It is a historical fact that Rev. Joseph Buckminster, who died in Vermont, in 1812, just before his death, announced that his distinguished son, Rev. J. S. Buckminster, was dead.
The Eaton (O.) Telegraph gives the following parallel case: “On Wednesday morning last, at four o’clock, Gen. John Quince breathed his last. But a few minutes after that, Joseph Deem, who also died on the 14th, aroused from his sleep, and said to his son John, who attended him, ‘Gen. Quince is dead.’ To this John replied, ‘You are mistaken, father, Gen. Quince is well, and goes by after his mail every day.’ ‘Yes,’ said Father Deem, ‘Gen. Quince is dead.’ Shortly after a neighbor came in, and said that Gen. Quince had suddenly died.”
Whenever the power of expression is retained, we see the development of clairvoyance at the approach of death. Sometimes the paralysis of the muscles prevents vocal expression, but where this is the case, the eyes show the ecstasy which the lifting of the vail from a new world only can give.
Mrs. Helen Willmans relates this touching story of the death of her child:
“From her birth she had been afraid of death. Every fiber of her body and soul recoiled from the thought of it.
“‘Don’t let me die!’ she said. ‘Don’t let me die! Hold me fast—I can’t go.’
“‘Jenny,’ I said, ‘you have two little brothers in the other world, and there are thousands of tender-hearted people over there, who will love and take care of you.’
“But she cried despairingly, ‘Don’t let me go. They are strangers over there.’
“But even as she was pleading her little hands relaxed their clinging hold from my waist, and lifted themselves eagerly aloft; lifted themselves with such a straining effort that they raised the wasted body from its reclining position among the pillows. Her eyes filled with the light of divine recognition. They saw plainly something we could not see. But even at that supreme moment she did not forget to leave a word of comfort for those who gladly would have died in her place. ‘Mamma! mamma! they are not strangers. I am not afraid!’ And every instant the light burned more gloriously in her blue eyes, until at last it seemed as her soul leaped forth upon its radiant waves, and in that moment her trembling form relapsed among the pillows, and she was gone.”
Thus we perceive that sensitiveness, which is first manifested in the mesmeric state, breaks in at rare intervals, during wakefulness or sleep, as vivid impressions or dreams, arises to clairvoyance as the spirit and physical body are separated more and more, and reaches its most intense expression at the moment of death, when the union between the two is severed.