—how delightful to contemplate the good Howard, and Oberlin, and the faithful follower in their footsteps, the devoted Elizabeth Fry,—with the gentle spirit of Fenelon to spiritualize and bless the lovely company—all meeting together, and walking through sweet scenes of heavenly peace, meditating and conversing on the goodness and Divine benignity of their Heavenly Father, their Lord and Saviour,—that Saviour, who not merely, like Howard, traversed foreign lands, but came down from heaven to earth, that he might "bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house," that He might "deliver men from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God," and who at length even "gave his life a ransom for many!" How sweet would be such a communion of beatified spirits! How blessed, beyond conception, must be such a re-union of the good and pure of all ages,—the "general assembly and church of the first-born, who are written in heaven!"
And is this merely a fancy? Is it a mere baseless supposition, that the intellectual and good do thus meet after the death of their material bodies, in a spiritual state of existence? Independently of proofs from the pages of Revelation, (which, for the present, we are not taking into consideration) is there no law of the mind, which makes this probable, nay, certain? It has been before shown, by argument, that the mind is the man,—that what is called death does not affect the mind at all, but only the material body; that, therefore, after death the mind or the man is the same as before, with his thoughts and affections essentially the same. Now, this being the case, will not the law of mental attraction,
