For myself I feel that I am immortal, and that those fellow sojourners, to whom I have been attached by the affection of long intimacy, and the reception of many and great kindnesses, will exist with me hereafter. I pretend to conceive nothing, I wish to inquire nothing, about the mode, the place and circumstances. I should as soon think of disturbing myself, by endeavoring to conceive the ideas that might be imparted by a sixth sense. It is sufficient that my heart declares, that a being who has seen this glorious world, cherished these warm affections, entertained these illimitable aspirations, felt these longings after immortality, indulged ‘_these thoughts, that wander through eternity_,’ _cannot_ have been doomed by Him, who gave them, to have them quenched forever in annihilation. Even an illusion so glorious would be worth purchasing at the price of a world. I would affirm, even to repetition, that there is given us that high and stern power, which implies a courage superior to any conflict, and which gives the mind a complete ascendency over any danger, pain or torture, which belongs to life or death. But we would not be so extravagant, as for a moment, to question that death, as the present generation have been trained, and as we are accustomed, by all we see, and hear to view it, is a formidable evil, fitly characterized by its dread name, _the king of terrors_. Many a debilitating interior misgiving will assail the stoutest mind, in certain moments, in view of it. There are dark intervals by night, in the midnight hours of pain, periods between the empire of sleep and active reason, when the terrific and formless image rushes in its terror and indefiniteness upon the mind. As age steals upon us, and the vivid perceptions, and the bright dreams of youth disappear, many a dark shadow will cloud the sunshine of the soul. The conflict, in which all these terrors are overcome by unaided nature and reason is, as has been seen, a cruel one. The tender sensibilities, the keen affections, the dear and delusive hopes of our nature must all be crushed, before we can be unmoved in the endurance of the pain and torture that precede, and the death that follows. It is only to a firm and unhesitating faith, that it becomes as easy and natural to die, as to sleep. Glorious and blessed hope, the hope of meeting our friends, in the eternal land of those who truly and greatly live forever! There we shall renew our youth, and _mount as on the wings of eagles_. ‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet, Where parting tears shall cease to flow: And, when I think thereon, almost I long to go!’ Note 62, page 177.