how much significance should be attached to
the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt
vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones
gone before. Sometimes these phenomena are very striking. I once
thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony
from thoughtful, cool-headed clergy and laity of such experiences at
death-beds. It might enable us to judge critically if it could be
explained away as mere sentimental fancy or if the evidence were strong
enough to suggest an underlying reality. It would need to be very
keenly criticized. All allowance should be made, especially in the
case of women, for the deceitfulness of pious fancies. But there are
some cases which, if their number were large enough, would point much
deeper, where there could be no case of sentimental fancies. For
instance a young student in one of our city hospitals told me a curious
experience lately. A little child under two years old had been rescued
out of a fire and was dying badly burned. "I took the little chap on a
pillow in my arms," he said, "to let him die more easily. Suddenly he
stiffened himself and reached out his little hands and his face beamed
with the sort of gladness that a child has in reaching to something
very pleasant and in a very short time he died." My informant was by
no manner of means a sentimental youth, and he was much struck with the
incident. I don't know if there is much evidence of this kind. If so
it would count for a good deal in forming our judgment. Our Lord
speaks of those whom we have made friends on earth receiving us when we
die into the everlasting habitations (Luke xvi. 9). Is it too good to
believe that He might have meant some pleasant welcoming on the other
side--that perhaps that little child in the hospital that night was
really reaching out his little hands to some one invisible to the young
student? Let us have no weak sentimentalizing, but on the other
hand--is anything too good to believe as to what God might do for poor
frightened souls at such a dread crisis of being?

[1] I have here freely adapted some thoughts and phrases from Edwin
Arnold's _Death and Afterwards_.

CHAPTER VI

"I," "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH

Section 1

But we must not delay at Death. Death is a very small thing in
comparison with what comes after it--that wonderful, wonderful,
wonderful world into which Death ushers us. Turn away