" The white wings of the
warden-angels, who stood on its watch-towers, were slowly folded
together, and back rolled the massive gates from the walls of
jasper; and with the great "Godlight" streaming outward, and amid
the sound of archangel's harp and seraph's lyre, the ministering
angels came forth. They did not ask the child-spirits there, if
their earthly homes had been among the high and the honourable; they
did not ask them if broad lands had been their heritage, and
sparkling coffers their portion; if their paths had lain by pleasant
waters, and animals followed their biddings; but alike they led
them--she, the daughter of wealth and earthly splendour, whose
forehead the breezes might not visit too roughly, and whose pathway
had been bordered with flowers and gilded with sunshine; and he, the
heir of poverty, whose portion had been want, and his inalienable
heritage, suffering; whose path had known no pleasant places; whose
life had had no brightness within that glorious city. They placed
bright crowns, alike woven from the fragrant branches of the
far-spreading "Tree of Life," around their spirit-brows; they decked
them alike in white robes, whose lustre many ages shall not dim;
alike they placed in their hands the harps whose music shall roll
for ever over (sic) the the hills of jasper; and alike they pointed
them to the gleaming battlements, to the still skies over whose
surface the shadow of a cloud hath never floated; to the "many
mansions" which throw the shadow of their shining portals on the
rippling waters of the "River of Life," and to far more of glory
"which it hath never entered into the heart of man to conceive of,"
and told them they should "go no more out for ever.
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