quality, slipping away from us as we pass on, and not the last self of
all whom the grave entraps, which constitutes our chief contribution to
mortality. What shall it avail for the grave to give up its handful if
there be no immortality for this great multitude? God would not mock us
thus. He has power not only over the grave, but over the viewless
sepulchre of the past, and not one of the souls to which he has ever
given life will be found wanting on the day when he makes up his jewels."




CHAPTER III.



To understand the impression which Paul's letter produced upon Miss
Ludington imagine, in the days before the resurrection of the dead was
preached, with what effect the convincing announcement of that doctrine
would have fallen on the ears of one who had devoted her life to hopeless
regrets over the ashes of a friend.

And yet at no time have men been wholly without belief in some form of
survival beyond the grave, and such a bereaved woman of antiquity would
merely have received a more clear and positive assurance of what she had
vaguely imagined before. But that there was any resurrection for her
former self--that the bright youth which she had so yearned after and
lamented could anywhere still exist, in a mode however shadowy, Miss
Ludington had never so much as dreamed.

There might be immortality for all things else; the birds and beasts, and