On another occasion I was brought back to my old religious consciousness thus: Just before my wife died she was talking with me, with a smile on her face. She was weak in body, and had lain in bed for many weeks; but she was perfectly sound in her mind. I found no sign of mental weakness to the very moment of her death. Then suddenly a spasm caught her, as the physician told me afterward, and in a few minutes she was gone. Only a moment ago there she was, and now she is not. Where is she? What has become of her? Her body lies here just as before, a little cold, perhaps, but where is that personality which shone so brightly through those eyes which are now shut? Has she vanished? Has she been destroyed? Is she annihilated? Impossible to think such a thing at such a time. Do you think I could help following her into that world yonder whither she went so suddenly? Yes, I did follow her. I was, as it were, peeping through the portal of death into that eternal world where she had just been translated. There and then I came face to face with the eternal reality of death. When you face death, either in yourself or in your friend, you face eternity. When you face eternity, all things which are not eternal, which belong to this world alone, temporary things, such as wealth and possessions, houses and clothing, and all other earthly valuables, which have absorbed your attention while you were healthy and strong, now sink into insignificance before the brightness of the eternal realities. What use is there of wealth and possessions to a dying man? He came naked into this world, and now he must go out of it naked again. What comfort can gold and diamonds give to the dying girl? Can the possession of pretty dresses and costly jewels make happy the heart of a dying girl? When a man comes to the last moment of his earthly journey, the sense of the nearness of eternity will overshadow all things earthly and temporal. When I faced eternity in the death of my dear one, that solemn and awe-inspiring consciousness of the eternal destiny of man which lay so long dormant in my heart now came back to me with overwhelming force and vividness. Then all the clouds of doubt and unbelief raised by my too much speculative thinking, and all the mists and fogs caused by worldly ambition and earthly enjoyment just vanished away, and I was lifted up into the third heaven. Death is a sad thing. Especially is the death of our dearest one the saddest experience of our life. But when you look at it in the light of heaven, the death of a dear friend is the most precious gift God can ever give in this world. I confess I was revived by the death of my wife. Certainly it can be said that she died in order to rouse me from the slumber of a backsliding and prodigal life. Oh, the wonderful method of God’s dealing, always surpassing our human understanding! Always and everywhere, the good suffer for the bad, the righteous for the unrighteous, and saints for sinners.