"Do you think he will bring me something nice when he comes?"
"When you see him again he will have for you, Bertie, more beautiful things than you ever saw before in all your life, but it may be a long time before you see him."
The child slipped down from his knees quite satisfied and full of pleasant anticipation, and went back to her play on the piazza.
"Do you believe all that?" asked Amy, looking as if Bertha had been told a fairy tale.
"I do, indeed. I have told the child what I regard as the highest form of the truth, though expressed in simple language. Miss Amy, I know that your father was ever kind to you. Did he ever turn coldly away from any earnest appeal of yours?"
"Never, never," cried the girl, with a rush of tears.
"And can you believe that his Heavenly Father turned from his touching appeal last night? Christ said to those who were trusting in him, 'I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also.' As long as your father was conscious, he was clinging to that divine hand that has never failed one true believer in all these centuries. Surely, Miss Amy, your own reason tells you that the poor helpless form that we must bury today is not your father. The genial spirit, the mind that was a power out in the world, the soul with its noble and intense affections and aspirations--these made the man that was your father. Therefore I say with truth that the man, the imperishable part, has gone away with him who loved humanity, and who has prepared a better place for us than this earth can ever be under the most favoring circumstances. You can understand that the body is but the changing, perishing shadow.
"When you compare the poor, disease-shattered house in yonder room, with the regal spirit that dwelt within it, when you compare that prostrate form--which, like a fallen tree in the forest, is yielding to the universal law of change--with the strong, active, intelligent man that was your father, do not your very senses assure you that your father has gone away, and, as I told Bertha, you will surely see him again? It may seem to you that what I said about the good-by kiss was but a fiction to soothe the child, but in my belief it was not. Though we know with certainty so little of the detail of the life beyond, we have two good grounds on which to base reasonable conjecture. We know of God's love; we know your father's love; now what would be natural in view of these two facts? I think we can manage to keep Bertha from seeing that which is no longer her father, and thus every memory of him will be pleasant. We will leave intact the impression which he himself made when he acted consciously, for this which now remains is not himself at all."