Page:Nurse and spy in the Union Army.djvu/114

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102
RECOGNITION IN HEAVEN.

the doctrine of the resurrection, and the hope of "recognition of friends in heaven" became very precious to me. For I believe with regard to our departed loved ones, that

When safely landed on that heavenly shore
Whe-e sigliings cease and sorrows come no more—
With hearts no more by cruel anguish riven,
As we have loved on earth we'll love in heaven.

And infinitely more than we are capable of loving here. "Few things connected with the great hereafter so deeply concern the heart as the question of personal recognition in heaven. Dear ones of earth, linked to our hearts by the most tender ties, have departed and gone away into the unknown realm. We have carefully and tearfully laid their bodies in the grave to slumber till the great awakening morning. If there is no personal recognition in heaven, if we shall neither see nor know our friends there, so far as we are concerned they are annihilated, and heaven has no genuine antidote for the soul's agony in the hour of bereavement. All the precious memories of toil and trial, of conflict and victory, of gracious manifestations and of holy joy, shared with them in the time of our pilgrimage, will have perished forever. The anxiety of the soul with regard to the recognition of our friends in the future state is natural. It springs from the holiest sympathies of the human heart", and any inquiry that may solve our