intermittent fevers long continued, that the chill returns in accordance with the habits of the system. Many habits of the flesh run on, even when opposed by our enlightened wishes. Habits of infidelity often exist when wishes militate; and after an instructed judgment tells us better! The feeling of my heart made it necessary that I should continue to read after I could say in truth, concerning the Bible, "I have more evidence an hundred fold, that this is God's letter, than I have of any past occurrence which I did not see.' In connection with Scott, I read Bonnet's Inquiries, Paley, Watson, Chalmers, &c., and was pleased and astonished to see them all evince the meekness, and modesty, and benevolent forbearance, which struck me in the author first named.

They all instructed me. This investigation went on for many months. The considerations which agitated my mind, raising or sinking it, swaying me to the right or left, whilst this reading and this research went on, shall be commenced in the next chapter. For the present I wish to say to the Christian reader, (for the unbeliever could not understand me,) I wish to say, in the language of another, that which no sinner ever deserved to have the privilege of saying; that which if any ever deserved to have no permission to pronounce, I have thus deserved; but with my face in the dust, whilst a joy inexpressible fills my soul, I can say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine cyes shall behold and not another."

CHAPTER LVII.

RELIGIONS BELIEF AT DEATH.

It does not seem a matter of moment where I begin, in trying to present thoughts which passed through my mind, whilst asking whether or not the Scriptures were of God. At different times, and under various temperaments of soul, I meditated on many points which made on me a lasting impression. Sometimes they spurred me on to further thought, or to more industrious reading. Sometimes they seemed to declare that God had revealed his wishes to men. Whether or not these considerations will thus affect others, I cannot tell. In the narration it matters not, I repeat again, where I begin. I shall commence by repeating a few of my thoughts on death.

OBSERVATIONS ON MAN'S Departure.

Whilst attending medical lectures at Philadelphia, I heard from the lady with whom I boarded, an account of certain individuals who were dead to all appearance, during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city, and yet recovered. The fact that they saw, or fancied they saw things in the world of spirits awakened my curiosity.

She told me of one with whom she was acquainted, who was so confident of his discoveries, that he had seemingly thought of little else afterwards, and it had

then been twenty-four years. These things appeared philosophically strange to me for the following reasons:

First, Those who from bleeding or from any other cause, reach a state of syncope, or the ordinary fainting condition, think not at all, or are unable to remember any mental action. When they recover, it appears either that the mind was suspended, or they were unable to recollect its operations. There are those who believe on either side of this question. Some contend for suspension; others deny it, but say we never can recall thoughts formed, whilst the mind is in that state, for reasons not yet understood.

Secondly, Those who in approaching death, reach the first state of insensibility, and recover from it, are unconscious of any mental activity, and have no thoughts which they can recall.

Thirdly, If this is so, why then should those who had travelled further into the land of death, and had sunk deeper into the condition of bodily inaction, when recovered, be conscious of mental action, and remember thoughts more vivid than ever had flashed across their souls in the health of boyhood, under a vernal sun, and on a plain of flowers?

After this I felt somewhat inclined to watch, when it became my business, year after year, to stand by the bed of death. That which I saw was not calculated to protract and deepen the slumbers of infidelity, but rather to dispose toward a degree of restlessness; or, at least, to further observation. I knew that the circle of stupor, or insensibility, drawn around life, and through which all either pass, or seem to pass, who go out of life, was urged by some to prove that the mind could not exist unless it be in connexion with organized matter. For the same

reason, others have contended that our souls must sleep until the morning of the resurrection, when we shall regain our bodies. That which I witnessed for myself, pushed me (willing or unwilling,) in a different direction. Before I relate these facts, I must offer something which may illustrate, to a certain extent, the thoughts toward which they pointed.

If we were to stand on the edge of a very deep ditch, or gulf on the distant verge of which a curtain hangs which obstructs the view, we might feel a wish to know what is beyond it, or whether there is any light in that unseen land. Suppose we were to let down a ladder, protracted greatly in its length, and ask a bold adventurer to descend and make discoveries. He goes to the bottom, and then returns, telling us that there he could see nothing that all was total darkness. We might very naturally infer the absence of light there; but if we concluded that his powers of vision had been annihilated, or that there could surely be no light in the land beyond the curtain, because, to reach that land, a very dark ravine must be crossed, it would have been weak reasoning: so much so, that, if it contented us, we must be easily satisfied. It gave me pain to notice many— nay, many physicians, who, on these very premises, or on something equally weak, were quieting themselves in the deduction, that the soul sees no more after death. Suppose this adventurer descends again, and then ascends the other side, so near the top that he can reach the curtain and slightly lift it. When he returns, he tells us that his vision had been suspended totally as before, but that he went nearer the distant land, and it was revived again: that, as the curtain was lifted, he saw brighter light than he had ever seen before. We

would say to him,—" A certain distance does suspend; but inaction, is not loss of sight. Only travel on further, and you will see again." We can understand that any one might go to the bottom of that ravine a thousand times; he might remain there for days, and, if he went no further, he could tell, on his return, nothing of the unseen regions.

Something like this was illustrated by the facts noted during many years' employment in the medical profession. A few cases must be taken as examples from the list.

I was called to see a female who departed under an influence which causes the patient to faint again and again, more and still more profoundly, until life is extinct. For the information of physicians, I mention, it was uterine hemorrhage from inseparably attached placenta. When recovered from the first condition of syncope, she appeared as unconscious, or as destitute of activity of spirit as others usually do. She sank again and revived: it was still the same. She fainted more profoundly still; and, when awake again, she appeared as others usually do who have no thoughts which they can recall. At length she appeared entirely gone. It did seem as though the struggle was forever past. Her weeping relatives clasped their hands and exclaimed,— "She is dead!" but, unexpectedly, she waked once more, and, glancing her eyes on one who sat near, exclaimed, "Oh, Sarah, I was at an entirely new place!" and then sunk to remain insensible to the things of the place we live in.

Why she, like others in fainting, should have no thoughts which she could recall, when not so near death as she afterwards was when she had thought,