I next became aware of presences about me. How can I describe the new sense which informed me of their nearness! I did not see or feel or hear them. I perceived them, intuitively as it were, by a holy atmosphere of love and purity and beauty which came with them. So the flowers, without senses like our own, when the dark and chilly night is over, must feel the tremulous waves of light gladdening around them.
These invisible, inaudible attendants were engaged in some office of love about me. What it was I did not understand; but I felt as if my body was being drawn out of something, as a hand is withdrawn from a glove,—although no one seemed to touch me. I entered into a state of exalted and blissful sensations, totally new to me, and quite incomprehensible to men still lingering in the flesh. My affections seemed to be concentrated or detained upon pure, tender, lovely and holy things, so that nothing painful or doubtful or sorrowful should stain the shining mirror of the soul.
I do not know how long this exquisite state of happiness lasted. It must have been rounded off with a delicious sleep; for it seemed itself like a sweet and mysterious dream, when I discovered that I was wider awake than before, and surrounded by a different though still delightful and purifying sphere of impressions.
From the presences about me I seemed to absorb the power of thinking and remembering distinctly. I [pg 173]could not open my eyes, but I seemed to be contemplating a luminous atmosphere, an infinite variety of splendid and dazzling colors, a whole universe of light. The ecstasy of Joy with which, bewildered and fascinated, I studied this inexpressible chaos of light, is beyond my power of description. In the midst of it I felt that two persons were near me, one at my head and one at my feet. One of them seemed to bend over me, and to be reading my face as one reads a book. He then said to the other in a gentle voice:
“It is good. His last thoughts were about the Lord.”
I pondered these words and asked myself whether I was dead or dreaming or in a trance.
My invisible friend then passed his hands several times gently over my face. He next drew a fine film from my eyelids and breathed upon my forehead. I instantly recovered my sight and looked around me. There were two men before me with beautiful and noble faces, and clad in robes of shining linen. I could not remove my eyes from them, there was something so inexpressibly tender and brotherly in their looks and motions.
“You are in the world of spirits, my brother,” said one of them with ineffable sweetness. “Be not afraid, but rejoice! The world of spirits is the vast realm betwixt earth and heaven into which all men come when they are first raised from the dead.”
“Raised from the dead?” said I, in extreme bewilderment.
“Yes—you have been raised from the dead. You have left the earth upon which you were born; you have left your natural body, which your friends will bury in [pg 174]the ground; you are now in a spiritual body and a spiritual state of existence.”