Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To Miss Lucy Osgood.

You are almost constantly present with me, in these days of this declining year, and to-morrow I am sure my first waking thought will be of you and the dear one who a year ago passed behind the veil; that veil so dark and heavy, with merely a line of golden light around its edges, intimating the inner, invisible glory. More and more strongly do I feel, as I grow older, that this unsatisfactory existence is the mere threshold of a palace of glories; but reason is importunate with its questions of how and where. I strive to attain to an habitual state of child-like trust, to feel always, as I do sometimes, like a little one that places its hand within its father's, and is satisfied to be led, it knows not whither.

Mr.-- is a great, good man, and when he lets doctrines alone his preaching always edifies and strengthens me. But he has no logic in his composition; not a jot; and sometimes I wish I had not. [144] Sometimes I think the light from God's own throne is best transmitted through the transparent golden veil of poesy. But there stands my reason, a stubborn fact; and it will not accept any supernatural mediums between my soul and its Heavenly Father; whether the mediums be Virgin Mothers, or Divine Humanities. There is undoubtedly a sense in which the doctrine of Divine Humanity is true; for in its highest ideal all humanity is divine. But that sense would be very unsatisfactory to Mr.--.

How I should like to know what your sister's active soul is now thinking of all these things! Perhaps she has introduced Theodore Parker to Dr. Hopkins; and perhaps Luther comes up behind them “with the sound of iron shoes upon a stone pavement,” as Swedenborg describes his walk in the spiritual world. It bears considerable resemblance to his walk in this world, I think. If Dr. Channing joins them, it will be in velvet slippers, on the softest carpet.