visible appearance of a second Life. Did no reasonable being who had once beheld the light of this world die, there would be no ground to look with faith for a new heavens and a new earth; the only possible purpose of Nature, to manifest and maintain Reason, would be fulfilled here below, and her circle would be completed. But the act by which she consigns a free and independent being to death, is her own solemn entrance, intelligible to all Reason, into a region beyond this act itself, and beyond the whole sphere of existence which is thereby closed. Death is the ladder by which my spiritual eye ascends to a new Life, and a new Nature.
Every one of my fellow-creatures, who leaves this earthly brotherhood, and whom my spirit cannot regard as annihilated,—because he is my brother,—draws my thoughts after him beyond the grave;—he is still, and to him belongs a place. While we mourn for him here below, as in the dim realms of unconsciousness there might be mourning when a man bursts from them into the light of this world’s sun, above there is rejoicing that a man is born into that world, as we citizens of the earth receive with joy those who are born unto us. When I shall one day follow, there will be but joy for me; sorrow shall remain behind in the sphere I shall have left.
The world, on which but now I gazed with wonder, passes away from before me, and sinks from my sight. With all the fulness of life, order, and increase which I beheld in it, it is yet but the curtain by which one infinitely more perfect is concealed from me, and the germ from which that other shall develope itself. My Faith looks behind this veil, and cherishes and
