“When I first rose from the dead,” he replied, “I seemed to myself to be in the same leprous body that I had in the wilderness; and like all men I found some difficulty in realizing the fact that I was living in a different world. The spiritual body or external form of the soul, changes rapidly according to the changes of its internal form, which is composed of affections and thoughts. In proportion as these are purified from the evil and false things imbibed during the natural life, the body is freed from its imperfections, its feebleness and its want of symmetry.” “And why do you look so young?” I inquired. “Time,” said he, “does not belong to the spiritual world. We have no computations here by months and years; no revolution of suns and planets, which produce day and night and the changing seasons of the world. Our external surroundings, what you would call our visible nature, are the immediate outgrowth of our own spiritual states. The exterior changes continually with the interior. All in heaven are therefore young and beautiful, because their soul-life is good and pure, and is fitly represented by youth and beauty.” My father then questioned me about the dear ones I had left behind. He manifested the deepest and tenderest sympathy in all that had happened to us since his departure from the world. He had heard of us frequently from new-comers into the world of spirits. We do not cease to love our earthly friends after death. But in the heavenly life there is such a thorough, soul-satisfying trust in the wise and merciful guidance of Divine Providence, that fears, doubts and anxieties about our absent loved ones, are utterly impossible. “And my mother?” I inquired in turn,—“my mother and my little brother Samuel, where are they?” “In heaven,” said he, “where you shall see them, but not now. You will undergo sundry preparations of state, inexplicable to you at present, by which you will be fitted for the ascent into their resplendent abodes.” The angel who assisted in my resurrection was right. The objects which surrounded me at my death, and which lingered a while on my mental vision, had faded away. I found myself in a strange but beautiful world, the forms of which were similar to ours, but the laws which governed their appearance and disappearance very different. I must confess that I was supremely astonished to find myself living, feeling, thinking, precisely as I did before my death. My mind indeed seemed more active, more penetrating than ever. My body had a buoyancy, a strength, a healthfulness pervading it, which were accompanied by a sense of intense pleasure. But it still seemed the same body in which I had previously lived; and I could scarcely comprehend my father when he told me that my sisters and friends were making preparations to bury my earthly form.