Put a wig upon your head, blacken your face, "make up" your features, and when you have finished and are completely unaware of your changed appearance, look into the mirror for your reflection and feel the sensation of the startling fact that you know not yourself. We speak of changes so radical in a person's appearance that we often say we could not recognize him "in a thousand years." What a ridiculous presumption it is, then, to maintain that we live after death when _all_ senses are gone and perception is dead! Again, how anyone can say that when we die we go to "heaven" is too childish to consider, because when we die, instead of going up and to heaven, we are put deep into the ground to moulder and to rot away. What a far-fetched conclusion it is to assume that we live after death, minus all the physical characteristics and under conditions utterly incomprehensible to our minds! Even if, at death, the body turned into invisible gases it would mean and prove absolutely nothing. If we live after death, by what means can one person communicate with another? We cannot feel, because we have no hands. We cannot see, because we have no eyes. We cannot smell, because we have no nose. We cannot hear, because we have no ears. We cannot taste, because we have no mouth, no stomach. But, with it all, these five mediums of sense are dependent upon a _living brain_. The fact that we suffer the loss of our senses even before death, because of the complications in the make-up of our body, should be sufficient proof of the nonexistence of a soul and the utter impossibility of a life after death. Unless we retain and maintain our sacred ties after death, another life is valueless and void, useless and unnecessary. It is a fearful sadness to think that the ones you love are to pass away into nothingness and be no more; that the sparkling eyes will be dim forever; that the rosy cheeks will no longer glow with radiant health; that the ruby lips will fade into a deathly blue, motionless and forever still; that dimpled hands and loving arms will never encircle you again, and the supremacy and tenderness of your love must be crushed with a cold and callous ferocity. But, sad and mournful as it is, with the human heart beating hopelessly against hope for only one more chance to kiss and caress and love the one you so dearly cherish, it is nevertheless only too poignantly true that death ends all. Death means nothing to the affairs of the world. To be taken from amid the world in such an ever-living condition as now exists, is like taking a cup of water from an ever-full pail. The gap is immediately filled, and the level of the water simultaneously adjusted, leaving absolutely no trace of what has been withdrawn. Only the individual suffers. What a mighty burst of heart there would be if we all could feel and suffer at the same time!