I thought of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes.

And then my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not; for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me.

Consciousness went out slowly.

'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain, nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.
"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness and the dreams of sleep.

It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new existence.