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Joy Snell – Ministry of Angels

About a month after the death of the girl which is related in the preceding chapter, another friend of mine died in the hospital. It was pneumonia that carried him off. He was a good and devout man and for him death held no terrors, for he was sure that it was but the transition to a happier, more exalted life than can be lived here. His only regret at dying was that he would leave behind him a dearly-loved wife; but that regret was softened by the assurance that their parting would be only for a time, and that she would join him some day in that other world whither he was going.

She was sitting by his bed and, believing as he believed, was awaiting the end with resignation. About an hour before he died he called her by name and pointing upwards, said: “Look, L___, there is B___! He is waiting for  me. And now he smiles and holds out his hands to me. Can’t you see him?”

“No, dear, I cannot see him,” she replied, “but I know that he is there because you can see him”.

 B___ was their only child who had been taken from them about a year before, when between five and six years of age. I could plainly see the little angel with curly flaxenhair and blue eyes, and garbed in what I call the spirit robe. The face was just that of a winsome child, but etherealized and radiant as no earthly faces ever are

The father had been greatly weakened by the ravages of his disease and the joyful emotion occasioned by seeing his angel child seemed to exhaust what little vitality he had left. He closed his eyes and sank into a placid sleep. He remained in that state for about an hour, the angel child meanwhile staying poised above the bed with an expression of glad expectancy on his radiant face. Occasionally he looked lovingly at his mother.

The breathing of the dying man grew fainter and fainter until it ceased altogether. Then again I witnessed what had now become a familiar spectacle to me - the formation of the spirit body above the discarded earthly body. When it was complete the angel child clasped the hand of the now angel father, each gazed into the eyes of the other with an expression of the tenderest affection, and with faces aglow with joy and happiness they vanished.

It was, indeed, a glorious sight! It made death, which nearly everybody regards as something awesome, enshrouded in dark, impenetrable mystery, appear beautiful and beneficent, indeed as the crowning proof of the infinite mercy and unfathomable love of the Heavenly Father. Had it not been for the presence of the weeping widow I could have clapped my hands and have sung for very joy. But her grief was not of the same black and bitter quality which had seized upon me when my father died and caused me to reject all solace.

“I am very glad my dear husband saw B___ before he died,” she said to me that same evening. “It was natural that B___ should come for him to take him to the angels, for they loved each other dearly. I shall now be able to think of them as always together and happy. And when I receive my summons I know that they will both care for me”