart knows his own bitterness; but God on his 

 white throne saw with the same infinite tenderness the 

 anguish of the old woman in the Pemigewasset valley 

 and the anguish of emperor or pope mourning for the be- 

 loved dead ; and there are thousands of just such homes, 

 and in every home a sorrow, in every home a memory 

 that comes with the twilight, and grows mighty in the 

 dark night, and over every one, above mountain-top and 

 cloud and storm, the everlasting pity of the Master. 



But why dwell on sorrows when, as I told you, she was 

 cheery and bright, and it was evident abundantly that she 

 had no heavy load of memory to carry. Life had rippled 

 along as the river rippled over its rocky bed, flashing in 

 the light of the sun, glowing silver-bright under the moon, 

 gleaming with reflected starlight. There had been dark 

 days and days of flood, but after a little the current went 

 gently on in its old channel, and made music for itself. 

 Why should she be sad ? Life is not so well worth living 

 that the other life is not better, and that other has more 

 abundant joy, even of the sort that we best love here. 

 The hills of heaven shine with more serene glory than 

 these hills of ours, and when she has lived in some valley 

 of the holy land, long, long after these granite hills are 

 crumbled and gone, she will not feel old, but ever young 

 — forever young. 



I once asked a learned Mohammedan in Egypt wheth- 

 er he believed that women would go to heaven (for it is 

 an error to think that houries are mere women), and what 

 he thought of the Prophet's saying that there are no old 

 women there. He replied, giving what is I believe the 



