● ● ● so characteristic of her writing.”104 When the article appeared in May it included the following paragraphs:
Who does not sometimes conjecture what will be his condition and employment in eternity? Will the mind be continually augmenting its stock of knowledge, and advancing toward complete perfection? It cannot be otherwise.
We shall there apprehend fully the relations and dependencies incomprehensible to understandings encircled by clay. The boundless ocean of truth will be fathomed and investigated by those, whom, like Newton, a residence here scarcely acquainted with a few pebbles on its trackless shore. The result of all experiments will then be satisfactory, since they will accord with the deductions of enlarged and enlightened reason.
Most authors have but dimly shadowed forth their own imaginings, and much of what they intended is involved in obscurity. This makes an approach to the regions of science and literature so extremely difficult; there this obstacle will be removed. No veil will hide from our observation the beauties, lovely, inimitable, of wisdom and philosophy; all their charms will there be displayed.
The imperfection of language will be no hindrance to the acquisition of ideas, as it will no longer be necessary as a medium of thought and communication. Intelligence, refined, etherealized, will converse directly with material objects, if, indeed, matter be existent. All will be accessible, permanent, eternal!105
Almost casually she raised the question that has racked philosophy since its earliest beginnings: “if, indeed, matter be existent.” The doubt might relate to whether matter exists in a future heaven or whether it has actual existence anywhere at any time. In either case, the statement evidences a suspicion that matter was no part of ultimate reality. At some point she revised two lines of an early girlhood poem to read:
104 “To Readers and Correspondents,” The Covenant, April 1847, p. 192. Actually the article is stylistically superior to much of her writing at that time. The influence of eighteenth-century models seems apparent.
↑105 [Mary M. Glover, “The Immortality of the Soul,” The Covenant, May 1847, pp. 193–194.]
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