Aside from the immediate teaching and awakening convictions of the Holy Spirit, perhaps no event more powerfully impresses the mind with the certainty of an invisible world than the death of friends and family. We can not believe that the minds with which we enjoyed happy communion have become extinct with the dissolution of the body. We have seen the light of intelligence beam from their eye, we have felt their sympathies in our adversities, and we have known that their hearts have rejoiced with us in the various seasons of our prosperity. But we have also witnessed the ravages of disease, fatality from fever, the pinings of desolating consumption, or have observed with anxiety the last, unrelenting grasp of death. Writing in 1838, William Jay of Bath, England, with his kind, tender, and Scripturally affectionate style, cannot fail to sooth the wounded heart. You will see the design and hand of God in afflictions, be consoled in death, comforted in the loss of children, enabled to honor God in trouble, and be given a glimpse of the glorious Christian dwelling in Heaven.