"It is this, I think, which more than any thing else makes us look forward to our own dissolution with instinctive dread, and leads us to avoid, if possible, every thing that reminds us of it. But when we view it as it really is, but a step in the ceaseless progression which is to carry us on to eternity, as a mere change of the external habitation of our spirits, a removal of the greatest impediments in our progress towards perfection, then, indeed, it loses all its terror, and we think of our friends who have passed through it as absent only in body, but present in spirit. Our own souls, though still connected with an earthly load, form by their derivation from heaven a part of the spiritual world, and in proportion as they become purified from the corruption of the world, they approach the state of those beatified beings who have finished their course. And therefore, though separated from them in this world, we are allied to them more closely than earthly ties could bind us, and must patiently wait for the fulfilment of our Father's plans for our joyful removal to them. This is, indeed, a new incentive to exertion, to prepare ourselves for this change. I have feared it might supersede a still higher motive; but how far it may be permitted to influence us, I dare not determine. That our earthly affections _may_ be a means of leading us to the Creator of them and of all our powers of thinking and feeling, I believe must be true, or they would not have been given us as sources of such pure enjoyment here. But their tendency to make us forget all other considerations, to absorb those thoughts which should be directed to higher objects, is the trial which always attends every means of worldly enjoyment we possess, and as such should be combated with our utmost powers.... "Yours, most truly, "M. L. P."