“Then it was that the full
significance of the great change that had taken place flashed upon my newly awakened
senses; then it was that I realized that an impenetrable barrier separated me from my
loved ones on earth, and that this great change which had taken place was indeed death.
A sense of weariness and longing for rest took possession of me. I seemed to be
transported through space, and I lost consciousness, to awaken in a land so different
and yet so similar to the one which I had lately left. It was not possible for me to
describe my sensations when I again regained consciousness and realized that, though
dead, I was still alive.
“When I first became conscious of
my new environment I was resting in a beautiful grove, and was realizing as never before
what it was to be at peace with myself and all the world.”
“I know that only with the greatest
difficulty shall I be enabled to express to you my sensations when I fully realized that
I had awakened to a new life. All was still, no sound broke the silence. Darkness had
surrounded me. In fact, I seemed to be enveloped in a heavy mist, beyond which my gaze
could not penetrate. Soon in the distance I discerned a faint glimmer of light, which
slowly approached me, and then, to my wonder and joy, I beheld the face of her who had
been my guiding star in the early days of my earth life.”
[pg 151]
One of the saddest sights witnessed by the seer at a death-bed is
the tortures to which we often subject our dying friends on account of ignorance of how to
care for them in that condition. We have a science of birth; obstetricians who have been
trained for years in their profession and have developed a wonderful skill, assist the
little stranger into this world. We have also trained nurses attendant upon mother and
child, the ingenuity of brilliant minds is focused upon the problem of how to make maternity
easier, neither pains nor money are spared in these beneficent efforts for one whom we have
never seen, but when the friend of a lifetime, the man who has served his kind well and
nobly in profession, state, or church, is to leave the scene of his labors for a new field
of activity, when the woman—who has labored to no less good purpose in bringing up a family
to take its part in the world's work—has to leave that home and family, when one whom we
have loved all our lives is about to bid us the final farewell, we stand by utterly at a
loss how to help; perhaps we even do the very things most detrimental to the comfort and
welfare of the departing one. [pg 152]
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