from the face of
your dead. Turn away from the house of clay which held him an hour
ago. The house is empty, the tenant is gone. He is away already,
gasping in the unutterable wonder of the new experience.

O change! stupendous change!
There lies the soulless clod.
The light eternal breaks,
The new immortal wakes,
Wakes with his God!

Oh! the wonder of it to him at first! Years ago I met with a story in
a sermon by Canon Liddon. An old Indian officer was telling of his
battles--of the Indian Mutiny, of the most striking events in his
professional career; and as he vividly described the skirmishes, and
battles, and sieges, and hair-breadth escapes, his audience hung
breathless in sympathy and excitement. At last he paused; and to their
expressions of wonderment he quietly replied, "I expect to see
something much more wonderful than that." As he was over seventy, and
retired from the service, his listeners looked up into his face with
surprise. There was a pause; and then he said, in a solemn undertone,
"I mean in the first five minutes after death."

That story caught on to me instantly. That has been for years my
closest feeling. I feel it at every death-bed as the soul passes
through. I believe it will be my strongest feeling when my own
death-hour comes--eager, intense, glad curiosity about the new, strange
world opening before me.

Not long ago in the early morning I stood by a poor old man as he was
going through into the Unseen. He was, as it were, fumbling with the
veil of that silent land--wishing to get through; and we were talking
together of the unutterable wonder and mystery that was only an hour or
two ahead. I always talk to dying people of the wonders of that world
just ahead of them. I left him and returned to see him in a couple of
hours; but I was too late, he had just got through--got through into
that wonder and mystery that I had been stupidly guessing about, and
the poor old worn body was flung dishevelled on the bed, as one might
fling an old coat, to be ready for the journey. He was gone. Just got
through--and I felt, with almost a gasp, that he had solved the riddle
of life; that I would give anything, risk anything, for one little
glimpse through; but I could not get it. I could only guess the
stupendous thing that had come to him. For all the stupendous changes
that have ever happened here are surely but trifles when compared with
that first few minutes in t