"I am going to glory."-Robert Newton.

"Oh, let me be gone, I long to be at home."Samuel Spring.

"I am sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb."-Alfred Cookman.

"Oh, how this soul of mine longs to be gone, like a bird out of his cage, to the realms of bliss.' Jno. Fletcher.

"I am drawing near to glory." -Mrs. Fletcher. "All my possessions for a moment of time."Queen Elizabeth.

"It is well."-George Washington.

"I resign my soul to God."-Thomas Jefferson. "I am going home."-David Livingstone.

"O my poor soul whither wilt thou go?"Cardinal Mazarin.

"I am taking a fearful leap into the dark.”. Hobbes, infidel.

The following is an account of the death of a soulsleeper, from "Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayers":

"Mrs. Mattie Campbell relates the happy death of her sister, a soul-sleeper, which occurred last May. In Sabbath-school this afternoon a message came: 'Emma is dying. Come quickly if you want to see her alive.' My dear sister! We had played together, and more than all, we dreamed dreams of the fairy future, wherein we saw everything but care and temptation crowning the golden pathway of our jubilant feet. She was plump and rosy, full of

laughter and frolic, which life's stern realities had not subdued. Strong and well I had seen her but five days before. Yet, ah! 'in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.' On our way the sad face of the family physician confirmed the truth. 'She may linger until sundown,' he said, and all the way I prayed, and felt it would be answered: 'Lord, dear Lord, only let me have one. word to know how it is with her soul.' Mother met me at the door. This was a heavy grief. 'Ask how it is with her soul,' said she. I entered the room filled with weeping friends. I pressed the damp, cold brow. She knew me and spoke in the old sweet way. Soon I commenced slowly and low the hymn we used to sing together,

"Jesus, lover of my soul,"

while I anxiously watched to catch a mark of grace upon her fast changing features. A happy, peaceful smile broke over her face. I bent down and she spoke. 'God has always been good to me, sister. He has not given me one harsh word since I came down to my bed.' How the promise rushed to my lips 'He giveth, and upbraideth not.' Glory to his name! Divinely assured that she was dying, she spoke of a long, sweet sleep, the sleep of the soul and body, until the resurrection, for that was her belief. . . . With mind clear and composed, she then lay, waiting to pass into an unconscious slumber, only to awaken at the last trump. 'Hark,' she said, listening intently. 'I hear music: don't you

hear it? And, mother, I see a door. . . . It is open. I see inside. It is a beautiful place. It is heaven. I see forms clothed in white, many, yca, a multitude of beautiful beings, their hands upraised, while they are waving something in their hands.' And then in wonder and astonishment, 'Why, there is pa.' Then she very intelligently gave orders for her burial. Good-bys were said, and in childlike pleading tones she called, 'Come, dear Lord, I am ready.' An effort on her part to close the dear eyes and mouth, a few more agonizing moments, and the open door received her gentle spirit."

Thus we could multiply testimonies of dying men and women, that the soul leaves the body at death. The reader perhaps has witnessed such death-bed scenes as just described. Millions in their last breath have testified to the world that they were then going to the Lord, to the realms of light, or to regions of dark despair. While penning these lines memory goes back a few years to the death-bed of my own sainted mother. Just before she expired she looked. up and said, "I see heaven opened and the glory of God descending." She testified she was "go'ng to dwell with Christ." Among her last words she said, "Tell my boy [referring to myself, who was then in the far West] to be true to God at the point of the bayonet." This charge I expect, by God's grace, to keep. While these departing souls had control of the organs of speech, they spoke audibly, to testify that existence was still real, and when the

voice was stifled in the cold stream, some of them held up their hands in token of their yet conscious being. If the soul of man were only a breath, if life were only a spark which expires when the heart ceases to beat, would there not have been an experience of the waning flame? would there not have been at least one testimony, in six thousand years, among the thousands of millions of dying men, going to show a conscious nearness to oblivion? But there is not one such, not one. On the contrary, millions have in their last breath testified to future conscious existence, while absent from the body.

If the soul-sleeping doctrine be true, then the Creator put it in the hearts of his creatures, in the most solemn hour of their existence, to testify to a falsehood. Men who would disdain a lie, are made to speak an unconscions one in the hour of deathmen filled with the Holy Ghost. Can this be so? Is it possible that the good men of all ages—men whom God has used to effect mighty reformations in the earth, testified to a lie in the hour of death? Was Stephen mistaken when he "looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God"; and a little later addressed his Savior thus: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"? Was the apostle Paul mistaken when he said, "We know" that when this earthly house, this mortal body, dissolves in death we shall "depart and be with Christ" be "absent from the body, and present with the Lord"? If all these

witnesses were mistaken, and man does not have any existence after death, then we have a shadow more enduring than the substance, for Stephen, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and other great moral natures, have, in their names and histories, an earthly immortality, while they themselves, going into eternity, conscious to the last, and expecting to live forever, have ceased to be. In a universe of harmony there can not be such discord; in a world of truth there can not be such contradiction. Enoch was translated; "for God took him." Moses lies down upon the mountainside, and dies. God himself buried the dust. Elijah steps into a chariot of fire, and by a whirlwind is carried to the skies. Almost a thousand years after, Jesus with three of his disciples goes to a mountaintop, where he is transfigured before them. Instantly there appear Moses and Elias talking with him. These men were still living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had long since died, and their bodies were mouldering in the dust; but Got said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the dead, but of the living." Amen, and amen.