1. Confidence in the reality of a future life does not exclude apprehension in regard to the passage from this present life to the other one. Many persons do not dread death in itself; what they dread is the instant of transition. Do we, or do we not, suffer in the crossing of the boundary? This is the query that disturbs one’s equanimity, and which is all the more worthy of consideration because it refers to something from which no one among us can possibly escape. We may decline to take a journey upon the Earth; but the journey we are contemplating is one that must be taken alike by rich and poor, and if it were a painful one, neither rank nor fortune can do away with its painfulness.
