Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/285

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stroying his manhood. And see how that wife pursues her erring husband! How she clings to him as a part, and the stronger part, of herself! How she pleads with him on bended knees, with tearful eyes, in angel tones—only as love can plead! And how, also, she pleads with God and heaven in his behalf! How she waits and watches and prays—how she bears and suffers and forgives until seventy times seven, only as love can bear and suffer and forgive! And see, too, what triumphs she sometimes achieves!—the salvation of a wrecked and sinking soul!

Can this deep, mighty love which God has placed in woman's heart, which can work such miracles of healing here below, which has such power on earth to soften, subdue and bless; and which, from its very nature, so yearns for an intellect to cling to and guide it—can such love perish when the body dies? Will there be no sphere for its activity, no use and no reciprocation of it, in heaven? Then woman as woman cannot live in heaven. And if woman lives not there, what man having within him the soul of a man, would not say that heaven would be no heaven to him.

Again: the eternity of conjugial love, and the consequent existence of marriages in heaven, may be reasonably inferred from the fact that consorts who have lived together happily on earth, internally desire that this relation may be continued in the world beyond. And it is not the vicious and degraded in whom this desire is strongest. These know nothing of the pure delights of marriage; they have little or no respect for its sacred obligations here, and, of course, think and care but little