But the same triumph is won by the hope of immortality, by a process, simple, easy, natural, in entire consonance with the most tender affections and lively sympathies of flesh and blood. We lie down in pain and agony, with a spirit of easy endurance, if we have a confident persuasion that, during the night, we shall have shaken off the cause of our sufferings, and shall rise to renewed health and freshness in the morning. Death can bring little terror to him, who believes that its darkness will instantly be replaced by the light of another scene: and that the separation from friends in the visible land, is only rejoining the more numerous group, who have already become citizens of the invisible country.
To what extent am I the subject of this hope myself; and whence do I derive my belief? These are questions which affection will ask; and the answers, if devoid of interest _now_, will not be so when the _memory of things that were shall come over the mind of the reader like a cloud_, and when read as the thoughts of one, who, during his whole sojourn, felt and reflected intensely upon those subjects; and who will then himself have passed away to the experience of all that which is here matter of discussion. Those most dear to me will know what relations I sustained to these subjects, during the best part of my life; and will not be without solicitude to know my final thoughts upon them; thoughts, purified at least from all stain of party interest and _esprit du corps_, and put forth in the simple consciousness of my own convictions, however they may be powerless to produce belief in the mind of any other. With the fierce war cry of sects in religion, in their acrimonious and never ending contests about abstract terms without a meaning, their combats about the vague and technical phrases of formulas of faith, I have long since had nothing to do. For many years they have rung on my ear like the distant thunder of clouds that have passed by. To the denunciations of those, who assume to hold all truth imprisoned in their articles of confession, if I might hope the distinction of receiving them, I am perfectly callous. Neither would I desire to add another book to the millions of volumes of polemic theology which already exist, and which have as little bearing upon the knowledge, virtue and happiness of the age, as the last year’s snow.