_MY SPIRITUAL BODY._
[Illustration: Initial]
Our sleep is an awakening: our death is a birth; our burial a
resurrection.
The slumber of a babe upon its mother’s breast, drawing from her bodily
warmth the secret magnetism of life, is a picture of the true state of
every human soul, leaning unconsciously upon the bosom of God at the
moment when bereaved friends are exclaiming,
“He is dead! he is dead!”
They called me dead. My sisters and their companions rent their garments
and covered their heads with ashes. Unconscious of their grief, I passed
beyond the shadows of this world, beyond these voices and sorrows, into
the pure light of a spiritual realm.
Dead, indeed! I lived most when I seemed to live least. Death is nothing
but a name for a change of condition.
The first thing I remember on returning to consciousness, was a soft
strain of distant and ravishing music. I could not open my eyes, nor did I
care to do so. It was perfect bliss to lie there in sweet repose, and
listen to those heavenly sounds which came nearer and nearer. I have been
asked if there was music in heaven. Why, the least motion of the air there
is musical. Music is to the ear what light is to the eye; and the sounds
of heaven are as sweet as its colors are beautiful.
I next became aware of presences about me. How can I describe the new
sense which informed me of their nearness! I did not see or feel or hear
them. I perceived them, intuitively as it were, by a holy atmosphere of
love and purity and beauty which came with them. So the flowers, without
senses like our own, when the dark and chilly night is over, must feel the
tremulous waves of light gladdening around them.
These invisible, inaudible attendants were engaged in some office of love
about me. What it was I did not understand; but I felt as if my body was
being drawn out of something, as a hand is withdrawn from a
glove,—although no one seemed to touch me. I entered into a state of
exalted and blissful sensations, totally new to me, and quite
incomprehensible to men still lingering in the flesh. My affections seemed
to be concentrated or detained upon pure, tender, lovely and holy things,
so that nothing painful or doubtful or sorrowful should stain the shining
mirror of the soul.
I do not know how long this exquisite state of happiness lasted. It must
have been rounded off with a delicious sleep; for it seemed itself like a
sweet and mysterious dream, when I discovered that I was wider awake than
before, and surrounded by a different though still delightful and
purifying sphere of impressions.
From the presences about me I seemed to absorb the power of thinking and
remembering distinctly. I could not open my eyes, but I seemed to be
contemplating a luminous atmosphere, an infinite variety of splendid and
dazzling colors, a whole universe of light. The ecstasy of Joy with which,
bewildered and fascinated, I studied this inexpressible chaos of light, is
beyond my power of description. In the midst of it I felt that two persons
were near me, one at my head and one at my feet. One of them seemed to
bend over me, and to be reading my face as one reads a book. He then said
to the other in a gentle voice:
“It is good. His last thoughts were about the Lord.”
I pondered these words and asked myself whether I was dead or dreaming or
in a trance.
My invisible friend then passed his hands several times gently over my
face. He next drew a fine film from my eyelids and breathed upon my
forehead. I instantly recovered my sight and looked around me. There were
two men before me with beautiful and noble faces, and clad in robes of
shining linen. I could not remove my eyes from them, there was something
so inexpressibly tender and brotherly in their looks and motions.
“You are in the world of spirits, my brother,” said one of them with
ineffable sweetness. “Be not afraid, but rejoice! The world of spirits is
the vast realm betwixt earth and heaven into which all men come when they
are first raised from the dead.”
“Raised from the dead?” said I, in extreme bewilderment.
“Yes—you have been raised from the dead. You have left the earth upon
which you were born; you have left your natural body, which your friends
will bury in the ground; you are now in a spiritual body and a spiritual
state of existence.”