"Of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such abject horror and dread as the mystery of 'the dead who die.'""Through many days they toil; then comes a dayThey die not,—never having lived,—but cease;And round their narrow lips the mould falls close."Rossetti—"The Choice."
"Of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such abject horror and dread as the mystery of 'the dead who die.'"
"Through many days they toil; then comes a dayThey die not,—never having lived,—but cease;And round their narrow lips the mould falls close."Rossetti—"The Choice."
Itmay occur to those of my readers who have neglected to bear in mind the concluding words of Chapter VIII., that notwithstanding the remorse which I have pictured myself as suffering in Hades, I do not appear to have been altogether indifferent to the consolations of socialintercourse, and that existence in the Unseen, as represented in the pages of this diary, would seem to consist largely of conversation between the "spirits in prison." But because I have confined myself in my last three chapters to the relation of such facts in regard to the condition of others, as, either through observation or conversation, came to my knowledge in the course of my singular experiences, it must not be supposed that my own sufferings had in any way ceased. What those sufferings were as described by me in my sixth chapter, they continued to be during the whole of the time in which it was ordained that I should remain in Hades, and each of the conversations here recorded took place during that comparatively painless interval of which I have elsewhere spoken, and was separated from the conversation precedingor following it by a space of terrible pain. With which necessary reminder I pass on to tell of "the dead who die."
During the time of my wanderings in the spirit world, it happened that I had occasion to speak to one to whom I was personally unknown, but who had lived for many years in a country town in which I had myself once resided. Though comparatively guiltless, as I learned he was, of any criminal offence, he seemed to be incessantly consumed by a spirit of strange unrest, and I noticed that, even in his moments of reprieve, he appeared unable to free himself from some singularly disturbing thought. I was aware that he had at one time been intimate with a former neighbour of mine, and something in our conversation recalling this man's name to my memory I asked my companion if heknew "what had become of Henry Marshall?"
The words had scarcely fallen from my lips before there passed over his features a spasm of uncontrollable fear, and with a quick gasping cry, and covering his face with his hand, as if to shut out some ghastly vision, he exclaimed: "He is dead; he is dead—but why do you speak of him? Know you not that he is of the dead who die?"
"Of the dead who die?" I repeated wonderingly; "I do not understand you. Surely all who are dead must die?"
To this he made no answer, and seeing that he was strangely moved, I forbore to question him further, but by-and-by he became calmer and of his own accord continued the conversation.
"You asked me about Henry Marshall,"he said, "and I will tell you all I know about him; but first let me explain that, next to the love of money which has been my ruin, my sorest hindrance on earth was my unbelief and faithlessness; and that here in hell the punishment of the unbeliever is that he shall be consumed by the anguish of his own unbelief. Once when Imighthave believed, I would not, and now, though I would believe, I cannot, but am for ever torn by hideous apprehensions and doubts as to my own future and the future of those dear to me. Moreover, there are many things which, clear and plain as they may be to the faithful of heart and to the believing, are to my doubting eyes wrapt around in mystery and in gloom. Into these mysteries it has been ordained as part of my punishment that I shall ever desire to look, and of all these mysteries thereis not one which fills me with such abject horror and dread as the mystery of the dead who die."
"Of the dead who die?" I said again; "what do you mean by those strange words?"
"They are my words," he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh, "mine, mine; the words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have discovered. Listen, and I will tell you about it. When I first came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces of most of the dead whom I had known on earth, but some faces there were (Henry Marshall's was one of them) which I missed, and which from that time to this I have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked myself, 'sinceneither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has God some fearful fate in store for the sinner, which may one day fall upon me and mine, as it has already fallen upon them?' As I felt the shadow of that dark misgiving resting on my heart, I knew that for me another horror had arisen in hell, and that rest thenceforth there could be none until I had solved the mystery.
"And so it came about that all the moments of my release from suffering were spent in the search for those missing faces. Sometimes I took counsel with those who were in hell as I was, but they could teach me only that which I already knew; sometimes I asked the help of the souls in Paradise, but they told me nothing save that I must be no more faithless but believing. And then I sought to know of the angels where were those lost ones, butwith a look of sad and pitiful meaning, they passed on and left me unanswered. Ah! but they could not hide their secrets from me! No, no, I was not one of the credulous, nor was I to be put off with a frown, and I have found out their mystery, and you shall share it.
"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is made in the image of God, and is born with an immortal soul. But they did not tell us that just as neglected diseases can kill the body, so unchecked sin can kill the soul, and that we have it in our power to so deface the Divine Image that we become like unto, if not lower, than the beasts which perish, and die out at our deaths as they. But it is so, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom you asked was 'of the dead who die.'
"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad, and that you cannot credit such a statement. Well, perhaps I am mad—mad with the horror of my unbelief; but why should it not be as I say, I ask you? I have brooded over it all a thousand times, and am convinced that I have solved the riddle, and I will tell you why I think so.
"God is answerable to Himself for His actions, and when He made man, He made a man, and not a puppet—a being of infinite possibilities for good as well as for evil, and to whom it was given to choose for himself between the doing of the right or the wrong. But God knew that many of those whom He so made would sin away all memory of their Divine origin. God did notwillit so, for He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing, but Godforeknewit; and, fore-knowingthat, God owed it to Himself not to call a creature into being, the result of whose creation would be that creature's infinite and eternal misery. No, even the Omnipotent dared not perpetrate so wanton and wicked a deed as that, for God is the inexorable Judge who sits in judgment upon God; and hence it was that He decreed that those for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths like the brutes. Doesn't that seem to you a probable solution? and isn't it rational and feasible upon the face of it? Our life—such as it is—is from God, and may not God take His own again, and withdraw that life if He wish it? and could anything better happen to many people whom you and I know, than that they should be allowed to die out, and the very memory of them pass away for ever?"
I was convinced that he was mad—mad, as he had himself hinted, with the horror of his unbelief; but I was interested in what he had to say, and in his singular fancies.
"Tell me more of these missing faces, and of the 'dead who die,'" I answered. "Who are they, for the most part?—murderers and criminals of the most bestial nature?"
"Not always," he replied excitedly, "not always; and that is the reason why I am so fearful about my own future. Most of them are those who in their lifetime were regarded as belonging to the respectable classes, and who, so far from having come at any time within reach of the law, were looked upon as good citizens and estimable members of society. Shall I tell you what killed the immortal soul in them, and in me, and turned us into mere animated clay, fit only to die out like the beasts which perish?It was money—money, the love of which is often more deadening to the spiritual nature than actual vice or sin.
"I set out in life with one steadfast purpose before me—the purpose of devoting myself body and soul to business and to the making of money. It was not that I was indifferent to the attractions of a profession, and still less that I was wanting in appreciation of higher things, for I liked books and pictures and music. Sometimes, too, when I was listening to my sister's singing of Herrick's lines, 'To Anthea,' or to Ben Jonson's 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' I felt bitterly the littleness of my aims, and seemed to know, as I never knew at any other time, what it was to love a woman with that high, whole-hearted, and deathless devotion which brings redemption and ennoblement to the soul of the man to whomit comes. But I said to myself: 'Patience; first of all let me grow rich; let me make all the money I can get together, and then, when I have sufficient for all my requirements, I will forsake the money-making, and turn my thoughts to love and poetry and pictures; and through them, perhaps on to religion, for I knew even then that though love and poetry are not religion, that they yet serve, before a higher faith has been called into being, to keep the life of the soul alive, and to open up the way for holier things.
"And so I became what is called a good business man. I made business the motive of my life. I thought of nothing else, and read nothing but the papers, and these I only scanned for the purpose of observing the influence of political or other passing events upon the markets. At last I became rich.And with what result? That when I no longer needed business, I found I could live no longer without it; that it had become my life, and I its slave, and that I could awaken no lasting interest in anything which did not pertain to the making of money. It is true that I had at that time a wife and children (the former of whom I had married chiefly for her fortune), and was not without a certain half-selfish love for them as part and parcel of myself; that I possessed a handsome house and gardens in which I took pride as being of my own acquirement; and that I went into society with enjoyment; and found a certain pompous pleasure in extending my patronage to Sunday-schools, bazaars and Young Men's Christian Associations. But where my treasure was, there my heart was also, and at heart I was a business man, and nothing more. I did not knowmyself then as I do now, and so far from being in any way dissatisfied, I had no more suspicion that I was other than one of the most enviable of men, than has the grinning savage with his handful of beads. But I know now the thing I am, and what I have missed, and I tell you that the most sorely swindled simpleton in existence is the man whose business capability is so keen, that though he has never been bested in a bargain, he has bartered away his own happiness for a bauble, and (so skilful a schemer to defraud us is old Satan) has become bankrupt of all that makes life worth the living, in order that he may boast a heavy balance at his banker's!
"Yes, I was a good business man—a smart and shrewd business man, as business men go—and I know much of such men and of their transactions; and I tell you that, sincethe days of Judas Iscariot, the money-lover and grubber who sold his God for thirty pieces of silver, as thousands are selling their infinite souls this day, there have been no more soulless and selfish creatures upon God's earth, than the men who have made what should be a means to an end an end in itself, and who liveforbusiness, instead ofbyit.
"They go to church, many of them, on Sundays, and subscribe liberally to coal clubs and soup kitchens, thinking, poor fools! to offer such acts as those as a set-off to God for the sordid self-seeking which has been the secret of their success in their commercial calling; never suspecting that in their respectable selfishness and sordidness of spirit, they are lower in the scale of being and farther from the kingdom of heaven than is the lurking prostitute shivering at thestreet corner, or the drunken sot reeling home after a night's debauch.
"That they must die out at their deaths, as do the beasts, I am convinced, for what can God find for such men to do in heaven?—men to whom the earth, its prototype, is nothing but a gigantic shop, and to whom Music, Art, and Song are but as dead letters and foolishness; men who are susceptible to no emotion save the greed for gain; and who have let the infinite soul within them pine away and perish for the want of the wherewithal to keep that soul alive.
"And I, I am one of them, and am of the dead who die! I have bartered away love and life and happiness for such Dead Sea fruit as this; I who once was young, and not altogether, as I now am, a soulless creature of clay! For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful facesand music set stirring always some strong emotion within me, in which it seemed that I saw hidden away in a crystal cell in the depths of my own strange heart, the shining form of a white-robed Soul-maiden, who cried out to me, 'Ah! cannot you make your life as pure and beautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may set me free?'
"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up body and soul to the greed for gain. And often in the hour when, tempted by an evil thought, I turned to do some shameful or selfish action, I seemed to see the white arms of the Soul-maiden uplifted in piteous entreaty to heaven, until at last the time came when her voice was silent, and when I knew that I had thrust her down and down into a darkness whence she would never again come forth!
"And now nor picture, nor poem, nor music moves me more, for the soul of me is dead!—is dead! and I have become like unto the beasts that perish, and know not that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as the dead who die!"
So saying, he burst into a shriek of insane and unearthly laughter, and foaming at the mouth like a madman, turned from me, and fled gibbering into the night.
I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST.
"Youbelieve probably in God, in Christ, and in Immortality, and you look with joy and gladness to the life beyond the grave. Probably, too, you have suffered, as we all have at some time, from bodily pain, mental affliction or bereavement, until your heart has been broken and crushed, and you have felt that you could bear your burden no longer were it not for the consolation that sorrow can last no longer than life, and that the nextworld will set this world right. But have you never asked yourself, 'How if it shouldnotbe so after all? How if I should open my eyes in the next world to find again all the old sorrows, the old heart-burnings, and the thousand and one trivialities which have made this world so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable?' Have you never considered that the mere fact of the existence of these sorrows in this world—the only one of which you know anything—is in itself a reason why it is likely that such sorrows, or similar ones, should exist in the world of which you know nothing? And have you never recognised that your failures have been the life-element of your successes, and that, since failure is the law of progress, an existence in which all your endeavours were successful would probably become monotonous and tame?"
The above is an extract from a letter (it lies on the desk before me) from one whom I had known in my early boyhood, and who had been for many years my constant companion and friend. Had she continued to be my companion it is possible that my story might have been a different one, but she went to live in America some months before I was twenty, and I never saw her again until the day that she and I stood face to face in the spirit-world—I in hell and she in heaven.
After we had exchanged greetings, and each had told the other what was necessary to be known of the past, the conversation turned upon the subjects which we had so often discussed in our letters. "Tell me," I said, "now that you really find yourself in heaven, if you are in every way peacefully and perfectly happy."
"One moment, before I give you an answer," she replied. "You are not altogether wrong in calling this heaven, although it is little more than the ante-chamber between earth and heaven. It is my heaven at present, but it will not be my heaven always, any more than it will be always your hell, and although it is heaven, it is nottheheaven. Of that neither you nor I can form any shadowy conception. Now for your question. There is only one thing which troubles me, and that is ignorance. I had always thought that in the spirit-world one would know everything. I don't mean that I expected to find myself omniscient, but I did think that I should know all one would wish to know. I need hardly tell you I was wrong. With whatever knowledge we have acquired and with whatever intellectual ability wehave developed up to the point of our leaving the earth-world, with that, and with no more, do we make our first start in the spirit realm. I do think our capability of intuitionally apprehending truth is in some way intensified by the transition which you speak of as death: but of intellectual change there is absolutely none; and there are things relating to the after-life, as well as to the earthly one, concerning which (never having studied them whilst I was in the body) I am far more ignorant than are many dwellers under the sun."
"That I can well believe," I replied; "but putting aside the fact that you are troubled sometimes by a consciousness of ignorance, tell me if in other respects you are happy."
"No good can come to one of being in a place where everything is too easy," sheanswered, "and if heaven were the abode of perfect happiness—this heaven, I mean—I think we should find it somewhat wearisome. When I was on earth I longed for heaven,not that I might be delivered from sorrow, but from sinfulness; and I think I may say that I am as happy here as my failures will let me be."
"Your failures!" I exclaimed, wonderingly, "your failures!"
"Yes," she said, "my failures. On earth failure is, as you know, the law of progress, and even here progress is only achieved through that which is, after all, in some degree a non-success. I don't quite know how to make my meaning clear to you, but perhaps we can't do better than look back to the old earth-life for an illustration. That earth-life—the life which we lead on earth, I mean—is, as you know, poor, pitiableand paltry; we feel it so, we cannot but feel it so, when it is viewed in the lofty light of our possibilities. Each morning finds us beginning the world afresh, and with the high hope that at last the time has come when we shall be true to ourselves and to our aspirations, that at last we shall veritably and indeed do some lasting work for God and for our fellow-creatures. And each evening! ah! each evening! is it not ever the same sad story, ever the same old bitter experience? You have spoken of it yourself in those verses you sent me so many years ago:
"'Each morning hails a new Endeavour's birth,Each evening weeps its pitiful corpse before.'
"Hardly has the freshness faded out of the morning air before the world spirit is at our side again; she is whispering inour ear; her white wooing arms are around us; her warm breath is on our cheek; there is a brief,—how brief and feeble!—attempt at resistance, and then, ah! then, we are broken and undone. And often as, with lips hot and dry, with cheeks fevered and flushed, we look back to that serene-souled self, which but a few short hours ago stood in rapt adoration under the silence of a midnight sky, and held high communion with its Creator, we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that we and it are one and the same being. Yet, in spite of the paltriness of the earth-life, in spite of the vice, and the shame, there is one element in the strife which lends dignity even to our very failures, for in our battling against the ever-present evil, and in our struggle towards the ever-unattained good, we come within sight of a possibility, higher,perhaps, than that of which even angels can conceive. Thesin and the shame are after all but human; the effort and determination to overcome them are Divine.
"Well, without some sense of difficulty to be overcome, some sense even of comparative failure, this effort and this determination could never be; and in heaven, the place of infinite progress and possibilities, there is a certain Divine discontent which I know not how to explain better to you than by calling it the heavenly counterpart of this earthly effort.
"But now tell me about yourself," she said, after a moment's pause, "for I can see that you have been through sore suffering since you came here."
Through sore suffering I had indeed been, and had already grown old in hell, but the lines which she had quoted from my boyishverses, and the words she had said about the "divine discontent" of heaven, had set stirring some hidden spring in my memory, and at the time she spoke I was thinking of what Robert Louis Stevenson has said about "that little beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned—the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be." She must have known what was in my thoughts, for, taking my hand in her own, she repeated some verses which she had written and sent to me on that Easter morning (a morning which must ever shine out white and fair in my memory) when she and I had knelt side by side after confirmation to take our first communion. I remember that she called them "This Only," and had headed them with the words, "Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?"
"O feeble lips that lapse from fervent prayer,To smile at sin, and lightly laugh at shame,That in the chamber loud your love declare,And in the world scarce dare to breathe His name,Whence wouldyecall Him Lord?"O changeful soul! now mounting like thin fire,Skyward and Godward; now like thing of night,Low-grovelling, smirched, and mid foul mud and mireTrailing white pinions given for starry flight,Darestthoucall Him Lord?"O morning's hope! O evening's dull despair!O lofty purpose! puny, paltry deed!O high resolve! heart big with longings fair!O loveless life that bears nor flower nor seed!Dareyeto call Him Lord?"Yea, I would call Him Lord, and all the moreFor this my sin, else were I sore undone;Say, who should seek Him, if not I? He woreThis fleshy garb, yet in Him sin was none,So may I call Him Lord."No heaven I ask, no crystal-shining shore,Nor realm of flowers—this only would I pray,That mid all sinnings, stumblings sad and sore,I still may cling to Thee, dear Lord, alway,And still may call Thee Lord."
She ended, and as her voice died away into a whisper sweet and low as the restful ripple of the rain, I hid my head between my hands and sobbed aloud, for something there was in the words and in her way of repeating them, which carried me back in thought to that vanished season of Youth and Hope when pictures and poetry, flowers and music, as well as sunrise, sunset, and the play of evening light upon the sea, had seemed but as the visible embodiment of my own thoughts, and were indeed to me as a part of my aspiration towards a loftier, lovelier life.
And then I remembered what manner of man I was, and as the shadow-horror of my sin arose spectre-like between myself and my distant childhood, I saw that "little brother," the child that I once had been, shrink back and back with sad reproachfuleyes, until with a sudden cry of anguish and despair he turned from me, and fled into the night.
A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST.
"Doyou see that young man with the dark, delicate features?" she continued, giving an unexpected turn to the conversation. "I mean the one with the brown eyes that have so strange a look in them. He is a poet, and when he was on earth he was blind, but his songs were sad as the sighing of the wind in the pine trees, and sweet with sound, and perfume, and the love of woman. He and I were then, as now, the most devoted of friends, and it was our custom to spend one evening at least in each week together. Sometimeswe talked of places or of pictures (in both of which, notwithstanding his blindness, he took a singular interest), sometimes of poetry or flowers. Not seldom he would sketch out for me the plot of some story he was writing, and often I would read aloud while he sat listening with tranquil face and closed eyes in his accustomed place by the fireside. I remember that on one occasion the piece which we thus read together was Jean Paul's Dream of the Dead Christ saying there is no God, and that when next I saw my poet-friend, he told me that after I had left him, he had fallen asleep, and dreamed a dream which he spoke of as 'the most impudent piece of plagiaristic imitation which ever was perpetrated,' and which he called his 'Dream of Eternal Rest.'
"'As I sat here in the darkness which has now become to me like a house of which Iam the only tenant,' he said, 'I fell asleep and dreamed that I saw my life lying behind me like the line of phosphorescent light which marks the track of a fallen star—a line traced in darkness, and which arising in darkness dies away into darkness again; and in my dream an angel appeared unto me, and, laying his hand upon my shoulder, said, "Thou who probest the mysteries of life, and peerest into the time which is to be, arise, come with me, and I will show thee something of that which thou seekest." So saying, he stretched forth his hand, which I clasped, and we set forth on our infinite journey.
"'What abysmal realms of space we passed I know not, for I was as one bewildered by the swiftness of our flight and by the rushing beat of the angel's pinions. I remember that ever and anon there swamup in the darkness a gleam of light that was at first no bigger than a single star, but which, as I looked, loomed out ever larger and larger, and each moment seemed to double in magnitude, until I trembled lest it should break the bounds of the heavens; but even as I trembled, it swept whirling by with a sound like that of infinite thunders, and, receding again, lessened before my eyes as visibly as it had increased, and finally dwindling to a mere point of light, died away into darkness. Ere long, however, there appeared a flush in the distant east, and as we drew nearer I saw that, below me and afar, there lay a land in which the sun shone with such exceeding splendour, that the atmosphere, light-filled and luminous unto sparkling, was in colour like unto the colour of a rainbow. And I saw also that the rays neither dazzled nor scorched, as do the raysof the earthly sun. And far as the eye could reach stretched shining hills, seen through soft vistas of purple and gold, and sunny meadows wherein bloomed flowers beautiful as the blush of a maiden, and pure as an angel's thought. And winding in and out among the meadows ran many a rippling river; and fountains also I saw, the waters of which, as they rose and fell scintillating like a shower of starbeams or spray of diamonds, discoursed music sweeter than the sighing of Æolian harps. Then as I looked yet closer, I saw, wandering hand in hand among the meadows, many white-clad figures, whereat my soul wept for gladness; and I turned to the angel saying, "Surely this is that Heaven whereof we read and wherein I would rest for ever? for I am sore wearied with the toil and the labour of earth." But he answered me, "Mortal, thouknowest not what thou askest. Lift up thine eyes, and see if thou beholdest aught else."
"'And I looked to the right hand and to the left, yet saw I only the sunny meadows and rivers of the land of flowers, and the blue distance of the bordering hills. Then I turned me round and gazed whence we came, but could nothing discern save remote plains of darkness, athwart the gloom of which I saw flash ever and anon (as one sees flash the eyes of a beast at midnight) the glimmer of a moving world. Then the angel stretched forth his hand, pointing me yet again to the distant east, and far away beyond the beauteous realm I beheld a vast plain of desolation, and beyond that a land whereof I could nothing see, save that a darkness, as of a twilight in which there is no moon, brooded above it like a cloud.
"'Whereat a shuddering horror seized me,so that I could look no more, and turning to the angel, I said, "Alas! lieth the region of endless night so nigh unto the realm of eternal day?" But he answered me sternly, "Mortal, thou speakest that of which thou art ignorant. Come, let us go thither, that thou mayest see, and seeing, learn." And I cast a longing look upon the beauteous land, and, lo! on the faces of those who walked therein, I saw a shadow as of something incomplete—not discontent, neither sorrow nor care, but the look as of an unfulfilled aspiration; but, even as I gazed, the angel smote the air with eagle pinion, and I beheld no more until we came nigh unto our journey's end. Then, every stroke of his wing bringing us nearer, he turned to me, once again bidding me "See, and seeing, learn," but at my heart lay such a nameless terror that I was as one spell-bound, anddurst not look upon his face. And with trembling voice I made answer, "Suffer me rather to depart, I pray thee! for I would not that mine eyes should behold the horrors whereof I have heard, and my soul longeth to return to the land of flowers wherein they toil not, neither sorrow, and where I shall cease from labour and be at rest."
"'But for the third time he bade me "See, and seeing, learn;" and as I looked upon the land which lay below me, I saw—instead of the realm of endless night—a shining city of such unimaginable beauty, that my heart sank within me in breathless awe. Then the angel spread forth his wings still and motionless, and we reposed on the azure air as a planet floats upon the purple bosom of night; and though neither sun nor moon was set in the peaceful heaven, I saw that there rested overthe city the soft splendour as of a world of far-off stars. There was but one gate, and over that was written in letters of light, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," at which I marvelled exceedingly; and inside the gate walked beings of such divine dignity and soul beauty that I could have knelt worshipping before them, were it not that they too were of human form and feature; and I saw that all were earnestly but unhastily engaged in some manner of work, at which they toiled serenely. And on every forehead was set the seal of a high purpose, and over the city there rested the calm of an immeasurable peace. Then silently upstole in the sky the dawnings of a great light, deep and wide as the infinite of Heaven, and athwart the glory thereof there spread the fore-splendours as of the approach of anAwful Presence.
"'And around me fell a darkness like unto midnight, and, turning to me yet again the angel said, "Mortal, thou mayest behold no more. Return to thy home and to thy labour, never more to murmur or complain, and when thou longest after the repose of the world to come, know for a surety that there is no rest either in earth or in heaven, save in the fulfilment of the work which God would have thee to do;" and so saying, he too passed away into the darkness, and—I awoke.'"
"That is a singular dream," I said, "although it was scarcely necessary to have mentioned that your friend had been making a study of Jean Paul. But I suppose there reallyiswork to do in Heaven?"
"It is very much as it is on earth in that respect," she answered, "excepting that here one loves one's work, and, althoughhere too, there are alternate periods of labour and repose, it would be difficult for some of us to say which is the sweeter. I could tell you whichIlove the more, but then all our work is of our Father's ordering, and He knows just what is best for each of us. Some who come here (never mind my smile! I was thinking of the 'tired woman' who was 'going to do nothing for ever and ever') have to take a very long holiday before they are allowed to put hand to anything; and others there are whose first task it is to learn those lessons which, through unfavourable circumstances or the accidents of their birth, it was hardly to be expected they could have learned on earth. There are some of the poorest of the poor in East London, among whom by our Father's direction I am now working, who I believe have had scarcely more opportunityof knowing what Christianity means to them than have the very heathen. Some, when they come here, have to start from the beginning, so you can believe that for you who can write, as well as for those who can preach, there is every opportunity for the exercise of God's gifts—only remember!" she added sadly, but with a smile, "that the popular preacher of earth, be he poet or parson, is not always the man who can do most good in heaven, for here one is expected to practise as well as to preach."
"So you are entrusted with the task of ministering to certain of the poor in East London?" I said; "I had no idea that our Father permitted those who had once left the world to return to it again."
"Half of our work, and more, is on earth," she made answer. "It was to tell you of that that I pointed out my poet-friend,the dreamer of dreams, to you. Himself a poet, he was the son of a poet, who had lived to see all else he loved on earth pass away before him; and when this boy, his darling hope and only companion, was also taken, the old man was left lonely, desolate and infirm. But not so lonely as one might imagine, for his boy seldom leaves him, and the work which God has set apart for the poet-son, and which is to him the resting-work of heaven, is to be with his father in all sorrow, to minister to him in all pain, and to be with him in every wakeful or weary moment, his unseen comforter and friend."
I was interested in what she related, for I remembered that when I was sitting one evening with the poet-father, he had told me that, for all his loneliness, he was never alone. "No, I am never lonely," he said,"although you will perhaps think what I am going to tell you is but an old mans' fancy. A night or two after my dear boy died, I was thinking of my dead youth, and of my dead wife, of my dead friends and my dead children, until it seemed to me as if I, too, ought long since to have been buried, for I was lingering on (like a spectral moon when the sun is high) the living ghost of a vanished past. The generation had departed which I knew, and the one which was growing up around me was too busy listening to the songs of its own singers to give ear to mine. As the thought of my loneliness, my loveless life, and my boy's newly-made grave, away out in the dreary cemetery, came over me, I did that which was cowardly and faithless, and dropped my head upon my hands and wept. Then it was that there came a touch upon my arm,and a voice in my ear, and though I knew none else was in the room, I was not afraid, but answered without looking up: 'Who is it?'
"'It is only I, dear father,' the voice replied, 'only your boy. You must not be unhappy about me, for though I have greatly sinned, yet I have been greatly forgiven, and am perfectly, peacefully happy.'
"My son then went on to tell me," the old man continued, "that for me there was to be no more loneliness, for that in all my sleepless nights and sorrowful days, he would be with me ever and always, my constant companion and comforter, until for me too the time shall come when,
"'Midnight waking, twilight weeping, heavy noontide—all are done.'"
"That is a very touching incident," said my friend, when I had related this conversation to her. "If all earth-dwellers were as spiritually-minded as yonder poet's poet-father, and were as capable of apprehending how real a thing spiritual companionship may be, our dead would soon cease to be called our 'lost ones,' and death would no longer be spoken of as the 'great parting.' Death gives us more friends than he takes from us, and often brings us nearer to those who have gone before, than we were during their lifetime. Though it is nineteen hundred years since our Master, Christ, trod the earth a visible Presence, yet He is more to the world to-day, and nearer to each separate soul in it, than ever He was to the men and women who touched garments with Him when He walked the fields of Palestine.Thensuch as sought His aidhad often to wait His coming in weariness and weakness of soul, whilst not seldom it happened that they could not obtain access to him 'because of the throng,' and we read even of one who was fain to climb a tree to catch a glimpse of Him in passing.NowHe stands by each of us, waiting and willing to hear.Thenthey had to go to Him;nowHe comes to us, and is with us always and in every place. I tell you that Jesus Christ is as real a Presence to-day in the streets of London or Boston, as He was in the homes of Nazareth or Jerusalem. He is as near to us now as He was to Martha and to Mary, and is as willing to help and hear you or me, as He was to heal the sick, or to pardon the dying thief;" and then in a low, sweet voice she repeated the following lines from Whittier's poem, "Our Master":—
"But warm, sweet, tender, even yetA present help is He;And faith has still its Olivet,And love its Galilee."The healing of His seamless dressIs by our beds of pain;We touch Him in life's throng and press,And we are whole again."Through Him the first fond prayers are said,Our lips of childhood frame,The last low whispers of our deadAre burdened with His name."
"The thought that the 'last low whispers' of the loved ones who have left us were 'burdened' with the Name which we first learned to lisp at our mother's knee is a very tender and beautiful one," she said reverently, after a moment's silence. "We seem to see our own fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers, linked to ourselves, and through us to our children and our children's children, until all the generationsof the world—past, present, and future—become as one family in a great bond of fellowship, even as all the joy and sorrow of humanity find one common home in the heart of the Lord Christ who loves us."
"I am not sure that I realize this love of His of which you speak," I said sadly. "It is so vague and vast that I become lost, and feel that I have no personal hold upon it. How can He love the whole world, and yet love each separate individual in it with an affection as distinct as that which I feel for my wife and children?"
"You cannot realize it as existing in yourself," she made answer, "although even you love all your children, and yet love each one of them with a distinct and personal love; but then you cannot order the succession of the seasons, or stay a planet upon its course, and you might just as well try tomeasure God's power by your power, as try to apprehend the love which passeth understanding by likening it to your own. But you will know what Christ is to us one day."
"Tell me more of Him," I whispered eagerly; "tell me more of Him. Did you love Him as earnestly and believe in Him as trustfully when you were on earth as you do now?"
"Not always," she answered sadly, "not always (and, oh! it was such 'cold comfort'—the talk of the Pantheists and the Deists to whom I had gone), but I came at last to see that the Cross of Christ is humanity's only hope. I came, too, to think that I could better bear to disbelieve in a God at all than to disbelieve in the Saviour. 'By Atheism,' I said to myself, 'I lose only a Deity of whom (excepting for the gospel-revelation)I know practically nothing, but in losing Christ I lose all—this world's hope as well as the next's.' There is not a creed which has been offered us during the last eighteen hundred years as a substitute for faith in the Saviour which does not take the very basis of its being from Christianity."
"Yes," I said; "but many people will tell you that Christianity is nothing more than a skilfully-framed fable, cunningly devised to adapt itself to our human needs."
"Christ was, and Christianity was before humanity or its needs came into being," she made answer; "and the sacrifice of the Cross was no afterthought given as a concession to our human requirements. On the contrary, our human requirements were given us that we, through them, might come by way of Calvary to the feet of Christ; and it is because it has been God's purposefrom all eternity to save the sinner by the sacrifice of Himself that you and I feel our need of a Saviour."
"Yes," I said, "I do indeed feel that whatever help comes to me must be something outside myself, and that no sorrowing of mine can atone for the past; but I feel also that I, and I only, am responsible for what I have done, and that to lay that responsibility upon another is utterly inadequate to satisfy even my limited sense of justice—besides which I never can and never will believe in the possibility of the innocent being allowed to suffer for the guilty."
"But the innocent do suffer for the guilty," she said, "even in the very earth-world, by the laws of which you wish to judge the heavenly one. You profess yourself willing to abide by the evidence of yoursenses, and if you will only look back upon the earth-life which you have left, you will see that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and that the innocent are suffering for the guilty every day, and that God, for some good reason of His own, allows it to be so. As for what you say about your sense of justice, I agree with you that if a man run into your debt—run into your debt by wilful and wicked courses—he must be held answerable for the repayment of the money. But supposing one comes forward who loves him, and who has watched his sinnings with sorrow, and says, 'I will pay for my friend that which he cannot pay for himself,' would not your sense of justice be satisfied?"
"Even then the moral obligation remains," I objected.
"Yes, but that obligation has been transferred,"she said, "although as a matter of fact, it is against God rather than against man, that our blackest sins are committed. But, independently of that side of the question, Christ has taken the consequences of your sin, and of the wrong you did Dorothy—the consequences to her, as well as to yourself—upon Himself, and has suffered for you and for her in His own person, and if He be willing to forgive, then are you forgiven indeed!
"That reconciliation by the Saviour should at any time have been to me an intellectual stumbling-block is now beyond my comprehension," she continued earnestly. "In its very adaptability to our human needs, Christianity bears the stamp of its divine origin. Left to himself, the very best of us must feel his inability either to atone for the evil he has already done, or to withstandthe temptations which yet await him in the future, and though he struggle right manfully to clamber out of the gulf into which he has fallen, the dead-weight of his sins, which he carries and must carry chained log-like about him, is ever the heaviest clog to drag him back. But Christianity does more for a man than merely forgive him his debts. It sets the bankrupt upon his legs again, a solvent man and sane, with a clean bill of health, and with a fresh start in life. It isthereligion of Hope, for none is too sinful for the Saviour to save, and to the man who brings his sins, as well as his inability to resist his sins, to the feet of Christ, there is indeed a present Help and Hope in all his troubles! There is much—very much—in Christianity that I cannot and do not pretend to understand, but I can understand enough to make me very lovingand very trustful. The only mystery which still sometimes troubles me is that most terrible of all mysteries—the mystery of human suffering. But even that I am content to leave, for is not our God Himself a suffering God? and who that witnessed the sufferings of Jesus Christ (and what sufferings were ever like to His?) could have foreseen that the cruel Cross whereon He hung should hereafter be the finger-post to point the way to heaven? or that beneath His cry of agony in the garden, God heard the triumph-song of a ransomed world?"
HOPE.
Atlast there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay so heavily upon me, that I felt I could bear it no longer, and that if succour there came none, the very soul of me must wither away and die. It was not that I wanted to evade the punishment of my crime, for I was willing and wished to undergo it to the uttermost. No, that which was so terrible to me was the thought that not all the sufferings of eternity could avail to wipe away theawful stain upon my spirit, or to undo the evil which I had brought upon the woman I had ruined. Of myself and of my future, save for the continual crying-out of my soul after its lost purity, I scarcely cared now to think. It was of Dorothy that my heart was full; it was for Dorothy that I never ceased to sorrow, to lament, and—sinner, though I was—to pray. I saw then the inevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her pictured forth in all their horror. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her, "not knowing where to turn for refuge from swiftly-advancing shame, and understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall," stealing stealthilyforth at dusk to hide herself from her fellow-creatures.
I saw her, when the secret of her shame could no longer be concealed, recoiling in mute terror from the glance of coarse admiration on the faces of sensual men, or shrinking in quivering agony from the look of curious scorn in the eyes of maids and mothers, who drew aside their skirts as she passed them, as if fearful of being contaminated by her touch. And then—driven out from their midst by the very Christian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand to save her—I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into brazen indifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy and sin.
Nor did the vision pass from me until, out of that seething vortex of lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of an immortalsoul which was lost for ever, crying out unto God and His Christ for judgment upon the seducer!
As these hideous spectres of the past arose again before me, I fell to the ground, and shrieked out under the burden of my sin, as only he can shriek who is torn by hell-torture and despair. But even as I shrieked, I felt that burden lifted and borne away from me, and then I saw, as in a vision, One kneeling in prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could bear the burden of my sin no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not only my sin, but the sins of the whole world, and that He stooped of His own accord to receive them. And as I looked upon the Divine dignity of that agonized form—forsaken of His Father that we might never be forsaken, and boweddown under a burden, compared to which, all the horrors of hell were but as the passing phantom of a pain—I saw great beads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung from Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from human lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find myself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of the wings of hope—the hope which I had deemed dead to me for ever.
Couldit be—O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might not be too late?—that there was indeed One who could make my sin as though it had never been?—who of His great love for Dorothy and for me, would bear it and its consequences as His own burden? and who by the cleansing power of the blood which He had shed upon the cross, could wash her souland mine whiter than the whiteness of snow?
But to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonized thought: "How if there be no Christ?" leapt out at me, like the darkness which looms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell gat hold on me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my ear: "And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?"
I reeled at that cry, and the darkness seemed once more to close in around. A horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed like vermin in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending fiends upon my face; a hundred hungry hands laid hold on me, and strove to drag me down and down as to a bottomless pit; but with a great cry to God, Iflung the foul things from me; and battling, beating, like a drowning man for breath, I fell at the feet of a woman, white-veiled, and clad in robes like the morning, whose hand it was that had plucked me from the abyss in which I lay.
HEAVEN.
Itseemed to me then that I fell into a sleep, deep, and sweet, and restful, in which I dreamt that I was a child lying upon the bosom of God. I remember that, as I lay, I stirred in my slumber, and, raising myself, chanced in opening my eyes to look below, but that with a cry of terror I turned and clung like a frighted babe to my Father's breast,—for beneath me and afar, there yet yawned the mouth of hell, from which, ever and anon, rolled dense clouds of hot and hissing smoke, that seemedto twist and writhe like souls in agony, and which in colour were like unto the colour of blood.
And I thought that, seeing my fear, my Father stooped to me as a mother stoops to comfort her frightened babe, and that as He stooped I beheld His face, and knew it for the face of the Lord Jesus, and that He bade me be of good cheer, "for underneath thee are the everlasting arms."
As He so spake I awoke, and saw that she whose hand had plucked me out of the abyss of horror into which I had fallen, yet knelt beside me in tender ministry and prayer, and that she was singing a hymn softly to herself whereof I heard only a verse:—
"I know not where His islands liftTheir fronded palms in air;I only know I cannot driftBeyond His love and care."
She ceased, and I arose, but ere I had time to question her, I was conscious of a sudden stillness, like the hush which follows benediction after prayer. "Don't you hear it?" she whispered eagerly, as with upraised hand enjoining silence, she turned her head as if to catch some far-off murmur, "Don't you hear it? They are praying for you at home: kneel down!" And as her words died away, there seemed to float towards me the sound of air-borne music that stayed for one moment to fold me round with the sweet consolations of loving companionship and of peace, and in the next stole swiftly and softly away as if journeying onward and upward to the throne of God.
And with a great cry of anguish I fell to my knees and prayed: "O Lord Christ! I am foul and selfish and sinful! I do notknow that I love Thee! I do not know that I have repented of my sins even! I only know that I cannot do the things I would do, and that I can never undo the evil I have done. But I come to Thee, Lord Jesus, I come to Thee as Thou biddest me. Send me not away, O Saviour of sinners. Amen."
As I ended, it seemed that my companion turned to leave me, and I fell to sobbing and sorrowing, until at last for very anguish I could sob no more. But soon I heard again her returning footsteps, and, looking up, I saw One who stood beside her, thorn-crowned, and clad in robes of white.His features were the features of a man, but His face was the face of God!
And as I looked upon that face, I shrank back dazed and breathless andblinded;—shrank back with a cry like the cry of one smitten of the lightning; for beneath the wide white brow there shone out eyes, before the awful purity of which my sin-stained soul seemed to scorch and shrivel like a scroll in a furnace. But as I lay, lo! there came a tender touch upon my head, and a voice in my ear that whispered, "Son."
And as the word died away into a silence like the hallowed hush of listening angels, and I stretched forth my arms with a cry of unutterable longing and love, I saw that He held one by the hand—even she who had plucked me out of the abyss into which I had fallen—and I saw that she was no longer veiled. It was Dorothy—Dorothy whom He had of His infinite love sought out and saved from the shame to which my sin had consigned her, and whomHe had sent to succour me, that so He might set upon my soul the seal of His pardon and of His peace. And to Him be the praise. Amen.
THE END.