al that
your hearts should yearn for him, should long to see him again, and
enjoy the pleasure of his company; yet death must sooner or later
have separated you, and longer life might have been a scene of
suffering. Would it not have been inexpressibly painful to you all
to have seen his mental and bodily powers decay and fade away? Such
a spectacle would have been distressing and mortifying. Now his
memory is associated with no humiliating recollections; but you
remember him as one always admired, respected and loved. Death has
set his seal upon him, and although he is removed from you to
return no more to earthly scenes, you know that it is only a
removal, and that he is now in a state of exalted and perfect,
though ever progressive, felicity. I trust you have the most
consolatory evidence that this is now his present and unalterable
state, and that you constantly think as David thought and said, "I
shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." In the meantime
you have the consolation of knowing that while you remember him
with the tenderest affection and interest, he has not forgotten
you, but has a more distinct and perfect recollection of you than
you have of him. That this is literally true is the conviction of
my understanding, founded not only upon reason and analogy, but
upon the irrefragable testimony of divine revelation. There surely
is nothing in such a thought that is improbable. We have daily
experience of the revival in our minds of past events long
forgotten; they lived there, though dormant. Then how many well
authenticated and well known instances, where persons recovered
from drowning have stated that before they lost consciousness, all
the scenes and incidents of their lives flashed instantaneously, as
it were, upon their minds, and appeared to be present to their
view. They had been treasured up there, though latent. Death does
not extinguish the mental faculties, thought does not cease, but
the conscious and thinking being passes from scenes present to
scenes eternal. "Mortality is swallowed up of life." There would be
good ground for this conviction, if revelation gave us no higher
proof; but it is explicit. "Every one of us shall give account of
himself to God." This necessarily implies a perfect recollection of
our