A Methodist canister's Life in the Spheres given through the Mediumship of Mrs. Gr, San Francisco Cal .
When I left my weak, exhausted body I was met on the spirit side by friends who welcomed me with songs of gladness and shouts of welcome. Foremost among these were my old father and mother, appearing in the prime of life, as I remembered them in my own early manhood. We were a mighty host gathered about the old, discarded earth mantle, and each seemed full of joy, but not one so blissfully content as I in my renewed youth and friendships. This was during the first glad surprise. Afterward I became anxious, as the questions of God and His judgment arose in my mind. Regarding that judgment as final, I earnestly questioned my spirit as to its life on earth. At this, my friends, all seemed to disappear, and there stood by me one clothed as with the light of the sun, and I fell upon my face filled with fear. I thought I was in the presence of the God whom I always feared more than loved. I, on earth, had been a doubter, but fearing my doubts were from the evil one, I had resolutely preached Christ, whose unselfish character I could understand and love.
"My son," said my radiant guest, "I am but your guide, once a mortal like yourself. I come to show you your earthwork. Arise, and look upon the souls you have blessed." I obeyed, and beheld a cloud of witnesses to the ministry of more than half a century. They cried, "To you, father, we owe the desire to do right." Oh, ministers of good, be brave and true, and your spirit will be so intertwined with the glory of God or good that your soul will vibrate to such a greeting with a joy mortals cannot understand. There are times of ecstasy on earth, but no more to be compared to this rich, ripe harvest of love, than the tiny dewdrop to the great ocean!
These friends, then, seemed to fade into the brightness of a band sent to conduct me to my spirit home. By their superior brightness, I saw dark spots in the tide that ebbed and flowed about my own soul. Looking closely, I was annoyed by the sight of weakness through which I had passed on earth. In the world of shifting light which seemed a part of myself, I read all my life, not one thought, not one hope, not one act was missing from the long earth-record. But as I looked, the good I had done and tried to do, produced such joy, that tides of -light from the center of my being so flooded my sphere, that the darkness of the earth melted from view. Blissfully I repeated my old and favorite hymn:
 
"No foot of land do I possess,
No cottage in this wilderness."
 
Then I seemed caught in a current of delight, up-borne by tender hands, floating, swimming in bliss until we entered a world of such exquisite beauty that earth has no heart to conceive nor words to describe its transcendent loveliness.
When I looked about, and saw the beautiful fountains sending up their fragrant, many-tinted drops, the waving of the rainbow-spanned foliage, the glittering of the diamond-sprayed shrubbery, the sheen of the silvery stream, I cried, "Heaven is a life of sight." But then there came a burst of music, such as finds no counterpart on earth. I shivered with very ecstasy, my quickened, sphere-enshrined life shot out sparks of praise, until in my soul was born a new song that flowed in tenderest rhythm to meet the waves of celestial music that came rolling in, and I exclaimed, "Heaven is surely music."
Immortality and Our Employments Hereafter
 
JM Peebles