‘I would think so.’
‘From God’s benevolence we cannot prove it; for as benevolence leads to giving the highest good, it may lead him to give us faculties above those we now possess, and felicities in comparison with which all that we have here shall instantly be forgotten. But it is seen from our natures. Our faculties, in their aspirations for something higher, by those very aspirations evidence faculties, which earth puts not in requisition. Few are the thinking minds who have not sometimes in the calm of the evening, as they have sent their gaze away into the heavens, and watched the stars come out to join the mighty sisterhood of planets and rolling worlds, felt a thirst and a lifting up within them as the pulsations of immortality. This is immortality. The world (not to speak poetically,) is forgotten. I myself have been so far enrapt in this mystery, that I have as completely lost my mortal consciousness as if I had never possessed any; at the same time I have been partly conscious of the same powers as those I use when admiring things around me. I was translated to another sphere—worlds of light were rolling around me—I myself was a source of light and magnificence, rolling on forever
‘Still quiring to the young eyed Cherubim!’
A state of purity was there. I admired it—but it was the same as my love of virtue here, though incomparably higher; and I was conscious of the same though more elevated communion, as the music of the spheres
‘Harping along their viewless boundaries,’
came floating about me. And these things prove that the same faculties go with us from earth, though their reachings and exercises may be as much nobler, as time is less than eternity.’
‘My sweet cousin was re-assured—and we soon betook us home.
‘This evening,’ continued he, ‘its stillness, its soft moonlight, and this foolish little treasure of a book in my hand, have recalled that evening, and that conversation—they have set me weeping. ’Tis seldom I speak of the past, but your importunity stands apology.’
I quickly and firmly assured him, that so far from seeking apology, my interest was unaccountable; and I begged the sequel in relation to his cousin.
‘Ask it not—ask it not’—said he, with deep solemnity.