Strange as this rejoicing in misery may appear, it is to some minds as natural and authorised by the laws of our being, as the joy which attends the acquisition of a great idea, or the verification of a potent truth. It is as verification that such pain is welcome. To men of the most spiritual tone of mind, every attestation of the reality of unseen objects is a boon of the highest order; and no such attestation can surpass in clearness that which is afforded by the sensible progress of decay in the material part of the sufferer’s frame. All attempt at description is here vain. Nothing but experience can convey a conception of the intense reality in which God appears supreme, Christ and his gospel divine, and holiness the one worthy aim and chief good, when our frame is refusing its offices, and we can lay hold on no immediate outward support and solace. It is conceivable to the healthy and happy, that, if waked up from sleep by a tremendous earthquake, the first recoil of terror might be followed by an intense perception of the fixity and tranquillity of the spiritual world, in immediate contact with the turbulence of the outward and lower scene. It is conceivable to us all that the drowning man may, as is recorded, see his whole life, in all its minute details, presented to him, as in clear vision, in one instant of time, as he lapses into death. Well,--something like both these experiences is that of extreme and dissolving pain, to a certain order of minds. The vision and the attestation are present, without the horrors caused, amidst an earthquake, by the misery of a perishing multitude, though at the cost of more bodily anguish than in the case of the drowning man. Though there may be keen doubts in a modest sufferer how long such anguish can be decently endured,--whether the filial submission will hold out against torment,--there is through, above and beyond such doubts, so overpowering an impression of the vitality of the conscious part of us, and of the reality of the highest objects for which it was created and has lived,--so inexpressible a sense of the value of what we have prayed for, and of the evanescence of what we are losing,--that it is no wonder if the dying have been known to call for aid in their thanksgivings, and to struggle for sympathy even in their incommunicable convictions. If the shadows of the dark valley part, and disclose to such an one the regions that lie in the light of God’s countenance, it is no wonder that he calls on those near him to look and see, though he is making the transit alone.