Read "Beyond the Gates" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Among the inquiries that must be raised by my fragmentary recital, I am only too keenly aware of the difficulty of answering one which I do not see my way altogether to ignore. I refer to that affecting the domestic relations of the eternal world.
It will be readily seen that I might not be permitted to share much of the results of my observation in this direction, with earthly curiosity, or even earthly anxiety. It is not without thought and prayer for close guidance that I suffer myself to say, in as few words as possible, that I found the unions which go to form heavenly homes so different from the marriage relations of earth, in their laws of selection and government, that I quickly understood the meaning of our Lord's few revealed words as to that matter; while yet I do not find myself at liberty to explain either the words or the facts. I think I cannot be wrong in adding, that in a number of cases, so great as to astonish me, the marriages of earth had no historic effect upon the ties of Heaven.