Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. ANTICIPATIONS. The early morning hours are richest in consolation to those who visit often the spot where their loved ones sleep in Jesus. If we had not become so thoroughly accustomed to the phenomena of the morning, when nature seems to awake refreshed, when the'early bird begins his song, and these violets open anew their hearts to the call and the kiss of the sun, we should account the new day to be the grandest of miracles. Sleep is not death; but in appearance it is so strangely similar, that it has been called its twin sister. In sleep we pass out of the world about us, so far as our own consciousness is concerned ; we depart from the world of our interests and cares. They say that we are dead asleep. And truly we shall not be more unconscious of what is transpiring about us when we are in the grave than we are when asleep every night in our bed. The greatest anxieties of our life are quieted. What to us then are all the strifes and ambitions of the world? The wise man and the fool lie down alike unconcerned in their night’s slumber,?as they will soon lie down together in the silence of the grave. But when we wake with the morning, a miracle confronts us,?the miracle that we are the same persons we were when last night we left the world to go on its way without us. We have gone through the period of unconsciousness, and have come up out of it without the loss of self. Everything is conserved; we are even fresher'and stronger, and have even gained by our apparent loss. Vigor has come to the bodily frame, sharpness to the eye, elasticity to the muscles, while to the mind in its processes, and the soul in its powers there is more glow and grasp. We have wakened with nature, as if a part of it. When we said good-night there was anticipation of a good- mor…
