“I have never seen the book to which you allude, but I suppose it to be that which bears the fictitious name of Search. The end which I should propose and expect from any theological investigation would be simply a conviction that Christianity is neither a fable cunningly devised, nor a superstition which has sprung from a combination of favouring causes, but that it is a scheme of Providence indicated by prophecies, and proved by miracles. With this consent of the understanding, I should be satisfied in Y——’s case. The rest would assuredly follow in due time and in natural course.
| 346 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 63. |
“I could agree with you that personal identity unbroken by death were little to be desired, if it were all,—if we were to begin a new life in the nakedness of that identity. But when we carry with us in that second birth all that makes existence valuable, our hopes and aspirations, our affections, our eupathies, our capacities of happiness and of improvement; when we are to be welcomed into another sphere by those dear ones who have gone before us, and are in our turn to welcome there those whom we left on earth, surely, of all God’s blessings the revelation which renders this certain is the greatest. There have been times in my life when my heart would have been broken, if this belief had not supported me. At this moment it is worth more than all the world could give. . . . .
“The end cannot be far off, and all is going on most mercifully. For several days when I have supported her down stairs, I have thought it was for the last time; and every night when she has been borne up, it has seemed to me that she would never be borne down alive. Thank God, there is no pain, no suffering of any kind; and only such consciousness as is consolation.
“God bless you!
