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Show TILL DEATH US DO PART. With a start and a shudder, Alma unclosed her weary eyes, and caught her husband's hand, as if to save her self from being swept away by the swift rolling current of death. "Hold me fast-hold me fast Rollin! Do not let me go!" whispered the faint voice, imploringly. "The waters are cold and deep. Do not leave me. Do not forsake me. Oh, beloved! I cannot descend into the cruel waves alone!" The feeble, clinging arms stole up to Rollin Moore's neck, and the dim eyes, full of doubt and terror, were now lifted pleadingly to his white, agonized face. Alas-poor human love! It was helpless in that hour. The strong arms that had sheltered the weak one from worldly dangers and troubles were powerless to shield her from the approaching terrors of death, the brave valiant heart that was her fortress of strength and her pillow of rest, was shaken with sorrow and dismay when her feet went down to the dark flood from which no earthly power could pluck them. Alma's husband groaned in anguish of spirit, and the sweat of agony stood in great drops upon his forehead. In that moment he yearned to hear his own voice speaking, as it had spoken, years before, the solemn words of the marriage rite "I Rollin, take thee, Alma, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part." Oh, the cruel divorcement! Years had strengthened the ties that bound them together; mutual joys and sorrors [sorrows] had drawn them closer and closer to each other; kindred loves and purposes had knit their lives in one. Could death put them asunder? To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death us to part. Was life only a temporal relation, then? Was the love which had made them better man and woman, which had brought them near to angels and earth, to have no perpetuation in heaven? Rollin had listened, a few Sabbaths previous, to a funeral discourse, in which occurred these words: When we enter the other world, we cast behind us all earthly affections and sympathies. The gross relationships of this life, which have their worldly use, are forever dissolved by death. In heaven the wife knows not the husband, nor the husband the wife, the mother the son, nor the sister her brother, but all are angels of God, and one is not dearer than the other." All this might be Gospel truth, but Rollin Moore could not accept it. It might be sound doctrine, but it was opposed to reason and instinct. It degraded the holiest of human ties to a mere temporal connection, so unspiritual to its nature that it could not outlast the dissolution of soul and body. It severed the interests of this life from those of the next, and put heaven and earth so far asunder that it seemed impossible to believe that angels were ever men with human affections and impulses, or that men could ever become angels, dropping at the Celestial Gate the loves and sympathies that sweetened and hallowed their earthly existence, and entering? without preparation on the never-changing routine of heavenly life which "certain of Scribes and Pharisees" picture as one eternal Sabbath of funeral worship. Oh, if the best and holiest things of our mortal life bear no relation of our immortal, what were their use? Estrangement is the woe of love; but what avails our human faithfulness, if at the door of heaven, God thrusts his arm of power between us and the beloved, and says, "Ye are no longer one, but twain. Ye were joined together for time, not for eternity?" What were this better than expulsion from Paradise? What! bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh in earth, and not soul of our soul in heaven? "Till death us do part!" The words rang in Rollin Moore's ears like stroke of a funeral bell. "Alma! Alma!" he cried, drawing the beloved band closer to his bosom. "The marriage vow reads wrong. Death shall not part us. To hold and to keep, to love and to cherish, to help and to comfort, to cheer and ???, forever and forever, through all eternity. Alma!" She had floated farther away on the Jerk river, and her ear was growing deaf to earthly sounds; but that well-known voice, piercing in it anguish, might have reached her on the thither side. The failing eyes unclosed once more, but the doubt and terror had gone out of them, and in their serene, solemn depths shone this morning light of eternal peace and joy. Rollin bent his head low, and listened breathlessly to catch to words that fell from the poor, pale lips, faint and broken, like music struck from a shattered chord. "God sent his shining ones to bear me over. He will not part us, my beloved. We will be together-together." A gasping sigh heaved the white bosom, a swift shadow rolled over the tender face, and the veined eyelids, like rose leaves shaken by the storm, flattered and fell faintly over the fading orbs. The struggle between dissolving soul and body is not more intense than the after-time struggle in our own mind to believe them forever dissolved. It seems impossible to think that the dear face will never brighten again with the fires of feeling; and while we bend with heaving hearts over the still, white clay, we half-expect to see the sealed eyes unclose and look at us with the tender, olden love, mute sympathy, and to hear the beloved voice, that will never more sound in the earth, speaking words of comfort and cheer. Slowly, slowly, do we come to realize the meaning of that word of terror-death. Yet more slowly do we grow in comprehension of the majesty of the life evolved from death-the unshackled life of the emancipated soul, which, bending no longer under fleshly infirmities, nor impeded in its progress by the opposing forces of nature, runs swiftly up to the shining heights which it strove in vain to reach while it contended against the powers and principalities of darkness that beseiged [besieged] it in the body, and praises to God, whose truths ???, without beginning and without end, sees from those shining heights others more brightly shining, and thither, with eyes that never blench, and purpose that never falters, and feet that never tire, it goeth, singing Hallelujahs; so through the eternal ages, from glory to glory, climbeth the free spirit after God. For hours, Rollin sat alone with his dead, his face bowed on the pulseless [pulse less] breast, and his hands clasped on the marble fingers that gave back no answering pressure. Dead! Oh no! Asleep! The slumbering eyes would open, the parted lips would speak, Silence resigned through [unreadable line] roll of the death-cart echoed through the deserted streets, bearing its unconscious freight all hours, by day and by night, to a city yet more silent. In the gray of early dawn came the vigilant officers of health to separate the living from the dead; and reckless of love's sorrow and entreaty, hastily prepared and sent away the mortal part of Alma to the grave. In dumb anguish, Rollin staggered after, feeling vaguely that the foundations of the earth were broken up, and chaos reigned. Yet favored in one respect. In the haste and terror of the times, cruel custom was abolished, and there followed no crowd of curious lookers-on, counting the tears and groans of the bereaved, and measuring the intensity of grief by its outward manifestations. Nor in that solemn hour was there any thought of mourning garb, the necessity of which is least recognized by those who feel deepest; nor any studied oration in honor of the deceased, customary and kindly-meant, but, oh, so cruel! every word a stab to the grieving heart, strained well high to breaking in the effort of self-restraint morbid in its dread of making an exhibition of its anguish to the public eye, and longing only for the comfort of secret prayer in closet solitude. The birds that build their nests in the quiet cemetery sang tenderly while Alma was lowered into the earth, the winds swinging in the tree-tops chanted softly her requiem; the clods falling with hollow sound upon her coffin-lid, said more eloquently than human tongue, "Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes!" Swiftly the green turf was heaped above her low resting place, and the fairest and sweetest face into which Rollin Moore had ever looked was hidden forever from human eyes. Oh, pure, white temple of a beautiful soul! How could he think of it falling to ruin and decay? Again and again he strove to turn his feet away from the new made grave, but they seemed bound to the spot by invisible cords-Alma was there. Not yet could be separate spirit from clay. Communication with the beloved soul through the medium of sense being forever destroyed, he could not, but for the dumbness of unbelief, come at once into that more subtle and interior communion, which is not in speech, nor in touch, but in the more intimate things of the spirit. Death alone, he thought, could bring him nearer to the vanished one, and he longed for it passionately, hailing with fierce joy the first symptoms of the destroying pestilence, whose foul breath had blown out the light of his soul, leaving it darkened and desolate, like the sky emptied of its sun, and its stars vailed [veiled] by clouds. But death flees from flatterers. Death loves not a bold wooer. Perhaps the strongest indication that the discipline of this life is longer needed, is the insane desire that sometimes seizes us to break its shackles by violence, and be at once and forever rid of it. The purifying fires have not done their perfect work, until from the depths of the suffering soul rises the cry of the divine man, "Abba, father! Not what I will, but what thou wilt." Oh, the infinite rest! the unspeakable peace that comes with the sincere utterance of these words! Then slips from our grasp the feeble staff of human prudence , which has failed us in many a trouble, and we find [continued...] |