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DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD
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anguish, from the deeps of ray soul there went forth a prayer to Him whose presence and majesty was then recognized, with heart bowed down, and with a fervency never realized before. I feared to be swept into nothingness by the tempestuous breath of heaven; I feared to be hurled into destruction by the driving blast! But no; for seemingly the wind passed through me, just as the electric current passes through human or any other material bodies, and touched me not destroyingly. The fiercest wind that ever raged can never blow a shadow from its place, neither can it in any way blow away a spirit! for the reason, amongst others, that spirit is not matter, any more than is a shadow or a sound substantial, as this last word is generally defined; hence wind, which is a material substance, can in no wise touch it. And so I was not blown away before the driving gale.

"But suppose a column of wind, just three yards square, and moving at the rate of two hundred miles an hour, sweeps toward the very spot on which a human spirit stands, or is; it cannot turn this wind aside: How, then, could anything remain unmoved?" This is the question; now the answer comes. A bar or column of sunshine streams through the air, and its volume is just three yards square. It will require something far different, and much more powerful than a column of air, moving at the rate of two hundred miles an hour, to blow away that sunshine, or to drive a hole through it; yet the sunshine would still be there, and so would the wind! This is my answer to that objection. I lifted up my soul in unspeakable thankfulness and adoration, as I realized that spirit was superior to matter, even in its most subtle and rarified forms—superior even to the glaring, seething, melting, white fire of the clouds, when