CHAPTER VIII.
Who can conceive or estimate the nature of that change which the soul of a believer must experience at the moment when, quitting its tabernacle of clay, it suddenly enters into the presence of God?
If, even while "we see through a glass darkly," the views of Divine love and wisdom are so delightful to the eye of faith, what must be the glorious vision of God, when seen face to face?
If it be so valued a privilege here on earth to enjoy the communion of saints, and to take sweet counsel together with our fellow-travellers towards the heavenly kingdom, what shall we see and know when we finally "come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant ?" (Heb.xii.

22-24.) If, during the sighs and tears of a mortal pilgrimage, the consolations of the Spirit are so precious, and the hope full of immortality is so animating to the soul, what heart can conceive, or what tongue utter its superior joys, when arrived at that state where sighing and sorrow flee away, and the tears shall be wiped from every eye?
Such ideas were powerfully associated together in my imagination as I travelled onward to the house where, in solemn preparation for the grave, lay the remains of the Dairyman's daughter.
She had breathed her last shortly after the visit related in my former account.

Permission was obtained, as before, in the case of her sister, that I should perform the funeral service.

Many pleasing yet melancholy thoughts were connected with the fulfilment of this task.

I retraced the numerous and important conversations which I had held with her.
But these could now no longer be maintained on earth.