Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1863-07-03
Alisfcllallrous Reaching.
The Dying.

The Dying.
Mother, can see great distance"
said good maa once, as he was entering
on the endless journey. "Ye shall see
heaven open, and the angels of God as
scending and descending" was the promise
to the disciples of our Lord, and through
them, to Christians of all time. Literally,
as well as metaphorically, in life, as well as
in dying hour. has the declaration been
verifed-verified every day in the life, as
well as in the death, of the righteous and
will be, until death shall be more. Sights
have been seen, and sounds heard-sights
or sounds freiy hted with ravishing sweetness
10 Christian people, in the broad daylight of
life and health, and in the gloom of the
grave; sights and sounds vouchsafed to
cheer is the most needed, when none can
come from any mortal source, as if
the very last, last moment of a Chris
tian's life should be fulfillment of a prom
ise given by the Master, to be with him
when he was walking s. through the valley
and shadow Of death"
The utterances of dying Christians indi-
cate that the angelic forms, and the famil-
lar faces of the departed dead, lowering
about them, and smiles of ineffable sweet
ness, beckon them away to the elysium of
the blessed. If these be mere fancies, they
are delicious fancies if facts, they are glo-
rious beyond expression. Whether it were
only dream or seeming the angels on
the ladder from earth to heaven, and the
promise of the Lord, who stood at the top,
tho r,racinncpase NJ IN Ionph all tla
same, as il it had been an embodied fact,
especially as the promise which he had in
his dream was literally complied with.
The film which covers the mortal eye,
and hides from physical sense the beings
and the the things at hand, has been brush
ed away in the case of patriarchs and proph-
els OF olden times and later on the mount
of TRANSPORTATION and various martyrs of
after ages have had their faces SO lighted
up with heavenliness, that it i S difficult to
be accounted for except by the fact of an
actual sight of heavenly things.
But, further on in the act and articles OF
dissolution, the sight that pierces ether,
faints and fades, and taste is dead, and
touch is dead, and feeling, and smell, all, all
are dead. Not so the ear it survives them
all, for it is the last sense that dies and it
is the repeated testimony of those who have
returned to life from the furtherest limits
beyond, that the whole atmosphere seemed
to be filled with with sounds so ravishing
as 10 be indescrbable by mortal words. 1t
has been testified TO by persons who have
been drowned, and then brought to, that the
very last perception was that of delightful
music.
A dying man sheds no tears. He calls
his wife and children, his parents, his best
friends, to his bedside, and, though teal
drops rain from every eye, the contamina
ton of tears never comes TO him, never one
falls down his cheek. This is because the
manufactures Of life have stopped forever
the human machine has run down at last
every gland Of the system has ceased it:
functions, and that is why death steps in
and like remorseless sheriff. takes pos
session and stops everything. In almos
all diseases, the liver is the first manufac
tory that stops work, one by one the other
follow, and all the functions OF life are a
length dried ups there is no secretion any
where; the lips and tongue, how dry, as We
have all seen; the skin, how dry or, j
mostened by the damp of death, it is from
mechanical causes. So the eye in deati
weeps not; not that all the affections arr
, dead in the heart, but because there is NJ
moisture on the lip, which undying affec
tion, when it came to nothing else, lave
necessarily with the little mop, or feather
There is one sign of approaching disso
luton. We have never seen it alluded tc
and we have never seen it fail When tn
extremities are cold, and the head, the yer.
last part 10 lose all power of motion,
+ turned necessarily and quickly and restless
ly from one side on the pillow to the othe,
;, death comes within an hour. 1t is wort
b the effort of Lifetime, to be able to di
well, to die at good old age, IN peace wit
: all mankind, and in a well grounded fait
of an immortal life beyond.