like a timid child, it shrank from the chill, midnight waves, and clung convulsively to its earthly loves,—vain, alas! to protect, powerless to detain!
Soul and body parted, as they part who have lived and suffered, and toiled together, in bondage, but who love one another, and who, at last, are torn asunder by the inexorable will of a remorseless master.
But joy for one of these! for whom the weariness of mortal bondage was to give place to the freedom of eternity; the pain, the struggle, the fear, the sorrow of its earthly lot, to peace, rest, assurance, and joy unspeakable! for, at last, at last, that soul, breaking from this poor life, with one glad bound, leaped into immortality! Oh! the sudden comprehension of the height and depth of the fulness of being! How every thought, and aspiration, and affection, and power, seemed springing up into everlasting life!
But methought that the first feeling or sentiment, of which I was conscious, was freedom,—freedom, which brought with it a sense of joy, and power, and glorious exultation, utterly indescribable in words. Ah! it was beautiful, that this crowning gift of God to His creatures, which had ever been so dear to my human heart; this principle, which here I had so adored, was the first pure and perfect portion of the Divine life, whose presence I hailed with the great and voiceless rapture of a disenthralled spirit.
Methought that I witnessed no immediate visible manifestation of Deity, heard no audible revelation of the Divine existence; but that I received fullness of faith, and greatness of knowledge, in loneliness and stillness, yet instantaneously, and more like recollections than revelations. Cloud after cloud rolled swiftly away from the dread mysteries of eternity, till all was meridian brightness and surpassing glory. The presence of Deity was round about me everywhere—felt, methought, not beheld; it flowed to me in the air, “every undulation filled with soul;” floated about me in the rapt silence, like an all-pervading essence, diffusing itself abroad over the great immensity of being.
There was no sudden unveiling of my eyes to behold the burning
