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able to acquire of the conditions of the future life exercises a great influence on our last moments. It gives us
more assurance, and enables the soul to quickly disengage itself.
To prepare oneself usefully for the life Beyond, it is not only necessary to be convinced of its reality,
but to comprehend its laws, and by their aid to see the advantages and the consequences of efforts toward
moral ideals. Our psychical studies and relations established during life with the invisible worlds, and our
aspirations toward a more elevated mode of existence help to develop latent faculties; and when the definite
hour comes, the final detachment from the body will be easily accomplished. The spirit will quickly recognize
its position; all that it sees will be familiar, and it will adapt itself without effort or pain to its new
environment.
Often at the approach of the last hour the dying enter into possession of their psychic powers and
perceive the beings and the things of the invisible world. There is an immense library of authentic facts open to
all who desire proofs of such occurrences. In the annals of Scientific Psychology of March 1906, the last hours
of the Rev. Dwight L. Moody, the Evangelist, are described by his son (page 485). The dying man said, ‘The
earth is disappearing, the heavens open before me; do not call me back. If this is death, it is beautiful. Dwight!
Irene! I see the children!’ A few moments later he lost consciousness. In the same periodical, page 50, Alfred
Smedley gives the story of the last moments of his wife, who cried out joyfully, ‘Why, here are my sister, my
mother, and my father and my brother! And they are bringing Betsey Heap. Oh, they have come to take me
away.’ Betsey Heap was a faithful servant of the family, greatly devoted to them. A few moments afterward,
Mrs. Smedley died. These are but two of numberless cases of a similar nature. Mr. Stainton Moses, pastor of
an English church, and a celebrated psychic, wrote of his study of the transition of a soul in the pages of Light.
For twelve days and nights he was at the bedside of a dying friend, and was able to see the changes in the color
of the aura, and, to use his own words, ‘At the supreme moment, I saw the forms of spirit guardians appear and
approach the dying man, and with no effort separate the soul from the body.’
The best means of securing a sweet and peaceful death is to live worthily, simply, soberly, and to
vitalize existence with high thoughts and noble actions. There are good and bad conditions beyond the tomb,
as here. What our condition will be there depends wholly upon the manner in which we have developed our
tendencies, opportunities, and desires. It is in the present that we must prepare, act, and reform, and not at the
moment when our earth end approaches. It is puerile to believe our future education depends upon certain
formalities well performed at the hour of departure. It is our entire life here which responds to the Beyond.
One is closely united to the other; they form a continuity of cause and effect which death does not interrupt. It
is well to dissipate the chimeras by which certain brains are haunted, of regions reserved for souls after death,
where hideous creatures torment them.
He who watched over our birth, and placed us in this world in loving arms outstretched to receive us,
will reserve affection for us also at the hour of our arrival in the Beyond. Rid yourself of visions infernal and
of vain terrors. The future, like the present, is activity. Work! It is the conquest of new regions. Have
confidence in the goodness of God, in His love for His creatures, and go forward with a firm heart toward the
goal He has fixed for each life. Your conscience will be your judge and your executioner beyond the tomb.
Release from the fetters of earth, it acquires an acumen difficult for us to comprehend; too often drowsy during
life, it awakens at death and lifts its voice. It evokes the memories of the past, and stripped of all illusions, they
appear in full light, and every least fault becomes a cause of regret. Of this Myers has said, ‘There is no need
of purification by fire! The knowledge of himself is complete punishment and the complete reward of man.’
Harmony is everywhere; in the solemn march of worlds, as in that of human destinies, each one is
classed according to his aptitude in the universal order. To great souls are given high tasks and creations of
genius - to the weaker, mediocre works and mission inferior. With every effort of our lives we go toward the
role which is ours by right. Make yourselves, then, great and powerful souls, rich with virtue and science,
capable of noble works, and create for yourselves a high place in the eternal order. By culture, by the conquest
of energy, dignity, and goodness, rise to the summit of the great spirits who labor for the cause of the
humanities, and later you shall taste with them the joys reserved for the truly meritorious. Then death, in place
of being a trial, will become in your eyes a benefit, and you can repeat the celebrated words of Socrates, ‘If
this is death, let me die again and again.’
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