“Yes—you have been raised from the dead. You have left the earth upon which you were born; you have left your natural body, which your friends will bury in the ground; you are now in a spiritual body and a spiritual state of existence.” I looked at myself and looked around me. “I cannot understand it,” said I, sorely puzzled. “You are certainly strangers to me, and you look so unlike any of the men I have ever seen, that I can readily believe you are angels. Nor do I see my beloved sisters, Martha and Mary, who, I know, would not leave my bedside for a moment. But this body is the same body I have always had; this is the room in which I have been sick so long; and looking out of that window, I see the Mount of Olives and the familiar sky of Judea. Explain how this can be.” They looked at each other smiling, and one of them replied: “The last impressions made upon the mind linger a while after death; so that the transition from natural to spiritual life may not be too sudden, and the sensation of personal identity may be fully preserved. This will change to you presently. We do not see the room that you see, nor the Mount of Olives, nor the Judean sky. These will all vanish from your sight after a little, and you will find yourself differently clad and moving about among novel and beautiful scenes.” “But,”—said I, incredulously,—“but this body of flesh and blood, in which I live, move and think, how came it here?” “That body of flesh and blood you have left behind you. The soul is a spiritual substance organized in the shape of its natural body. The natural body resembles the spiritual as a glove resembles the hand contained within it. You have dropped the glove. You see the naked hand.” “Our mission,” he continued, “is now ended, and another takes our place. We assist in the resurrection.” They made a motion of departure, but I seized one of them by the hand. “Oh stay!” said I, “do not go. Your words interest me beyond measure. I would learn more of the heavenly life. Pardon my incredulity, pity my ignorance.” “One approaches,” said he, “who is much nearer and dearer to you than we. Relatives delight to render to relatives these charming offices of comfort and instruction. He comes!” “Who?” I exclaimed, eagerly. “Your father!” I looked in the direction indicated by the angel’s face. Out of the darkness—which appeared to me and not to the angels, for it proceeded from my own mind and not from theirs—out of the darkness slowly loomed up a human figure. It brightened as it advanced. Then there stood before me a young man of radiant beauty, clad in a tissue of shining purple. His face was full of eager expectation, sparkling with love and joy. While I was gazing at this form, which seemed to me a beautiful apparition, the other angels disappeared. “My son! my son!” exclaimed the shining visitor in a voice of touching sweetness, and which seemed in some way remotely familiar. “Do you not know me?”