ng like a snake in the sun. Thus you perceive that the spirit
sees and hears without the aid of bodily organs; and why may it not be
so hereafter? Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.
The scenes now passing before us will live in eternal reproduction,
created anew at will. We assuredly shall not love heaven the less that
it is separated by no impassable gulf from this fair and goodly earth,
and that the pleasant pictures of time linger like sunset clouds along
the horizon of eternity. When I was younger, I used to be greatly
troubled by the insecure tenure by which my senses held the beauty and
harmony of the outward world. When I looked at the moonlight on the
water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the
tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I
heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the
summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the
thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would
sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason
to thank God that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is
really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost. The present will
live hereafter; memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds;
for only on the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our
identity and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world,
and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would
be simple annihilation of our actual selves, and the substitution
therefor of a new creation, in which we should have no more interest
than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars."

The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional
and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.

"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look
upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as
unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that
I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and
merciful God. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor
have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to
pass from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking
in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compassion and
encouragement, 'It is