[To THE EDITOR OF TICE 'SPECTATOR."] Sza,—The deeply interesting and
sympathetic article on "The Things Beyond the Tomb" in the Spectator of September 15th has suggested to me that the little paper of thoughts on the same subject which I enclose might not be unwelcome to you, and might, perhaps, give to some of your readers the comfort I and a few intimate friends to whom I have com- municated them have found in them. It may add somewhat to their weight with you to state that the writer is a woman well on in the eighty-fifth year of her life and in the eighth of commune with her own heart in the stillness of the bed she
will never leave but for the grave.—I am, Sir, &c., •
M. G. G.
"AFTER DRATNP When reading the other day of the terrible slaughter of natives and British troops in quelling the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the thought pressed itself upon me : What will be the first consciousness of another life to all those souls, Christian, Pagan, Moslem, believers and unbelievers, thoughtful and thoughtless, so suddenly launched from the temporal, the visible, the known, into the unknown, the unseen, the eternal, never by the immense majority thought of as a reality; ridiculed by many as an inven- tion of priestcraft; by many more believed in as a place of bliss or torment of which their priests or prophets hold the keys and can give a safe conduct to the one and escape from the other with- out any moral responsibility or effort on their part beyond passive obedience ? Pondering upon this question, two events in the New Testament record forcibly suggested themselves as offering pos- sible answers. May not that first consciousness of another life come
to the unthinking, the ignorant, the credulous, the scornful, the vile, as Christ to Sant on the road to Damascus, as the sudden sense of a dazzling light and an overwhelming Presence, before which each soul will sink into utter abasement and wonder with Saurs cry : Who art thou, Lord? And will not that be the beginning for each one of that cleansing, purifying perception of a Beauty, Goodness, Truth, Life undreamt of before, having nothing to do with Time or Space, only with what is ; scathing the vile by the perception of their own vileness ; leading the blinded souls gently towards enlightenment, as Saul was led to Ananias, and dealing with the ignorant and the savage as with little children, guiding, soothing, training the power to understand and to act in this new life ? For those who have thought, those who have known and believed and, at least, striven however feebly and falteringly to follow Christ, though, perchance, denying Him once and again like Peter, but like Peter turning back to him in bitter repent- ance, surely there will be another consciousness brought by that sudden great light and sense of a Divine Presence. Will not their cry be : It is the Lord ! and will not they, like Peter by the shore of Galilee, spring forward in absolute self-forgetfulness and adoring love and trust to hear His greeting: Children, come'?"
[We have received several other letters on this subject, but regret to be unable to find room for them.—En. Spectator.]
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