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Edna had endeavored to realize and remember what her Bible first taught her, and what moralists of all creeds, climes and ages, had reiterated that human life was at best but "vanity and vexation of spirit," that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"; yet as she stood on the line, narrow and thin as Al-Sirat, that divides girlhood and womanhood, all seemed to her fresh, pure heart as inviting and bewitching as the magnificent panorama upon which enraptured lotophagi gazed from the ancient acropolis of Cyrene.
The Mohammedan's heaven passes its disciples in over the bridge Al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword, and then they are let loose into a riot of everlasting sensuality. The American aborigines look forward to a heaven of illimitable hunting-ground, partridge and deer and wild duck more than plentiful, and the hounds never off the scent, and the guns never missing fire.
The thought of eternity brought terrible visions in its train, and Ali shuddered at the prospect of Al-Sirat, that awful bridge, narrow as a spider's thread and hanging over the furnaces of Hell which a Mussulman must cross in order to arrive at the gate of Paradise. He ceased to joke about Eblis, the Prince of Evil, and sank by degrees into profound superstition.
The thought of eternity brought terrible visions in its train, and Ali shuddered at the prospect of Al-Sirat, that awful bridge, narrow as a spider's thread and hanging over the furnaces of Hell; which a Mussulman must cross in order to arrive at the gate of Paradise. He ceased to joke about Eblis, the Prince of Evil, and sank by degrees into profound superstition.
'She wears a pair of ringlets long let down * Behind her, as she comes and goes at speed, And eye that never tastes of sleep nor sheds * A tear, for ne'er a drop it hath at need; That never all its life wore stitch of clothes; * Yet robes mankind in every-mode of weed?" Quoth she, "A needle." Q "What is the length and what the breadth of the bridge Al-Sirat?"
The judge will be seated in the clouds, the books open before him, and everything in its turn called on to account for its deeds. For greater dispatch, the angel Gabriel will hold forth his balance, one scale of which hangs over Paradise and one over hell. In these all works are weighed. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the assembly, in a long file, will pass over the bridge Al-Sirat.
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