returns and the pleasant vision is ended. Now the mind could not have
created these pleasant scenes, for as everyone knows, there is complete
sympathy between the body and mind, and a diseased, pain-tossed body,
would produce a diseased mind. Between sleep and death there is a
wonderful similarity. In sleep the soul wanders forth and returns to the
body, in death it journeys over the broad sea of eternity into the great
unknown. Have you ever stood at the bedside of a dying child and seen
the look of joy that passes over its face? In many instances the child
being too young to reason, too young to create for itself pleasant
scenes. Then what could have produced the ecstatic joy? I stood by the
bed of a dying child, a mere infant. The little sufferer had lain
unconscious during the day, efforts were made to arouse it, the mother
was bending over the bed anxious for one look of recognition, but the
efforts were useless, the stupor continued until suddenly, to the
surprise of the watchers, the little creature raised its hand, and
pointed upward, with a smile of perfect joy, and at that moment the soul
winged its flight.

Materialists will say the child had been told of the beauties of
another world, and at the last moment memory and reason returned, and
the beauties which had been depicted, were suddenly recalled to mind.
But in this instance the child was too young to have been told pleasing
stories; and the mind could not have created for itself a vision. Then
what was it? At the moment of dissolution the soul had flitted through
the gates of the eternal city.

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