{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_72971/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_72971","id":"gutenberg_72971","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72971","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Christian fiction","Future life -- Fiction","Heaven -- Fiction","Hell -- Fiction"],"text":"A DEAD MAN'S DIARY.\n\n\n\n\n  A DEAD MAN'S DIARY\n\n\n\n  Written after his Decease.\n\n  WITH A PREFACE BY\n\n  G.T. BETTANY, M.A.\n\n  \"I sent my Soul through the Invisible,\n  Some letter of that After Life to spell:\n    And by-and-by my Soul return'd to me,\n  And answered, 'I myself am Heav'n and Hell.'\"\n\n  Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m.\n  (_Fitzgerald's Translation._)\n\n  WARD, LOCK AND CO.,\n\n  LONDON, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.\n\n  1890.\n\n  (_All rights reserved._)\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe literature purporting to describe the state of mankind after death,\nwhether as Hades, Intermediate State, Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven, has\nmostly erred in the direction of too great detail. On the one hand,\nwe have had those who with Swedenborg declare \"that after death a man\nis so little changed that he even does not know but he is living in\nthe present world; that the resemblances between the two worlds are so\ngreat, that in the spiritual world there are cities, with palaces and\nhouses, and also writings and books, employments and merchandises.\"\nOn the other hand, we have the picture drawn by the writer of \"Letters\nfrom Hell,\" of imaginary houses and scenes, of seeming actions, of\nsemblances of men compelled to appear to be doing after death the\nvery things they did in life, despair all the while gnawing at their\nhearts. Archdeacon Farrar, in Chapter IV. of his \"Mercy and Judgment,\"\nhas given a varied and horrifying series of extracts from ancient\nand modern divines describing their detailed conceptions about the\nfuture of the wicked. As to the future of the beatified, no one\nneeds reminding of the multitude of word-pictures, often mutually\ncontradictory, in which their existence has been depicted.\n\nThus we see that the human mind cannot choose but speculate in some\nfashion on the future state, while no man has the right to claim\nthat he had said the last word on the subject. It may therefore be\nconfidently anticipated that the remarkable narrative here presented,\nof which considerable portions have already appeared, serially, in the\nEnglish edition of \"Lippincott's Monthly Magazine,\" will find a very\nlarge number of interested readers, who will be glad to peruse it in\nthe connected and completed form, in which it is best calculated to\nexpress the author's full meaning and experiences. It will not by its\nlength or excess of detail overburden the reader, nor does it claim\nto be more than a narrative of experience which may be left to convey\nits own lessons. The writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, is one\nwhose essays and stories have been received with high appreciation on\nboth sides of the Atlantic. His narrative is put forth as his actual\nexperience during a lengthened absence from the body, during which\nhe was believed to be dead. Of course no other living person can\nconfirm or deny his experiences, though many may deem them incredible,\nfictitious, or the imaginings or visions of a trancelike state. I do\nnot pretend to decide to what category they belong, nor do I feel\ncalled upon to condemn or approve any of the assertions or opinions\nthus put forward. If any one holds theological convictions which appear\nto conflict with them, I would remark that the publishers, in letting\nthe \"Dead Man\" speak for himself, do not hold themselves responsible\nfor his opinions, merely having assured themselves of the serious\nspirit in which they are narrated.\n\nThe record of these experiences being given in the form of a diary, the\nwriter has not felt bound to tell his story with the simple directness\nwhich is expected in a work of fiction, but has noted down in his\nnarrative, as is the manner of diarists, the thoughts which the record\nof his experiences have aroused. Though these occasional digressions\nhave no immediate bearing upon the facts recorded, they will, I think,\nbe found to contain some interesting reading, nor do they, in my\nopinion, interfere seriously with the completeness of the narrative as\nan artistic whole.\n\nIn conclusion, I would add that the writer only desires that his\nexperiences may be read in a candid spirit, and that as no man can\nprove him to be wrong who has not actually entered the world of\nspirits, those who reject his narrative will endeavour to maintain\nan attitude of suspended judgment, until they are in a position to\njudge for themselves. For myself, I can but say that the moral of the\nauthor's teaching is worthy of the most serious attention, and if put\ninto practice there can be no question that it would conduce greatly to\nthe happiness of mankind.\n\n  G.T. Bettany.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                       PAGE\n\n  PREFACE                                                5\n\n\n  CHAPTER I.\n\n  EXPLAINS MY TITLE                                     13\n\n\n  CHAPTER II.\n\n  DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT                  19\n\n\n  CHAPTER III.\n\n  DEALS WITH LIFE AND THE LUST OF IT, BUT HAS\n  NO DIRECT BEARING ON MY STORY                         26\n\n\n  CHAPTER IV.\n\n  I DIE                                                 46\n\n\n  CHAPTER V.\n\n  IS OF AN EXPLANATORY NATURE ONLY                      58\n\n\n  CHAPTER VI.\n\n  TELLS OF MY FIRST AWFUL AWAKENING IN HELL,\n  AND OF THE SHAMEFUL SIN WHICH BROUGHT\n  ME THITHER                                            67\n\n\n  CHAPTER VII.\n\n  SHOWS THE FITNESS OF MY PUNISHMENT                    87\n\n\n  CHAPTER VIII.\n\n  I MAKE AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY IN HELL, AND\n  MEET WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE                         94\n\n\n  CHAPTER IX.\n\n  I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM\n  FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN THE NATURE\n  OF A SERMON                                          113\n\n\n  CHAPTER X.\n\n  A LOVE-STORY IN HELL                                 128\n\n\n  CHAPTER XI.\n\n  THE MYSTERY OF \"THE DEAD WHO DIE\"                    148\n\n\n  CHAPTER XII.\n\n  I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST             167\n\n\n  CHAPTER XIII.\n\n  A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST                             180\n\n\n  CHAPTER XIV.\n\n  HOPE                                                206\n\n\n  CHAPTER XV.\n\n  HEAVEN                                              213\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n_EXPLAINS MY TITLE._\n\n\nIt has always been a favourite fancy of mine that I should like to\ndie upon some sunny, songful morning, in spring or early summer. The\nthought of dying in the night, and of finding this thin and a\u00ebrial\nsomething, which I have learned to call \"my soul,\" being driven\nremorselessly nightward, as Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise;\nthe seeing it in imagination, a spectral, unsubstantial shadow of\nmyself, flitting a-shivering out into the black-wombed darkness, and\nfumbling with filmy hands that it might clasp the closer around it\nthe warm familiar robe of flesh, only to find that robe fallen away\nfor ever--this thought, I must confess, fills me at all times with an\nabhorrent loathing and dread.\n\nTo look up by night at the cold glitter of the stars, and to fancy my\ndisembodied spirit winging its weary way thereto, through fathomless\nleagues of void and voiceless ether, causes me ever to shiver, and to\nturn shudderingly to earth again; but the thought of passing peacefully\naway upon some sunny, summer morning seems less like dying than like\nstepping out of doors to be among the birds and the butterflies. _Then_\nthe heaven of my hopes would not seem so very distant after all (and\noh! how much more heavenly and homelike would that heaven appear did\nI but know it to be _this_ side of the stars!), and my first entry\ninto the dim and shadowy realm of the spirit-world would seem the\nless strange and unfamiliar for my having to pass out on my way to it\nthrough the fields, the flowers, and the sunshine that I love so well.\n\nTo me, however, in the utter solitude of midnight waking, and in the\nscarcely less utter solitude of day-dreaming in the midst of men, the\nthought which ever most oppresses me in the contemplation of death, is\nnot so much the Unknown which lies beyond, as the thought of its awful\nloneliness,--the thought that human faces may shine on my face, human\nhands lie clasped in mine, and human voices bear me company up to the\nvery boundary line of that still and silent land, but that when that\nboundary line is once reached, all these must fail and forsake me, and\nI must turn to face the unknown darkness naked, desolate, and alone.\n\nBut why do I allow my thoughts, you say, to brood thus morbidly upon\ndeath and the death moment? I will tell you. Because I who now write\nto you have--save only in the last and uttermost giving up of the\nspirit--been for some narrow space of time dead; because on me there\nonce fell that thin and impalpable veil which cuts off, as by a wall\nof vast and impenetrable night, the dead one from those whom he leaves\nbehind.\n\nThe facts of the matter are simply these. Some years ago I became\nseriously ill, grew worse day by day, and was pronounced dying, and\nfinally dead. Dead I apparently was, and dead I remained to all intents\nand purposes for the greater part of two days, after which, to the\nintense and utter astonishment of my friends and of the physicians, I\nexhibited symptoms of returning vitality, and in the course of a week\nor two was convalescent. The medical and scientific aspects of the\ncase are, I am assured by those most competent to judge, of unusual\ninterest, but it is not to them that I now wish to direct attention. It\nis rather to that dim borderland betwixt life and death, wherein the\nspirit hovers on uncertain pinion, as if hesitating whether to return\nto the body it has lately tenanted, or to wing its way to the shadowy\nheights of the world Unseen.\n\nWhere, during those two-score hours, I would ask, was my soul, ghost,\nor life-principle? Had it passed into some intermediate spirit-realm,\nthere to await till the Father of Spirits should command it either\nfinally to quit the mortal habitation in which it had so long found\na home, or to return thereto till such time as He should call it to\nHimself? Or was it still hovering over the body, struggling and\nstriving to free itself from the fetters which bound it to that which,\nwithout it, were but a senseless and inanimate clod?\n\nTo that question I am prepared with an answer, and so strange a\none, that I cannot hope my story will be regarded with anything but\nincredulity, nor can I reasonably expect it to be otherwise, for\nI am aware that what I am about to relate I myself should reject\nunhesitatingly were it proffered me on the testimony of another.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n_DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT._\n\n\nIf the thoughts which are coursing through my brain at this moment be\nnot less gruesome to read than they are to write, this chapter will, I\nfear, be but sorry reading; for I feel strangely depressed and nervous,\nas I settle down to the opening pages of my diary.\n\nThe wind is raging and roaring outside until the stout walls of the\nhouse seem to rock and sway like tree-tops, and the sudden gusts and\nsqualls make my startled heart bound and beat faster in my bosom, and\nturn me sick with a sense of loneliness and of loss.\n\nEven when I lie warm in my bed the sound of the wind at midnight\nstrikes a chill through me, so that I shiver in spite of the blankets.\nAs it comes shrieking and sobbing through key-hole and lattice, the\nvery doors and windows seem to partake of my superstition, and to be\ntouched with some uncanny dread; for long after it has died away I\nhear them creaking complainingly among themselves, as if they too were\nnervous and in fear. In the wind's shriek at such times there is always\nto me some suggestion of the sights it has seen, and of the ruin it has\nwrought. I seem to see, as I listen to its wailing, a weary moon that\nlooks out white and wan upon a bleak heath, where a dead woman lies\nstraining a living babe to her milkless breast; or upon a waste of\nhurrying waters that heave and roar and hurl themselves in huge billows\nupon one desolate figure, clinging despairingly to a broken mast. And\nthen there is a sudden lull in the storm; the moon is hidden by clouds\nonce more, and the infant's wail, the strong man's cry, and the shriek\nof the wind, gloating in savage exultation over its ghastly secrets,\ndie away into a distant rumble, and all is still save the beating of my\nheart, and the stealthy creaking of door and casement.\n\nEven as I write I can hear its wailing so die away in the distance, and\nI seem to see it crouching, still and quiet and panther-like, yet ever\ngathering itself together, and creeping nearer and nearer, so that it\nmay take me unaware, and in one sudden bound sweep down upon me, as an\neagle swoops upon his prey, and bear me away to destruction.\n\nListen to it now!--whistling, wailing, shrieking, like a live thing! Is\nit any wonder, on such a night, and with a sound in the air like that\nof innumerable lamentations, that I feel strangely conscious of the\nnear approach of death, and cannot dissociate my thoughts from\n\n  \"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,\n  The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm?\"\n\nFor I _do_ fear death, as I believe we all do in some moods.\nNotwithstanding our reiterated beliefs in Christ and in Immortality;\nnotwithstanding our prayers, hymn-singing, and heartfelt declarations\nof our trust in God, and in His care for us, are there not moments\nin the life of each of us when the human nature within recoils in\ndumb and desolate protest from the thought of an existence in which\nthe body will be left to decay? We think at such times of our own\ndeath and burial. We picture the mourning coaches setting out, with\nsolemn pomp and pageantry of woe, to bear us away to our last earthly\nresting-place. We see them drive back--briskly now, and as though the\ngrief were left behind with the coffin--to the darkened house, and\nwe see the mourners alight and re-enter to draw up the blinds with a\nsigh of thinly-disguised satisfaction, and to turn with a natural if\nhumiliating relief to life and the things of life again. And as we\nthink of the darkness coming on, and of that deserted body of ours,\nwhich had once so craved for light and warmth and human companionship,\nlying, in the first awful night of desolation, away out under the sods\nin that dreary cemetery, we can almost fancy that we see the uneasy\nsoul, restless even in heaven, stealing sadly to earth again, and\nhovering, for very companionship, over the forsaken mound that covers\nits ancient comrade.\n\nSo, too, there are moments of midnight waking, when we lie on our bed\nas in a grave, and feel the awful thought of death borne in upon us\nwith unutterable, intolerable horror. Then the darkness which shuts\nout those objects that in the day-time distract the attention of our\noutward eye, and of our mind, serves only to make our mental vision\ndoubly keen, and to concentrate all our faculties, as to one inward\nfocal point of light, on that hateful thought. Then do we seem to\nfeel the earth rushing swiftly on its way, as if eager to hurry us\nto our own dissolution; and then do we stretch forth impotent hands\nand vain, striving hopelessly to stay it on its course. Yet ever is\nour striving of none avail: Death, hideous and inexorable, stares us\nin the face--a wall of vast and impenetrable night, which closes\nin upon us on every side. We gasp and choke as though some bony and\ncruel fingers lay clutching at our throat. \"Is there no way,\" we cry,\nwith heart strained unto bursting, \"is there no way by which we may\nescape the Inescapable?--no loop-hole through which we may creep, and\nelude this black and grisly thing?\" But from the hollow womb of night\ncomes back the sullen answer, \"Escape there is none,\" and then, like\ndoomed criminals who snatch greedily at a day's reprieve, we thrust\nthe ghastly thing away from us, and strive to distract our thoughts in\nfolly.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\n_DEALS WITH LIFE AND THE LUST OF IT, BUT HAS NO DIRECT BEARING ON MY\nSTORY._[1]\n\n    Shall we not weary in the windless days\n        Hereafter, for the murmur of the sea,\n        The cool salt air across some grassy lea?\n    Shall we not go bewildered through a maze\n    Of stately streets with glittering gems ablaze,\n      Forlorn amid the pearl and ivory,\n      Straining our eyes beyond the bourne to see\n  Phantoms from out life's dear forsaken ways?\n\n\n  Give us again the crazy clay-built nest,\n      Summer, and soft unseasonable spring,\n      Our flowers to pluck, our broken songs to sing,\n  Our fairy gold of evening in the West;\n      Still to the land we love our longings cling,\n  The sweet vain world of turmoil and unrest.\n\n  --Graham R. Tomson.\n\n\nLet me frankly confess that I love this world and the things of it,\nand so, I believe, do all in whom the \"great, glad, aboriginal\" and\nGod-given love of life is whole and healthy, and not stunted by\nsickness of mind or body. For the bereaved and the sorrow-stricken\nI make every allowance and would have all tenderness, but I suspect\neither the honesty or the health (and by \"health\" I mean, of course,\nmental as well as physical soundness) of those who express themselves\nas being \"desirous of departing,\" or who assert that love of this\nworld is irreconcilable with the love of God.\n\nIt is not God's world, with its love and friendship and little\nchildren, its fields and flowers, sea and sky, sunlight and starshine,\nand sweet consolations of Art and Song, against which we are bidden to\nbeware. No it is _man's_ world--the world which devotes itself to gain,\nor to the wish to be somebody in society; to the frittering away of our\ndays in fashionable frivolity, or in struggling to outdo our neighbour,\nnot in the purity of our lives, or the dignity of our actions, but in\nour clothes, our carriages, and the company we keep--_this_ world it is\nwhich cannot be rightly loved by one in whom dwelleth the love of the\nFather.\n\nBut God's world we can never love half enough, can never sufficiently\nappreciate and enjoy. Suppose that you and I, my reader, had to make\na world--call it a heaven if you will--of our own designing, and were\nentrusted with infinite potentialities for the purpose. Could we, could\nall of us combined, ever conceive of anything half so beautiful as this\nworld at which so many of us gaze with apathetic eyes?\n\n  \"An idle poet, here and there,\n    Looks round him, but for all the rest,\n  The world, unfathomably fair,\n    Is duller than a witling's jest.\"\n\nAt best we could but copy, but if it so happened that we, to whom it\nwas given to create, had never been permitted to set eyes even upon\nthis earth beforehand, what sort of a world then, think you, should we\ncontrive to construct?\n\nI believe that if God were to make a man, a full-grown man in a moment,\nand were to set him down in the midst of the world, to look upon it\nwith new eyes, and for the first time, instead of letting him grow up\nfrom a child, _to become accustomed to it_--for it is true, as Mr.\nLowell says, that \"we glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to\nOrion and the Pleiades,\"--I believe that that man would be in danger\nof delirium from his overwhelming joy and wonder at the beauty and the\nboundlessness of that which he saw around.\n\nEven this grim old London is full of beauty and of boundlessness; of\nbeauty which strikes me breathless, and of boundlessness of life, and\nsky; for in what slum of it, be it never so stifling, are we quite shut\nout from view of the stars or the sunshine, or of the human faces that\ncome and go in the streets? But a moment ago, while looking out from\nmy window upon a crowded, choking city thoroughfare, I caught one\nglimpse of a woman's profile, as she passed with her head poised, and\nhalf-turned towards me; and though the vision was gone in an instant,\nthe sweep of the queenly neck, ivory-white and stately as a lily-stem,\nset my senses vibrating with a thrill of exquisite pleasure. And\nyonder, looking into a window, I see another face, the sweet pure face\nof a maiden. I run my eye like a finger along the profile, I follow\nthe flowing line of the hair; but even as I look, she turns, is gone\nand is forgotten, for her place is taken by a girl with a basket of\nflowers, the flowers that I love as I love nothing else but poetry.\nIt is Emerson, I think, who tells us that God's loveliest gifts are\nthe commonest; and that sun and sky and flowers are scarce denied to\na beggar's call; and it is pitiful, as he says in another passage,\nthe things by which we call ourselves rich or poor. Why, I have gone\nhome from my morning's walk, feeling richer in the possession of a\nhandful of honey-suckle than if I had found a purse of sovereigns by\nthe wayside; nor could all the art-treasures of Bond Street (not that\nI fail to appreciate them, either) give me a more exquisite thrill of\nsweetly-saddened pleasure than does the tender perfume of a bunch of\nviolets.\n\nAs a child I used to fancy that I found in a flower all my whitest\nand purest thoughts crystallized into a thing; and now, though I am\na man, the white-pure thoughts of my childhood still live for me in\nevery flower that blossoms in the meadows; for the flowers bring me\nback not only my vanished childhood, but my childhood's innocence\nand peace. Even in those remote child-days I was persuaded that the\nflowers were not of earth, but of heaven, nor while I had them could\nI believe heaven to be so very far off, after all. \"Else how could the\nflower-seeds have been blown over its edge, and fallen down to the\nearth-land?\" I would say to myself. And I find myself fancying now, as\nI fancied then, that God takes the flowers home to His heaven in the\nwinter, and every spring when I welcome them back, I feel that they\nhave come as direct from Him and from heaven as if He had leant down\nout of the skies to give them to me; and I feel that they are not my\nflowers, but His flowers; for even as I gather them to call them mine,\nHe puts forth His hand and claims them, so that they fade away again to\nthe heaven whence they came.\n\nYes, I love this world, and the things of it. To me the mere\nconsciousness of life is a gladness, the pulsing of my heart a\npleasure. I pencil the latter part of this chapter while lying lazily\nin a sun-filled meadow, and as I write I seem to feel the very drawing\nof my breath a joy. The sky spreads above me, a shimmering sea of\nblue--not the cool, crystalline sapphire of early morning, but the deep\ndense azure of a midsummer noon. How hot the bees must feel in that\nfurry coat! As I lie here, basking in the sunlight, and watching the\nbuttercups dancing and dipping above the grass, like golden banners\namid an army of green-bladed bayonets, I do not wonder that the poor\nbees keep up a dull droning hum of monotonous murmuring. I can see the\nhot air simmering and quivering above the clover fields, but all else\nis drowsily, dreamily still. I know that the streets of the far-off\ncity are reeking and smoking with dry and dusty heat, but here I am in\nanother world, and the bees and the birds are my brothers. This meadow\nis my boundless prairie; my head is below the level of the grass tops,\nand they spread feathery, filmy arms above, like the boughs of a vast\nforest.\n\nYes, lying here in this sun-filled meadow on this summer morning, I am\nconscious that I love my life, and that I should be loath to leave it.\nI love to feel the wind upon my cheek, and to hear it as it whistles\nby me, singing in my ears, as in the hollow convolutions of a shell.\nI love to stand and look out upon the sea, or upon open plains and\nbroad sky-spaces, which give us _eyesight room_ and room for our souls\nto be. I love to lie and listen to the song of the wind among the\npine-trees,--the \"sailing\" pine trees,--and to watch them swing and\nsway like storm-tossed barks at sea. I love to see the rook beat up\nagainst the wind, and poise and hover and soar, and slide down upon the\nedge of the blast with rigid blade-like wings that shear the air like a\nknife. And when I watch him cut the ether in circles as full and fair\nas the curves of a woman's bosom, I think of him less as a bird than as\nsome winged artist of the heights, who delights in flowing line, and\ngrace of form and feature; and I too feel buoyant and airy, and to my\nvery limbs is lent the lightness of his flight.\n\nI love, too, the companionship of those who love the things that\nI love--my spiritual brethren and fellow-worshippers; for, to my\nthinking, the lovers of Art, Music, Nature, Poetry, or of Religion,\nare all of them in one attitude of mind, and are animated by one\nand the same spirit--I call it the Worshipping Spirit. It may body\nitself forth in the homage-love of the musician for harmony, in the\nartist-worship of sensuous beauty, or, highest of all, in the adoration\nof Christ and of that which is spiritually perfect; and yet all these\nloves are not many loves, but one love, for they are but different\nexpressions of one and the same spirit. Hence to turn from a chapter\nof St. John to a sunset, a sonnet from Wordsworth, or a picture by\nBotticelli, is to me not unseemly, but natural, for each of these\narouses, in different degrees, one and the same emotion, and that\nemotion has its source in one and the same Worshipping Spirit.\n\nI love also travel, change and adventure. I love the Botticellis, the\nFra Angelicos and the Leonardo of our own princely National Gallery,\nnot the less, but the better for an occasional ramble in the Louvre, or\namong the galleries of Holland or Italy. I love the life, the stir and\nbustle of our London streets; but I love, too, the old-world rest and\nrepose of Bruges or of Berne; and many a time have I lingered the long\nday through in the antique streets of Antwerp, listening to the sweet\nuproar and silvern wrangling that ripples, cloud-borne and wind-wafted,\nfrom where the stately belfry soars lark-like above the world. To\nme to have been happy once is to establish a claim upon happiness\nthenceforward, and it is for this reason, I suppose, that I love so\nto re-live the past, and to dwell on the memory of former sights and\nscenes. It is true, as Frederick Robertson says, that the \"first time\nnever returns,\" and shall I ever forget the exultation of the moment\nwhen, after repeated failures, I first set foot on that inaccessible\nmountain-height which I had risked my life to scale? Even now, lying\nhere in this sunny English meadow, I seem to re-live that moment, and\nto see that scene again. Before me rises one wild and wasteful world of\nwhite--a white on which the fierce rays of the sun beat and burn with\nblinding, blazing, intolerable brilliance. Above, swimming and soaring\naway into unfathomable azure, spreads the silent heaven, but around,\nabout, beneath, all is white, deathly-white, save only where the vast\nangles of ice-crag or column deepen into a lustrous turquoise, or where\na blue mist broods athwart the mouth of yawning crevasse or cavern.\nBelow me and afar--so far that it seems as if I were cut off from it\nfor ever,--lies the sunny village that I left so many toilsome hours\nago, just visible, a wee white dot upon the green. There the air is\nsweet with the breath of flowers and of the clover-fields, there, too,\nare the bees, and the butterflies, and the music of rushing water.\nBut here, where the wasteful snows writhe and wreathe around in arch\nand cave and column, vast and wonderful to behold--above, the shining\nzenith, below, the sheer abyss and the treacherous descent--here in the\nsolemn solitude and silence of this whited wilderness, I can scarcely\nbelieve that I am still on the earth, and of it, and that the dazzling\ndome on which I am standing is but the white and swelling bosom of the\nGreat Mother from whom we all sprang.\n\nOr, weary of the silence and the snow-solitudes, I close my eyes,\nand lo! I am down in the valley again, and all around me spreads a\nblithe and beauteous scene of serenest summer. On every breeze that\nsings from sunny slope or smiling pasture is borne the windy chime and\nclamour of countless cattle-bells from the hillside, but beyond that,\nand the unbroken _buzz_ and _burr_, which bespeak the deep content of\ninnumerable bees, all is still, drowsily still. Here, if anywhere, one\ncan realize for a moment the deep, dreamy peacefulness that pervades\nthe opening lines of Mr. Swinburne's majestic \"Garden of Proserpine,\"--\n\n  \"Here, where the world is quiet,\n    Here, where all trouble seems\n  Dead winds' and spent waves' riot\n    In doubtful dream of dreams;\n  I watch the green field growing,\n  For reaping folk and sowing,\n  For harvest time and mowing,\n    A sleepy world of streams.\"\n\nHere are the bees, the birds, and the butterflies; here, too, nestling\ncosily on hillside or meadow, are dotted dozens of umber-brown ch\u00e2lets,\neach of which seems to suggest that \"haunting sense of human history\"\nof which George Macdonald speaks, when he says that \"many a simple home\nwill move one's heart like a poem, many a cottage like a melody.\"\n\nAnd now there is a change in the picture: the drowsiness and\nthe dreaminess are gone, and there is the free, fresh sense of\nmotion, and of the open. In my ears is the journeying music of the\n_diligence_--music which despite its jingle never becomes monotonous,\nfor every now and then the horses toss their heads to shake off the too\npersistent flies, and sprinkle the air with spray of silvery sounds.\nThe road winds along a mountain path overlooking a lake, and the\nmirroring of sunset fire upon the surface of the water, the cool clear\ncrystal of the blue depths that swim away below, the purple distance\nof the farther hills, fast-shrouding in light-drawn mist, and lastly,\nthe solemn splendour of that sky-hung, soaring summit, brooding like\na presence athwart the skies,--all these make up a scene upon which I\nam never weary of dwelling, and which I dearly love to recall; a scene\nof such indescribable loveliness as to leave me at last bowed and\nbreathless, and\n\n  \"Sad with the whole of pleasure.\"\n\nI thought when I penned the last paragraph that I had made an end\nof telling you of my love of life and of the things of it, but that\nhalf-line which I have quoted from Rossetti's most beautiful sonnet\nsets me thinking of another love of which I have not yet spoken. Need I\nsay that I mean the love of music? not only of the music which is \"like\nsoft hands stealing into ours in the dark, and holding us fast without\na spoken word,\" but also of those sobbing soaring strains, which sound\nas sadly in our ears as does the wintry flittering of dead leaves upon\na withered bough? To those who feel that every ray of morning sunlight\nwhich strikes across their path calls them to a higher and holier\nliving; to whose hearts the pure petals of a primrose are as a silent\nreproach against their own impurity; to whom a glint of blue sky,\ngleaming out between rain-beaten tree-tops is as an aspiration towards\na loftier, lovelier life; to whom the very wind, as it sings from the\ngates of morning, cries out \"Unclean! unclean!\"--to such, I suppose,\nmusic must ever contain less of joy than of sadness, if, indeed, it\nappeal not with a pleasure which cuts to the heart like a pain. It is\nto them as if an angel from heaven had cast, for one passing second,\nupon a cloud-screen drawn across the soul, a vision of what they\n_might_ be, of what they were _meant_ to be, and of what in God's good\ntime they may yet become; and as if at the very moment when the spirit\nwas pouring itself forth in one unutterable cry of longing after the\nDivine beauty of that ideal, there rose before them the shadow-horror\nof what they really are.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 1: Then why print it here? asks the reader. For the reason,\nI reply, that this Diary is the history, not only of a sin, but of a\nsoul; and that to leave the aspect of my subject here treated unnoticed\nwould be to give but a maimed and one-sided representation. I do not\nthink any reader who studies my sketch-outline as a whole will consider\nthe introduction of this chapter as inartistic.]\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\n_I DIE._\n\n\nI pass on now to tell of my death moments. The room in which I died was\nthe room in which I had been born. One half of it was my bedroom, and\nthe other half--that near the window--was my study. There I had done\nall my work, and there were my books and papers. There, too, grouped\naround the walls, were portraits of the men and women who seem to me\nsometimes to be more myself, as Emerson puts it, than even I am, and\nwho are nearer to me and dearer to me, many of them, than are some of\nthose who sit daily with me in the household--I mean the portraits of\nmy favourite writers.\n\nI do not know whether the literary associations of the room had any\npart--probably they had--in determining the current of my thought, but\nI remember that, during the first few hours of the morning preceding my\ndeath, I found my mind running on poets and poetry. I recollect that I\nwas thinking chiefly of Rossetti, and of the fact that he was haunted,\nas he lay a-dying, by passages from his own poems. Not that I saw or\nsee any cause in that fact for wonder, for I can recall lines of his\nwhich I can believe would haunt one even in heaven.\n\nThose of my readers who fail to appreciate in its fulness the saying\nof \"Diana of the Crossways\" that in poetry \"those that have souls\nmeet their fellows,\" or that of the _Saturday Review_, that \"there\nis an incommunicable magic in poetry which is foolishness to the\nmultitude,\"--may think this an exaggeration. Ah well, they are of the\n\"multitude,\"--the more pity for them!--and can never understand how\nthe soul is stirred by a simple sentence in the god-like language of\nShakespeare, or is as irresistibly swayed as are trees in a whirlwind\nby a single stanza from Swinburne; how the magic witchery of a couplet\nby Keats can bring tears to the eyes; or how the tender grace of a line\nfrom Herrick can set the senses vibrating with an exquisite thrill of\njoy. Nay, I could indicate sentences in the diamond-pointed prose of\nGeorge Meredith, pellucid sentences, crystal-clear and luminous as the\nscintillations of Sirius (and for all their judicial poise and calmness\nemitted like the Sirius scintillations at a white heat),--which affect\nme in a similar way. There are few other writers of whom I could\naffirm this with the like confidence; but Meredith's thoughts have\ncrystallized into a brain-stimulating prose--every sentence of which is\na satisfying mouthful to our intellectual hunger--which is sometimes\npure poetry.\n\nPoetry is to my diary, however, and in fact to all I think or say,\nwhat King Charles's head was to Mr. Dick's memorial, and it is time I\nreturned to my narrative.\n\nThe possibility of a fatal ending to my illness had never occurred to\nmyself or to my family, until that ending was nigh at hand, and so it\nwas that death came upon me in every way unawares. I remember my father\nbending over me, and asking gently if I knew that I was dying, and I\nrecollect looking up to whisper back, \"No: is it so?\" and receiving\nhis sorrowful response. It was too late then for me to do more than\nrecognise the fact as a fact, for my brain was so strangely affected\nthat I was utterly incapable of following out that fact to its result.\nI knew that I was dying--knew it much as I might have known it of some\nother person--but felt no individual pang of terror or surprise. This\nstate of indifferent acquiescence in that which was about to occur\nwas followed by a sense of regret at having to leave a volume which I\nhad in hand unfinished, and then, with the ruling passion strong in\ndeath, I found myself endeavouring to find fitting words to describe\nmy sensations. It is so with me ever and always. Art and Poetry have\nbecome such realities, that I cannot take them up and lay them aside\nat pleasure, but must needs bear them with me whithersoever I go. I\ncarry my poetry with me to bed and to breakfast; and I can sit and\nwrite, or carry on a conversation, with the consciousness of Mr. Lang's\nlatest _Ballade_, or Mr. Theodore Watts's last sonnet, running like an\nundercurrent in my mind. I am perpetually striving to fix in language\nthe fleeting colours of sea and sky. I can never listen to the trickle\nand purl of a brooklet tinkling over its pebbly bed, without making\ndiligent search in my vocabulary for a word--the golden word--which\nseems most to babble and to blab of water. As surely as I find in\nWordsworth's poems a background of sky and mountain, just as surely do\nI find in mountain and sky an echo of Wordsworth's song. To me, too,\nthe sonnet which rises involuntarily to my lips, as I gaze out upon\nthe deep, is as much a part of the scene before me, as is the sun or\nthe sand upon the shore; and I have come to feel with Mr. Lowell, as\nif a sunset were \"like a quotation from Dante or Milton,\" and that \"if\nShakespeare be read in the very presence of the sea itself, his voice\nshall but seem nobler for the sublime criticism of ocean.\"\n\nI was telling you that as I lay a-dying, I found myself endeavouring\nto find fitting words to describe my sensations. At this point,\nhowever, the train of my thoughts was disturbed--and I recollect\na slight reawakening of my old characteristic irritability at the\ninterruption--by the entrance of a sister who had come from a distance\nto see me. I remember slightly lifting my head to speak to her, and\nthen glancing round the room to see if all were present. Yes, close\nbeside me, and with his head bowed over his hands, sat my father, and\nround about the bed were gathered the remainder of the family. Nor were\nthese all, for standing among them were three other figures--that of my\nbrother Fred, whose grave as yet was hardly green, and of my mother and\nmy little sister Comfort, both of whom had died when I was a child. If\nmy conviction that I have indeed been dead be a delusion,--as I doubt\nnot many of my readers will think,--is it not strange, I would ask,\nthat these faces should have been with me at the end? Had there been\nany conjecture in my mind as to the probability of my meeting with my\nlost ones, I could readily believe that what I saw was the creation\nof my own brain. But there had been no such conjecture, for death\nhad taken me, as I have already explained, entirely unawares, and no\nthought of the dead had as much as occurred to me. Their presence,\nhowever, so far from causing me any surprise, seemed perfectly natural,\nfor the fact that they were dead did not dawn upon my consciousness.\n\nThis, I am ready to allow, strongly supports the theory that these\nexperiences may be nothing more than dreams, for in dreams it not\nseldom happens that we re-live the past, and hold converse with our\ndeparted ones, all oblivious of the death which has come between us.\nIt _may_ be so, I admit, but in my heart of hearts I cannot think it;\nfor if all that I have to tell be but a dream, then does it seem to me\nthe strangest dream ever dreamed by man. Moreover, with these three\nfigures was a fourth--a figure which at first had escaped my notice;\nand it is the presence of this figure in the room which is to me most\nunaccountable. My mother, when I first saw her, was standing at the\nfoot of the bed, with my dead brother and sister looking over her\nshoulder, but at the sight of my father's grief, she went gently round\nto where he was sitting, and with a caress of infinite pity stooped\ndown as if to whisper in his ear. It was then that I saw for the first\ntime that she held by the hand a little child--a little child whom I\nhad never seen before, but across whose face, as he looked up at me,\nthere flitted the phantom of a resemblance I could not catch.\n\nI remember that even then, brain-benumbed and dying as I was, I\nwondered who that little child could be; but there dawned upon me no\nshadowy suspicion of the truth, and I passed away with that wonder\nunremoved.\n\nI think now--nay, I am sure--that I know who that child was. It was my\nbrother James John, the eldest of the family, who had died before I was\nborn, and whom, in this world, therefore, I had never seen.\n\nI have little left to tell of my death, for nothing else occurred of\nany moment, and I am resolved to confine myself strictly to facts. I\nremember that immediately after I had seen my mother, and while I was\nwondering who the child she held by the hand could be, there came over\nme a strange and sudden sense of loss--of physical loss, I think it\nwas, as though some life-element had gone out from me. Of pain there\nwas none, nor was I disturbed by any mental anxiety. I recollect only\nan ethereal lightness of limb, and a sense of soul-emancipation and\npeace--a sense of soul-emancipation such as one might feel were he to\nawaken on a sunny morning to find that all sorrow and sin were gone\nfrom the world for ever; a peace ample and restful as the hallowed\nhush and awe of summer twilight, without the twilight's tender pain.\n\nThen I seemed to be sinking slowly and steadily through still depths\nof sun-steeped, light-filled waters that sang in my ears with a sound\nlike a sweet-sad sobbing and soaring of music, and through which there\nswam up to me, in watered vistas of light, scenes of sunny seas and\nshining shores where smiling isles stretched league beyond league afar.\nAnd so life ebbed and ebbed away, until at last there came a time--the\nmoment of death, I believe--when the outward and deathward setting tide\nseemed to reach its climax, and when I felt myself swept shoreward and\nlifeward again on the inward-setting tide of that larger life into\nwhich I had died.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\n_IS OF AN EXPLANATORY NATURE ONLY._\n\n\nWhen the first rough draft of this diary was lying on my study table,\nthere called to see me, at a time when I chanced to be out, a certain\nnovelist who is an old and intimate friend of mine. He was shown into\nthe study to await my coming, and, on my return, I found him amusing\nhimself with these papers. Of the reality of my death-experiences\n(which he persistently refused to regard as other than dreams) I had\nnever been able to convince him, and I was not surprised therefore\nwhen, after the conversation turned upon the work each of us had in\nhand, he referred to my booklet in his usual sceptical tone.\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" he said, laying one hand upon the offending\nmanuscript, \"I haven't the slightest intention of disputing the truth\nof your statements, or of denying that your diary has a certain\nunwholesome interest of its own, but seriously, I don't think fiction\nis altogether in your line.\"\n\n\"Nor satire in yours,\" I replied; \"but what have you to say against the\nthing now?\"\n\n\"This,\" he answered, more evidently in earnest, \"that you haven't\nscored as you might have done, but have let slip what opportunities you\nhad for turning out something original. 'Letters from Hell' (which, by\nthe bye, you must expect to be charged with imitating, though _that_\nneedn't trouble you much) was confessedly a work of pure imagination,\nand I shouldn't be surprised if the fact helped somewhat to lessen\nthe interest of the volume. Now your book has just enough shadow of\nprobability or possibility to sustain the delusion, and all that\nwill tell in its favour. The public likes--just as Dick Swiveller's\nMarchioness did--to 'make believe' in the reality of that which is\nmeant to interest it; and books or plays can't be too life-like or\nrealistic nowadays. You have 'made believe' until you have brought\nyourself to believe in the reality of something which I can't think\never happened; but that isn't my business. What I complain of is\nthis:--that although you have a story to tell with sufficient shadow\nof probability or possibility, as I have said, to make it interesting,\nand to keep up the delusion, you have failed most lamentably to turn\nyour opportunities to account. Take your death scene, for instance. Any\npractical writer of ordinary ability could _imagine_ the sensations\nof dying, and could draw a far more powerful picture of them than you\nhave done, who profess to have actually experienced those sensations\npersonally. Then what you have to say about Heaven and Hell, and all\nthe rest of it, is curious, and some may think it not uninteresting,\nbut you haven't given us any idea of what the places are like, after\nall. Why didn't you draw on your imagination, man? Why didn't you go\nin for the grim, and grey, and ghastly? Why didn't you revel in the\nweird (never mind Mr. Lang's abuse of the word), or conjure up blissful\ndreams of the blest and of Paradise? I know a dozen men who could have\nmade twice as much capital, and far more saleable copy, out of that\nidea of yours about a man dying, or nearly so, and then coming back to\nrelate what he has seen, as it appears from the standpoint of frail\nmortality; and I tell you frankly that I don't think you have scored as\nyou ought to have done.\"\n\n\"But what has all this,\" says the reader, \"to do with your diary? We\nare willing to hear what you have to tell about your experiences,\nbut we didn't bargain for an article setting forth the opinion of\nyour friends on the subject, and we can't help thinking that the\nintroduction of this chapter is somewhat uncalled for.\"\n\nWell, perhaps it is so, but it is because the conversation given\nabove touches upon some points concerning which I am anxious that the\nreader should come to a right understanding before he enters upon my\nafter-death experience, that I have inserted it here, and if a very\nfew minutes' indulgence be granted me, I will say what I have to say\nas briefly as possible. I could, I am sure, by drawing a little on\nmy imagination, have written a far more striking description of the\nsensations of death, than that which I have given in the preceding\nchapter, for of such description, in the sense of \"working-up a\nsituation\" there is absolutely none. All that I have tried to do is\nto relate my story with a resolute avoidance of anything akin to the\nsensational. If aught of the sensational there be in the narrative, it\nis because the thing is sensational in itself, and not because I have\nattempted to make it so. As George Eliot says, it is far easier to draw\na griffin, with wings and claws filled in according to our own fancy,\nthan to correctly limn the outlines of a lion; and to keep to the\ntruth has been the hardest part of my task.\n\nWhen the mental picture or impression left on my mind is but an\nimperfect one, I have not attempted, as I might easily and perhaps\npardonably have done, to fill in the missing outline from my\nimagination, but have given the picture or impression for what it\nis worth, and have left it so. My memory is, generally speaking,\nexcellent, and during the first few hours of consciousness after the\nreturn of vitality, the recollection of that which I had seen was\nas fresh as are the events of yesterday. Within a week, however, I\nfound that the greater part of it had gone from me, and that all my\nefforts to recall the mental pictures were unavailing. I have sometimes\nwondered if it can be possible that when my presence was missed\nfrom the realms into which I had so untimely wandered, some angelic\nmessenger was despatched with instructions to wipe out from the tablets\nof my memory the records of my experiences. Whether it be so, or not,\nI cannot say, but this I do know, that had I commenced my diary within\na week of my return to life, the booklet would have been one such as\nit is not often given to man to write. The subject, however, seemed\nthen, and for a long time after, too solemn to be turned to account\nfor \"copy,\" and each of the several years which have elapsed since I\ndied, has taken with it some part of the recollections that remained\nto me; and now that I have all too tardily set about my task, I have\nbut blurred and broken reminiscences to offer in place of a life-like\npicture.\n\nThese reminiscences, vague, disconnected, and fragmentary as they\nare, I have given for what they are worth. If any reader think that I\nhave overrated the value of my experiences, and that I have failed to\nverify the promise with which I started, I can only assure him that\nthe failure is due, not to the insufficiency of what is strange and\nstriking in my experiences, but to my inability to recall what I have\nseen, and to my incompetency to do fitting justice to my singular\nsubject.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n_TELLS OF MY FIRST AWFUL AWAKENING IN HELL, AND OF THE SHAMEFUL SIN\nWHICH BROUGHT ME THITHER._\n\n  The expense of spirit in a waste of shame\n    Is lust in action; and till action, lust\n  Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,\n    Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,\n  Enjoyed no sooner but despis\u00e8d straight,\n    Past reason hunted, and no sooner had\n  Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,\n    On purpose laid to make the taker mad;\n  Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;\n    Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;\n  A bliss in proof, and, proved, a very woe;\n    Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.\n  All this the world well knows; yet none knows well\n  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.\n\n  _Shakespeare's 129th Sonnet._\n\n\nTime, which is the name we give to our petty portion of Eternity, has\nno existence in that Eternity which has been defined as the \"lifetime\nof the Almighty\"; and so it was that though I remained in the spirit\nrealm but two days, it seemed to me as if weeks, months, years, had\nelapsed between my death and the hour when I first became conscious of\nthat death.\n\nI have told you that as I lay a-dying, I felt my life slowly\nbut steadily ebbing away, until at last there came a time--the\nmoment of death, I believe it to have been--when the outward and\ndeathward-setting tide seemed to reach its climax, and when I felt\nmyself swept shoreward and lifeward again. I know there are some who\nwill say that the turning-point which I have called the moment of death\nwas nothing more or less than the moment which marked the decline of\nthe disease, and the return of vitality, but this theory, plausible and\neven probable as it seems, leaves the strangest part of my experience\nunexplained, and I cannot entertain it; neither, I think, will the\nreader, when he has heard me out.\n\nWhether my death was succeeded by a season of slumber, in which certain\ndivinely ordered dreams were caused to be dreamed by me, or whether\nGod caused the hands on the dial of Time to be put back for a space in\norder that I might see the past as He sees it, I neither knew nor know;\nbut I distinctly remember that the first thing of which I was conscious\nafter my dissolution was that the events of my past life were rising\nbefore me. Yes, it was my past life, which I saw in that awful moment,\nmy past life standing out in its own naked and intolerable horror, an\nabomination in the sight of God, and of my own conscience.\n\nThe hands on the dial of Time went back half a score, a score, and\nfinally a score and a half of years, and once more I was a young man of\ntwenty-one. The chambers in which I was then living were situated in\none of the well-known Inns off Holborn, and the housekeeper of the wing\nwhere I was quartered was a widow, who, with her daughter Dorothy, a\ngirl of seventeen, resided on the premises.\n\nAs it was Dorothy's part to wait upon the occupants of the chambers,\nshe had occasion to come to my room several times in the day, and I\ncould not help noticing her loveliness, which, indeed, reminded me not\na little of my favourite Greuze picture. When I first knew her she\nseemed maidenly and modest, but was vain beyond a question, and her\nmanner to the opposite sex was shy and self-conscious, with occasional\ndashes of an artless and even childish coquetry which was most\nbewitching. By this girl I was irresistibly and fatally fascinated. I\nwas young, susceptible, and singularly impressionable to female beauty,\nwhilst the loneliness and the monotony of the life I was leading were\nin themselves elements of considerable danger; and to make matters\nworse, it was only too evident that Dorothy was not indifferent to\nmy admiration. As I knew that it was but the fascination of form and\nfeature which attracted me, and that nothing but mischief was likely\nto come of such a passion, I strove my hardest to steel myself against\nher; but Fate seemed adverse, for one summer evening while I was\nsitting in my study, waiting for a friend, there burst over London the\nmost fearful thunderstorm which I have ever witnessed. The lightning\nwas so vivid and the thunder so terrific, that even I, who am by no\nmeans nervous about such things, felt strangely moved and unsettled;\nand I was not a little glad, therefore, to hear what I took to be my\nfriend's knock. When I went to the door, however, I found that it was\nnot he, but Dorothy, and that she was white with fear, and trembling\nfrom head to foot. \"Oh, sir,\" she sobbed, \"mother's out, and there's no\none else in but you, and I'm so frightened that I can't stay by myself.\nIf you'll only let me be here till she comes back, I'll be very quiet\nand not disturb you in any way.\"\n\nKnowing my weakness and her great beauty, I had up to that moment\nstudiously refrained from allowing so much as a wandering glance to\nrest on her; but I could not avoid looking at her now, and I remember\nthat her eyes, bright and pitiful and beseeching, \"her bosom's gentle\nneighbourhood,\" and the very consciousness of her presence as she stood\nbefore me, set my heart beating so wildly, that it was all I could do\nto refrain from taking her in my arms then and there, and telling her\n(forgive the profanation of a holy word) that I \"loved\" her.\n\nThe virtuous determination to be on our guard against some besetting\nsin or constitutional failing comes to us generally, _not_ during\nthe moment of temptation, when we are most in need of such a moral\nreminder, but _after_ the event, and when the determination is too\nlate; but on this occasion I heard the inward monitor speak out a\ntimely warning, and that with no uncertain tongue. By a great effort\nI nerved myself to my accustomed control, and though I knew Dorothy\nwould think me churlish and cruel, I told her coldly that she had\nbetter go downstairs and wait the return of her mother. The words had\nscarcely time to pass my lips (I doubt, indeed, if she could have heard\nthem), before they were lost in a terrific thunder-peal, following\nalmost instantaneously upon a blinding flash of lightning. It had been\nbetter for both of us, as I have often since thought, if that flash\nhad struck us dead as we stood there; for, with one cry of passion and\nfear, and calling me by my name--my Christian name--in a tone that none\ncould misinterpret, Dorothy flung her arms around me, and the next\nmoment I found myself pressing her to my heart with a fierce and almost\nsavage exultation, and telling her, amid a score of burning kisses,\nthat I loved her.\n\nAlmost immediately afterwards we heard the opening of doors, which\nindicated her mother's home-coming, but not before Dorothy had time to\ntell me in return that she too loved me, and had always done so. And\nthen she slipped from my arms, and tripped away with tumbled hair and\nflaming cheeks to join her mother, turning as she reached the door to\nlook back with a shy smile and to say--innocently and unsuspectingly\nenough as I knew well--that the room directly over mine was her own,\nand that she often lay awake at night listening to my restless pacing\nto and fro, and wondering what could keep me up so late.\n\nOf the hellish thought which rose in my heart as I listened--the\nthought that she would not refuse me admittance to her room should I\nseek her there that night--she could have had no suspicion, for it was\na thought of which, at any other time, I should have deemed myself\nincapable. I remember that I did not fling the hateful suggestion from\nme, as I should have done an hour earlier, although, passion-maddened\nas I was, I recoiled from it, and vowed that I would never entertain\nit. But I brooded over the horrible idea, and sketched out how easily\nit might be acted upon, were I the foul thing to do it, which I still\ndeclared to myself I was not. Had I arisen in trembling horror, and\nthrust the vile conception from me, she and I might even then have been\nsaved, but I let it enter and take up its abode in my heart, and from\nthenceforward I strove to drive it forth in vain.\n\nOh! in God's name, in the name of Love and Truth and Purity, when\nany such evil or impure thought so much as casts the shadow of its\napproaching presence on your soul, then, in all the strength of your\nmanhood, arise and thrust it out, ere it be too late! Argue not, delay\nnot, listen not, but hurl the loathsome whisper from you as though it\nwere some poisonous reptile, and bid it be gone for ever!\n\nFrom the moment that I gave audience to that messenger of Satan, hell\nand its furies laid hold on me. Sometimes I seemed to be gaining\nground, sometimes I seemed to be recovering my balance of mind. \"I\n_will_ do the right!\" I cried, \"I will _not_ be guilty of this accursed\nthing!\" but even as I strove to fix my feeble purpose to the sticking\npoint, some moral screw seemed to give way within me, and I felt that\npurpose ebbing away like life-blood from a fatal wound.\n\nAt last the struggle seemed to cease, and there was borne in upon me a\nsense of peace, deep, and sweet, and restful. I know now that it was\nbut exhaustion consequent upon the strain I had endured, that it was\nnothing more than the inevitable reaction from the high soul-tension to\nwhich I had been subjected. To me, however, it seemed as the very peace\nof God and as a sign from heaven, and lulled into a false security, I\nlet my thoughts wander back to dwell again upon the temptation. Need\nI tell the remainder of my story? Need I say that my passion had but\nsimulated defeat, as passion often does, in order that it might turn in\nan unguarded moment, and rend me with redoubled fury? The next moment I\nsaw my last gasping effort to will the right sink amid the tempestuous\nsea of sinful wishes, as a drowning man sinks after he has risen for\nthe third time; and deliberately thrusting away, in the very doggedness\nof despair, the invisible hand which yet strove to stay me, I arose and\nsought the room that I had prayed I might never enter.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYou may wonder, perhaps, how it is that I am able to recall so vividly\nthe circumstances of an event which happened many years ago. You would\ncease so to wonder, had you seen, as I have seen, the ghost of your\ndead self rise up to cry for vengeance against you, and to condemn\nyou before the judgment seat of God, and of your own conscience. For\nthis was my first glimpse of Hell; this was my Day of Judgment. The\nrecording angel of my own indestructible and now God-awakened memory\nshowed me my past life as God saw it, and as it appeared when robbed of\nthe loathsome disguises with which I had so long contrived to hide my\nown moral nakedness. \"Sin looks much more terrible to those who look\nat it, than to those who do it,\" says the author of the \"Story of an\nAfrican Farm.\" \"A convict, or a man who drinks, seems something so far\noff and horrible when we see him, but to himself he seems quite near\nto us, and like us. We wonder what kind of a creature he is, but he is\njust we ourselves.\" It was so indeed that I had thought and wondered.\nI had read often of \"adulterers\" and \"murderers\" in the newspapers,\nand had thought of them as I thought of lepers or of cannibals,\nin no way imagining that _my_ youthful escapade could render such\nwords applicable to me. I had accustomed myself to calling my crime\n\"gallantry\" in my own thoughts, and I should have regarded one who used\nharsher language as wanting in delicacy and in breeding; and now I\nfound myself branded as \"Murderer\" and \"Seducer\" to all Eternity!\n\n\"Murderer!\" you say. Yes, murderer, for seduction _is_ moral murder;\nand the man who has thus sinned against a woman is fit only to stand\nside by side with him who has taken a life. Ay, and his is not seldom\nthe more awful punishment, for God will as surely require the spiritual\nlife at the hands of the seducer, as He will the bodily life at the\nhand of the murderer.\n\nThe one thing of all others which added to the unutterable horror of\nthat moment, was the memory of the false and lying excuses with which I\nhad striven to palliate my sin to myself. I remember that such excuses\ntook form and shape, and haunted and tortured me like devils--as indeed\nthey were--of my own begetting. \"The relation of the sexes,\" I had\noften said when striving to silence an uneasy conscience, \"Bah! it is\nbut a yoke of man's imposing. I take the woman I love to live with\nme, and she and I are shunned as lepers. Yonder is a man who follows\nthe same precedent and from the same motive; and because a priest has\nmurmured a few words of sanction over the contract, he and his partner\nare f\u00eated and flattered. How can the indulgence of a natural passion\nwhich in one set of circumstances is fair and honourable, in another be\nsinful and foul? Fair is fair, and foul is foul, and no muttering of a\nman can transform the one into the other.\"\n\nThis is the way in which I had repeatedly striven to silence my\nconscience, and it is but one instance of the way in which many others\non this earth are now striving to silence theirs. \"For God's sake,\" I\nwould say to them, \"beware!\" Such hardening of the heart against the\nHoly Spirit, such God-murdering (for it _is_ the wish to kill God, and\nto silence His voice for ever) is the one unpardonable sin which is a\nthousand-fold more awful in its consequences than is the crime which it\nseeks to conceal. It was the foulest stain on the soul of him who hung\nby the dying Saviour, and it is, I believe at this moment, the one and\nonly thing which still keeps Hell Hell, and Satan Satan.\n\nMust I write further of the torture-throes of that awful moment, when\nI first saw my sin in its true light? God only knows how even now I\nshudder and shrink at the mere thought of it; but I have told you of\nmy crime, and it is right that I should speak also of my punishment.\nI remember that when the realization of what I was, and what I had\ndone, was first borne in upon me, I fell to the ground and writhed and\nshrieked in agony. The tortures of a material hell,--of a thousand\nmaterial hells,--I would have endured with joyfulness could such\ntorture have drowned for one moment the thought-anguish that tore me.\nNay, mere physical suffering--physical suffering meted out to me as\npunishment, and in which, though it were powerless to expiate, I could\nat least participate by enduring--I would have welcomed with delirious\ngladness, but of such relief or diversion of thought there was none.\nFrom the mere mention of annihilation--the personal annihilation of\nsoul and body, of thought and sensation--I had ever shrunk with abject\nloathing and dread; but to annihilation, had it been then within my\nreach, I would have fought my way through a thousand devils. But in\nhell there is no escape through annihilation; suicide, the last refuge\nof tyrannous and cowardly despair, is of none avail,\n\n  \"And death once dead there's no more dying then.\"\n\nWhat had to be endured I found _must_ be endured, and that unto the\nuttermost, for in all horrid hell there was no nook or cranny into\nwhich I could creep to hide myself from the hideous spectres of the\npast. I remember that I rose up in my despair, and stretching vain\nhands to the impotent heavens, shrieked out as only one can shriek who\nis torn by hell-torture and despair. I fell to the ground and writhed\nand foamed in convulsive and bloody agony. I dug my cruel nails deep\ninto my burning eyeballs, and tearing those eyeballs from their tender\nsockets, flung them bleeding from me; but not thus could I blind myself\nto the sights of hell, nor could mere physical pain wipe out from my\nbrain the picture of the ruin I had wrought.\n\nAnd then--but no, I am sick, I am ill, I am fainting; I cannot, I\ncannot write more.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n_SHOWS THE FITNESS OF MY PUNISHMENT._\n\n \"But there will come another era, when it shall be light, and when man\n shall awaken from his lofty dreams and find _his dreams still there,\n and that nothing is gone save his sleep_.\"--Jean Paul.--_Preface to\n \"Hesperus.\"_\n\n\nThe following paragraph is taken from a diary which I kept before my\ndecease. I will explain later on my reason for giving the extract\nhere:--\n\n\"It has been said that no man can realize to the full the certainty of\nhis own dissolution; that each acknowledges the inevitability of death\nin regard to others and to the race, but cherishes a secret conviction\nthat he himself will, through some strange and unforeseen circumstance,\nprove the solitary exception.\n\n\"Of the truth of this assertion as a general rule, I cannot of\ncourse speak, but I know that I at least have never so thought. On\nthe contrary, there are moments when death (by which I do not mean\nannihilation, but the dying into life) seems the only certainty there\nis before me, all else being shadowy and unreal. I am a child of\neternity dreaming the dream of time, and even while I dream I am half\nawake and know that I am but dreaming. Life is to me--not poetically\nonly, but positively--a dream and unsubstantial. The world is a dream,\nthings and persons are but dreams, and exist for me only in my thoughts\nof them. My self-consciousness becomes awake, and I look in and down\nupon myself with a wonder as fresh and novel as if the mystery of my\nown existence had never caused me wonder or surprise before. I stretch\nout my hand, as an infant does, and open and shut the fingers, and ask\nmyself who I am and what I am doing here. I tell myself my name, and I\nsee that the hand, the body, and the clothes that I look down upon have\na strangely familiar aspect, but the name conveys no meaning to me, the\nfamiliarity is but the familiarity of an oft-dreamed dream, and is, I\nknow, but the sign that I am still dreaming.\n\n\"I look out each day upon the face of the earth with as much wonder and\nsurprise as if I were some new-comer thereon, and were opening my eyes\nupon it for the first and only time. Upon London and the life of it,\nthough I passed half my days within the sound of St. Paul's, I gaze and\nwonder as upon some dream-pageant, with ever-increasing awe. I look\nup upon that ample dome, large-looming, and brooding like a Presence\nathwart the skies, until its surroundings and itself and those who come\nand go in the streets are to me as unsubstantial as 'a city visioned in\na dream.'\n\n\"So supremely conscious am I at such times that\n\n                            'We are such stuff\n  As dreams are made of, and our little life\n  Is rounded with a sleep,'\n\nthat were I, while this mood is on me, to open my eyes one morning and\nfind that all this present world and its dream-creations had passed\naway for ever, there would hardly stir in my heart one momentary\nthrill of surprise, for I should but sigh and say, 'Ah, then, at last\nit has come, and now I am asleep no longer!'\n\n\"What the awakened life for which I am waiting will be like, I know not\nconsciously, but something there is within me that does know, and that\nhas a dumb inarticulate knowledge of it, like the memory of a dream\nwhich we have not all forgotten, yet cannot all recall. That it will\nbe _Life_, I am sure--a life which though orbing in ampler cycle and\nvaster sweep than this life, is yet on one and the same plane with it,\nand in no way separate and distinct. Nay, even now this dream-world\nwould seem to be surrounded and insphered by the waking one, even as\n'time is but a parenthesis in eternity;' for there are realities in\nthis unreal existence, flowers and faces, love and poetry, and the\nmorning and evening skies, which have to me no part in this perishable\nworld, but which 'torment me ever with invitations to their own\ninaccessible home.'\"\n\nI have transcribed this extract from my earlier diary, not because I\nthink there is anything in it worth preservation, but because I believe\nit very aptly illustrates the suitability of the punishment meted out\nto me in hell to my own peculiar temperament. I was one of those who\nlived only in thought. \"The world is a dream,\" I said, \"things and\npersons are but dreams, and exist for me only in my thought of them.\"\nHence to make my punishment a _thought_, to confront me with the memory\nof my crime and of its consequences, and to leave me thus hell-haunted\nby the cry of an awakened conscience, was to inflict a torment upon me\na thousand-fold more terrible than material pain.\n\nTo those, however, who think with Heine, that \"mental torture is more\neasily to be endured than physical pain,\" I have a word to say. When I\nwas in hell, I saw there the souls of men and women whom I had known in\nlife, and I learnt something of the nature of their sufferings. Unlike\nmy own, that punishment was, in many cases, not mental but physical;\nand to those who are incapable of realizing what agony a thought\ncan bring, let me say that hell has too its bodily punishment, and\npunishment from which there is no escape.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n_MAKE AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY IN HELL, AND MEET WITH AN OLD\nACQUAINTANCE._\n\n \"The servants said unto Him, Wilt Thou then that we go and gather\n them up? But He said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye\n root up also the wheat with them. _Let both grow together until the\n harvest._\"--Matt. xiii. 28, 29, 30.\n\n\nI come now to what I think is the strangest part of my story. \"When\nany one dies,\" I had been told in childhood, \"he goes to one or the\nother of two places--either to hell or to heaven--according to whether\nhe has been a good or bad man,\" and I recollect being not a little\ntroubled in my childish mind as to what became of the people whose\nvirtues were about equally matched with their vices (as I had even then\ndiscovered was not seldom the case), and whose chances between hell and\nheaven were what we used to call in my schoolboy days (I do not say it\nirreverently) a \"toss-up.\"\n\n\"Even God must be puzzled sometimes,\" I used to think to myself, \"to\nknow what to do with the folk who are not wicked enough for hell, but\na little too bad for heaven.\" Once after I had been taken to hear a\nlong evangelical sermon, I thought I saw a way out of the difficulty by\nassuming that when God \"weighed\" a man (I use the phraseology of the\nsermon referred to, and I remember that not being clear as to how much\nof the language was figurative or otherwise I had an idea that souls\nreally were weighed in some sort of celestial balance) and found him\n\"wanting,\" He turned the scale in the sinner's favour by pouring in\nsome of the blood of Christ. I can recall, too, that for a day or two\nI went about fancying myself quite a juvenile theologian, until the\nconviction that even God must draw the line somewhere, set me thinking\nthat a good many folk would thus be consigned to the bad place for\ndoing that which was only a very little more wicked than was done by\nthose who were admitted to the good one.\n\nMy ideas about hell and heaven, even at the time of my death, were\nnot very clear and not very many, although I do not think they were\nmore cloudy and less practical than are the ideas entertained upon the\nsubject by other folk. I had been brought up in all the old-fashioned\northodox and scriptural notions, and \"going to heaven\" was as\ninseparable in my mind from upward motion of some sort as \"going to\nhell\" was with downward motion. Each of the places was a separate\nand distinct one--the former being situated, according to my belief,\nsomewhere in the direction of the zenith, while the latter I localized\nin the bowels of the earth, and connected in my thoughts with fire and\ndarkness. Now let me give the results of my experiences, premising\nonly that in regard to what I have to say about the after life, it\nmust be understood that I am speaking only of that ante-chamber of the\nspirit-world--that in some sense purgatory, as I am half inclined to\nhold it--into which I have had admittance.\n\nMy experiences, then, are briefly these. _The good and the bad are not\nparted, but exist together as they exist here, and heaven and hell as\nseparate places have no existence._\n\nI will tell you how I first came to discover this. I have said that\nafter my change (in the spirit-world that which we call \"death\" is\nspoken of as the \"change\") I awoke to find myself in \"hell,\" and I\nought perhaps to add that I used the word as indicating a state of\nmental or physical suffering--in my case the former--and not with any\nlocal significance.\n\nEven in hell, however, there are moments when the intensity of the\nsuffering is, for a narrow space of time at least, relaxed, and when\nthe anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed a temporary reprieve.\nSuch a moment occurred after the first awful paroxysm of self-loathing\nand torture which I experienced when my past life was made known to\nme in its true colours, and it was in this saner, and comparatively\npainless interval, that I met in the spirit realm one whom I had known\nand honoured on earth as a woman of the purest life and character.\nBeing still under the impression that I was in \"hell\" in the sense in\nwhich I had been accustomed to think of that place, I started back upon\nseeing her, and hardly noticing her words of greeting, cried out in\nastonishment, \"You here! _You!_ and in Hades!\"\n\n\"Where else should I be except where _he_ is?\" she answered quietly,\nadding, as she observed my look of evident perplexity, \"It is Arthur,\nof course, of whom I speak.\"\n\nI remembered then that when I had known her first, her only living\nrelative was a worthless brother of that name, to whom she was\npassionately attached, but who had been dead so long that I had hardly\nany recollection of him. Before I could question her further, I suppose\nshe saw something in my face which told her all that was necessary\nto be known of my own story, for she suddenly burst into tears, and\ntaking both my hands in her own with a gesture of compassionate grief,\nexclaimed, \"Forgive me my foolish and selfish forgetfulness! Oh, I am\nso, so sorry!\"\n\nIt was from her that I first gathered that even for me there was yet\nhope, and it was from her lips that I learned much of that which I have\nto tell of the spirit-world.\n\n\"Do you think,\" said she to me, when I had again expressed my wonder\nat finding that heaven and hell were not as I had supposed, separate\nplaces, \"Do you think that I could be happy anywhere separated from my\nbrother? Why, even Dives in the parable was unable to forget the five\nbrethren he had left behind him, and cried out amid the flames, asking\nthat Lazarus might be sent to warn them, lest they too should come to\nthat place of torment. Is it likely, then, that any wife, mother, or\nsister, worthy the name, would be content to settle down idle-handed in\nheaven knowing that a loved one was in hell and in agony? I know there\nare folk on earth who try to smooth out the creases that crop up in the\ncreed-roll of their convictions, by asserting that the truly regenerate\nsoul will unconditionally surrender everything to the will of God,\nand that they, for their part, are quite prepared to leave the fate\nof their erring fellow-creatures in the hands of the Creator. I don't\nsay that they are not right in so speaking, although, as far as I am\nconcerned, I have more sympathy with old Dives and his wish to warn his\nsinning brethren. But how are we to know what is the final will of God\nin regard to one's fellows? When we are satisfied that a man who has\nfallen into the water is dead, we may not unnaturally conclude that\nthe will of God, as far as this world is concerned, is that he should\ncome to an end by drowning, and we must bow to that will; but as long\nas we can see a 'kick' left in him, we feel that we must do all we can\nto bring him round again. Isn't that natural?\"\n\nI suppose I must have manifested some surprise at the plainness of her\nspeaking, for after glancing at me for a moment with an amused smile,\nand with a twinkle of her old humour (I mean that kindly eye-twinkling\nof humour which is not far removed from the trickle of a tear-drop,\nand which, for all her piety, had been a noticeable element in her\npersonality), she said, as if in reply to what was in my mind, \"No, I\ndon't speak like a sanctified spirit, do I?\"\n\nI was a little taken aback by her question, but answered that I was\nsomewhat surprised at the homeliness of her speech, but was glad to\nfind that death had left her old personality unaltered.\n\n\"Of course it has,\" she answered, \"my personality is just the old\npersonality of my earth-life, and I should not wish it to be otherwise.\nTo awaken after the change, which you call death, only to find that\none's personality had been transformed into that of another person--no\nmatter how excellent that other person might be--would not be\nimmortality but transmutation. But you were about to ask me a question\nconcerning my brother before we got upon the subject of personality,\"\nshe continued; \"you didn't put your question into words, but your looks\nexpressed it, and thoughts cannot be concealed in the spirit-world.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I had a question to ask you, and it is this: You\nknow how surprised I was to find that heaven and hell are not, as I\nsupposed, separate places. Now what is God's reason for allowing the\ngood and the bad to exist together here, as they do on earth? Is it\nbecause He shrinks from breaking up the old family-life (as it must be\nbroken, if right-doers and wrong-doers be set apart), and because He\nwould still use the influence of the good to reclaim the evil?\"\n\n\"Even that,\" she said, \"I cannot tell you, for I am a mere child in His\nkingdom. I do know that many of heaven's noblest are engaged, as I am,\nin striving to stir up souls to repentance; but whether our efforts to\nsave the sinner from his sin after death are of any avail, I cannot\nsay positively, for it has not been given me to know. We are told that\nafter His death our crucified Lord preached to the spirits in prison;\nand although the theologians will explain it all away for you if you\nwill let them, I believe that He came here to hell in search of the\nso-called lost, and I don't think I can be doing anything opposed to\nHis will, in trying all I can to save my brother.\"\n\n\"When you and I were on earth together,\" she continued, after a pause,\n\"you once sent me a copy of the _Contemporary Review_, containing\nan article written by Dr. Knighton. The name of the article was\n'Conversations with Carlyle,' and the writer related one conversation\nin which I was very much interested, and which I have often thought of\nsince. I read it so many times, that I think I can remember it word for\nword.\n\n\"'I was going to tell you about an Indian poem which some one sent me\ntranslated,' said Carlyle. 'I think it was called the \"Mahabarat.\" It\ndescribes seven sons as going off to seek their fortunes. They all go\ndifferent ways, and six of them land in hell after many adventures.\nThe seventh is of nobler seed; he perseveres, fights his way manfully\nthrough great trials. His faithful dog, an ugly little monster, but\nvery faithful, dies at last. He, himself, fainting, and well-nigh\ndespairing, meets an old man, Indra disguised, who offers to open for\nhim the gates of heaven. \"But where are my brothers?\" he asks; \"are\nthey there?\" \"No, they are all in hell.\" \"Then I will go to hell too,\nand stop with them, unless you get them out.\" So saying, he turns\noff and trudges away. Indra pities him, and gets his brothers out of\nhell. The six enter heaven first, the seventh stops. \"My poor faithful\ndog,\" says he; \"I will not leave him.\" Indra remonstrates, but it is\nuseless. The faithful dog, ugly as he was, is too well remembered,\nand he will not have paradise without it. He succeeds finally, Indra\nrelents, and lets even the dog in. But, sir,' added Carlyle, 'there is\nmore pathos about that dog than in a thousand of our modern novels,\npathos enough to make a man sit down and cry almost.'\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I remember the story well. I wonder what old Carlyle\nwould say about it now? Have you ever seen him here? or Emerson? or\nRichter? or Robertson of Brighton?\"\n\n\"Robertson!\" she answered; \"as yet I know only one of the many circles\ninto which the spirit-world seems naturally to resolve it; but I\nsuspect that if you and I could see where Robertson is, we should find\nhim infinitely nearer to the Father-heart of the universe than I at\nleast can for countless ages ever hope to attain!\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'circles'?\" I said. \"Am I to understand that there\nis a kind of sifting and sorting process going on, by which each human\nsoul is, on its arrival here, assigned a fitting place and level among\nhis or her spiritual fellows?\"\n\n\"I don't know that I should express it quite in those words,\" she\nanswered, \"although I cannot think just now of a less clumsy way of\nputting it, but there is some such gathering of like to like as that of\nwhich you speak. The majority begin, as we did, in this lower circle,\nand remain here until they are fitted to move onward to a higher\nsphere. Others take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some\nfew are led into the Holy Presence straightway. To die is not to close\nthe eyes on earth merely to open them the next minute in heaven; it\nis not a sudden transition from darkness to light, or from light to\ndarkness. No, it is a slow and gradual awakening, for no human soul\ncould bear so sudden a shock. Your own transition was, comparatively\nspeaking, an exceptionally rapid one, but I know of some who have\nbeen 'changed' for a quarter of a century, and are only now becoming\nconscious of the fact. Of one thing you may be certain, and that is\nthat God is never in a hurry in the education of a human soul. He works\nin this world as in the natural one, not by fits and starts and sudden\nconvulsions, but by slow and imperceptible developments, and none but\nHimself knows what He is going to make of us before He has done--if\nindeed He ever will have done, which I question. Whatever sphere of\nwork He may assign to us here is the one for which He has all along\nbeen preparing us. Our Saviour told the disciples that in His Father's\nhouse were many mansions, not one big one where they were all to dwell\ntogether, but 'many mansions,' and that He went to prepare a place for\nthem; and you may be positive that He would not so have spoken were not\nsome individual preparation necessary.\n\n\"I do not know in which of these 'mansions of the blest' Frederick\nRobertson, of whom you ask, is now dwelling, but you must not\nthink because his spiritual circle is far removed from mine that\nall communication and companionship are cut off between us. On the\ncontrary, he is often, very often, here, and I have not seldom held\nsoul-communion with him and felt his spirit near to me. This circle,\nhowever, is but the outer edge of the spirit-world--only one step,\nindeed, removed from the life of the earth and of the body--and I don't\nthink we are capable yet of understanding the finer distinctions of\nspiritual companionship.\" And then her voice seemed to sound to me like\nthe voice of one in the far distance, I felt the darkness closing in\nupon me on every side, and knew that my hour of punishment was again at\nhand.\n\nUpon the details of that punishment it would serve no good purpose\nagain to dwell, and if in the next two or three chapters I make only\na passing allusion to my subsequent sufferings in Hades, the reader\nmust understand that it is not because those sufferings had in any way\nceased to be, but because I wish to put more prominently forward the\nsingular facts in regard to the condition of others, which came to my\nknowledge during the time of my sojourning in the spirit-world. That\nthese facts were not without their own influence in bringing about\nthe change in myself, hereafter to be described, will, I think, be\napparent to all, but that change I shall not attempt to trace out, step\nby step, to its ultimate development. It is of what I saw and heard,\nrather than of what I endured, that I now come to speak, and although\nmy recollections are all too disconnected and fragmentary I give those\nrecollections just as they still linger in my memory, and without\nattempting to follow too closely the narrative of my own personal\ndoings in Hades.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\n_I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN\nTHE NATURE OF A SERMON._\n\n  \"They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,\n    They go to church on Sunday;\n  And many are afraid of God,\n    And more of Mrs. Grundy.\"\n\n\nIt is a long time ago since Religion first took to preaching at the\nWorld, and now at last the World has grown wearied of it, and has\ntaken in her turn to preaching at Religion; and in this verse by Mr.\nLocker-Lampson she has a text which is sternly, trenchantly, grimly\ntrue in its satire. I know there are folk who affect to be scandalized\nat what they consider an irreverence, but I for one can recall no\nsermon in which the worldliness and the worthlessness of many so-called\nChristians have received as terrible a rebuke as they have in these\nlines by a writer of _vers de soci\u00e9t\u00e9_.\n\nI will tell you why I have introduced this topic into my diary. When\nI was in hell, I saw one there whom, save for his averted looks and\npitiable endeavours to escape my observation, I should probably have\npassed unnoticed. He was one of those at whom the verse I have quoted\nis directed. His pitfall in life had been nothing more vicious than\nvanity. He was a coward who was so blind in his cowardice that he\nfeared God less than he feared Mrs. Grundy, and who, in order to\nsecure the approval of man, had not scrupled to do that which he knew\nwas hateful to his Maker. His life had been a living lie. Love of\napprobation was so strong in him that he was never happy except in\nperpetually posing and in endeavouring to pass himself off for that\nwhich he knew he was not. And with what result? That he had spent his\ndays in preparing for himself his punishment. The one and only aim of\nhis existence had been to win the approval of others, and, lo! one\nmorning he awoke in Hades to find himself the despised of the despised\nand the laughing stock of the very Devil. He had so pandered to his\nlove of approbation that it had grown at last into a disease, and I saw\nfew more pitiable sights in my wanderings than that of this wretched\ncreature, slinking shamefacedly through hell, and wincing, as from a\nblow, at the glance of every passer.\n\nOf all vices none is so vindictive to its wretched victim as vanity.\nIt is continually craving for the wherewithal to gratify its insatiate\nappetite, whilst growing but the hungrier for a meal. The very\nclamorousness of its demands not seldom defeats its own purpose, for\nsooner or later it is sure to be discovered, and none of us honour\nthe man whom we suspect of \"jumping\" to gain our good opinion. Of the\npower which vanity may acquire over a human soul I read lately an awful\ninstance. We are told that the last emotion visible on the face of\nPranzini, the French murderer, as he stood waiting to be despatched\ninto eternity, was a simper of gratified vanity (and what share vanity\nhad in bringing him to that scaffold only He who reads all hearts\ncan tell) at being the prominent object of interest to so large and\ndistinguished an assembly. And that as he was about to step with blood\nupon his soul into the presence of the Great Avenger!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Men create their God after their own image,\" says Mr. Stigand in his\n\"Life of Heine\"; and it is a fact that the conception of God changes\nwith the manners and morals of a people. To our Puritan forefathers\nHe was a just but awful Judge, who, from His home in the vast abysses\nof space, kept an unwinking watch upon us, His creatures, and, with\neyes of telescopic minuteness, noted every breach of His commandments,\nin order that He might visit it with a fiery and fearful vengeance.\nThat man-created God is no more: He is dead, and another God reigns\nin His stead; but in our natural reaction from the conception of the\nvindictive God of past generations, we have come, in these days, to\nlose sight of the fact that our God is a chastening one. Not only have\nwe turned a deaf ear to the thunders and the threats of old-fashioned\northodoxy, with its talk of everlasting punishment and lakes of\nbrimstone, but many of us _pooh-pooh_ the thought of a hell at all,\nand speak of God as though He were a good-natured and weakly-indulgent\nparent, on whose leniency we might lightly presume, forgetting that\nsin--unrepented sin--never can and never must go unpunished.\n\nIt was in this contemptuously indifferent way that one whom I knew\nwell on earth was accustomed to speak. He was a man of free and open\ndisposition, with a perfect genius for friendship, but his life would\nnot bear too close an inquiry. I remember his being warned in my\npresence of the punishment which must await the course he was pursuing,\nand his answering, as I had often heard him answer before, that even\nif he _were_ on the road to hell (if, indeed, such a place existed,\nwhich he was inclined to doubt), he had at least the consolation of\nknowing that plenty of other \"good fellows\" were bound for the same\ndestination, and that he was quite sure that he should feel more at\nhome among the sinners in hell than he should among the saints in\nheaven.\n\nWell, when I was in hell, I saw a sight there which is worth recording\nas an example of the ingenuity of the Devil in apportioning to each\nperson the punishment best fitted to his individual case. I say \"of\nthe Devil,\" because I learned that he has a part (under certain\nrestrictions and by Divine permission) in the imposition of necessary\nchastisement, and he is therefore an unwitting worker in the kingdom of\nheaven. He has indeed been such a worker from the beginning, for in\nspite of his serpent-like cunning and subtlety, he was the first fool,\nand will be the last. The acknowledged and ancient enemy of God, he is\nand has been playing into the hands of the Almighty for ages, and among\nall fools none is so simple a fool as he.\n\nThe sight, then, to which I have referred was that of a desolate plain,\nlow-lying and unlighted, and in the centre of it there roamed one who\ncalled out ever and anon, as if in search of a companion, but to whom\nthere came no answer save the distant echo of his own cry. A more\nlonely and lifeless spot I have never seen. The silence which brooded\nover the place seemed sometimes to oppress the forsaken wanderer like a\npresence, for, with a half-affrighted and despairing cry, he set off at\na panic-stricken run, as if seeking to escape this silence by flight;\nbut, notwithstanding his haste, he made, I observed, no progress, for\nhe was but moving round and round in one continuous ring. Of this,\nhowever, he seemed unaware; for once, when he passed near me, I heard\nhim cry out as if in despair, \"Is there no living soul in all this void\nand voiceless desert?\" And, as he hurried by, and I caught a sight of\nhis face, I saw that it was the face of the man who had said that hell\nwould not be hell to him so long as he and his boon companions were\ntogether.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother former acquaintance that I met there interested me even more.\nHe was a man whom I had always regarded as deeply religious, and his\npresence in hell (by which I mean as one who was undergoing punishment)\nwas to me the greater cause for surprise.\n\n\"What is it,\" I said to him, \"that brings you here? not impurity,\nsurely? and I cannot think of any other reason.\"\n\n\"No,\" he answered, \"it is not impurity, for that was never one of my\nfailings. To this day, I am unable to understand the relish with which\nmost young men (and occasionally, be it said with shame, those who\nare not young) listen to the kind of conversation which is current\nsometimes in the smoking-room. We hold our handkerchiefs to our noses\nwhen we pass a place where there is an unpleasant odour, and turn\nhastily away if we come upon a repulsive sight; and impure talk affects\nme always as does a disgusting object or a nauseous smell.\n\n\"You are surprised at finding me here in hell, because you have always\nbelieved me to be one who thought much and felt deeply on religious\nsubjects. But you forget that to have religious feeling, and to act\nupon religious principle, are in many ways distinct. There are men who,\nthough they are naturally incapable of lofty thought, would scorn to\ndo anything immoral or mean; and, on the other hand, there are men who\nfeel intensely on all religious subjects, who pray fervently and often,\nsing hymns with eyes streaming with tears of heartfelt earnestness,\nand yet their actions are not seldom unworthy, and their lives will\nnot bear too close an inquiry. 'There is no self-delusion more fatal,'\nas Mr. Lowell has said, 'than that which makes the conscience dreamy\nwith the anodyne of lofty sentiment, while the life is grovelling and\nsensual.' It is a delusion which bids a man close his eyes lest he see\nwhere he is going; it comes to him with its harlot-beauties daintily\ndraped in the robes of an angel of light, and sings hymns before the\nvery gates of hell. It is because I am one who so deluded, or who\ntried so to delude himself, that you and I meet here to-day. We set\nout together with the broad path and the narrow path before us. You,\nby one fatal and irrevocable step, swerved to the broad path from\nthe narrow, and that single step plunged you headlong and hopeless\ninto this abyss. And I, well, I appeared to myself and to others to\nbe walking in the narrow way; and yet, by the making of continual\ndivergences, so trifling as to seem of but little or no account, I\nfind myself eventually in the same awful abyss that you are in, and\non a level fully as loathsome as your own. Though I have committed no\nsuch crime as you have committed, I was, in the petty details of my\ndaily life, habitually untrue; and so the time came at last, in which,\nwith every desire to serve God faithfully and to follow the dictates\nof conscience, I found that the power to make my will subservient to\nmy wishes had slipped unnoticed from me. Habit has the strength of a\ngiant, for good as well as for evil, and the will to do right on every\noccasion is as much a matter of training as is mere physical strength.\nThe man who is habitually untrue in small things, cannot, even though\nhe wish it, do right in great ones, any more than the man of untrained\nmuscle can, by a mere exercise of volition, lift weights which would\ntry the practised athlete. The only way in which to become Christlike\nis not to endeavour to feel so, not to seek to arouse sentiment or\nemotion (as drunkards fly for strength to stimulants), but to make\nChristliness the persistent and unconditional _habit_ of our lives. We\nmust learn day by day to resist the first rising of a desire to do,\nor to say, or to think, that which we know diverges by the hundredth\npart of an inch from the path which conscience would have us to walk;\nand we must so school ourselves that we can, by sheer force of will,\nrise above the mood of the moment, so that we act not by impulse or by\ninclination, but by conscience.\"\n\nHe stopped, and, reading my thoughts, said, in reply to them: \"Yes,\nthere is, indeed, something grimly humorous in my setting up to\npreach to others; but it cost me my hope of heaven, and a lifetime,\nto learn the lesson, and God knows I have it by heart at last! One\nmore illustration and I have done. Let us suppose that you and I are\nstanding on the deck of a ship which is steering straight for a certain\nhaven, and that you put your hand on the helm and shift her a fraction\nof an inch from the line on which she is running. The angle at which\nyou have swerved from that line may be so utterly infinitesimal that it\nmight be measured by a hair's breadth, but let that angle be carried\nout to its ultimate destination, and you will be borne miles and miles\naway from the harbour for which you are bound.\n\n\"Remember, then, when next you are called upon to make choice, be\nit in never so trifling a matter, between good and evil, between\nobeying conscience or disobeying her, that you are choosing in that\nmoment between hell and between heaven, not for to-day, this week, or\nto-morrow, but for eternity!\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\n_A LOVE STORY IN HELL._\n\n  \"And shall my sense pierce love,--the last relay\n  And ultimate outpost of eternity?\"--D.G. Rossetti.\n\n\nSome years ago, a near relative of mine, the editor of a certain paper,\nwas taken seriously ill, and was told by the doctors that complete\nrest was absolutely necessary for his recovery. As I had frequently\nassisted him in the preparation of \"copy,\" and was acquainted with the\nroutine of his office, it was arranged that I should attend on certain\ndays in each week, and be answerable for the work during his absence.\nThe journal was one which was made up largely of extracts from other\npapers, and my duties consisted less in the selection of original\nmatter, than in the more prosaic plying of paste-brush and scissors;\nbut the number of manuscripts received was large, and for a week or two\nat least I tried conscientiously to give each separate packet something\nlike a fair consideration. I remember that the very first manuscript on\nwhich I was called to pronounce judgment was one entitled, \"The Strange\nConfessions of a Bachelor.\" It is too lengthy to be printed here in\nfull, but as the love-story from which my chapter takes its heading\nwas largely attributable to the publication of this manuscript, I have\ntranscribed some paragraphs from it, which I think will serve to give\nthe reader a general idea of its tone.\n\n\nThe Strange Confessions of a Bachelor.\n\n\"Yes, I am in love, although as yet I could not tell what the name of\nmy love is or will be. But in every inspired poem or perfect picture,\nin the soaring and sobbing of music, in sunrise and sunset, or in the\nsighing of the wind upon my cheek, there is something which speaks to\nme of her, and which beckons my spirit forth in search of her, as if by\nthe leading of an unseen hand. And sometimes, but only in my dreaming,\nmusing moments, my thoughts, as they wander forth into the blue expanse\naround me, take colour and shape, and I see her standing by a tiny cot\nin a cosy room where the warm firelight flickers on walls gay with\npictures. I see her bend with eyes that brim with tears of blessing to\nfold two dimpled hands together, and to listen to a baby voice which\nwhispers after hers the hallowed words to 'Our Father in Heaven.' And\nas the little voice dies away into the holy hush of the last Amen, and\nthe little lids droop like the petals of a primrose over the tired\neyes, my dream-picture changes again, and I am rambling among the walks\nI love so well, but no longer alone, no longer wrapt in melancholy\nmusing for--now trudging cheerily along with hand clasped fast in mine\nand face upturned to listen, now darting bird-like aside in search of\nfly or flower--there journeys ever with me my little son and hers. We\nwander merrily through that sunny stretch of meadow--the children's\nmeadow, as we call it--where the grass grows lush and long, and where\nthe blithe day through the skylark ever sings and soars; we cross the\nstile and enter the shady shelter of the 'Lover's Lane,' dark, as it\nalways is, with the dense green of overarching ash and hazel, and then\nwe reach that sunny, wind-swept and sloping hillside, where he and I\nlove to linger, watching the slow sailing of stately clouds above, or\nlistening to the tinkle and purl of the brooklet which ripples over\nthe pebbles in the valley far below. In the joyous wonder of the child\nheart beside me at all that is beautiful in this beautiful world, I\nforget the books and the making of books with which my brain is busied;\nand when the first flush of rapture is over and the little brain has\nsobered into calm, I tell my boy of the Brother-Lord who loves him, and\nwho was once such a little child as he, and of the dear Lord-Father by\nwhom all that is beautiful was made.\"\n\nThe writer of the \"Confessions\" then goes on to speak of love, and of\nthe woman he loves; but as his concluding paragraph will sufficiently\nserve to give an idea of his thoughts on the subject, it is hardly\nnecessary to quote the passage in full. \"Yes, I love her, I love her\ntruly, and she too loves me, or will. It is not blind love, or foolish\nidolatry. She knows all my faults--the pitiful paltriness of my life,\nthe selfish acts and foolish words, the vanity and the vice--she knows\nthem all, and yet she loves me, me, not them, but the true me which\nthese faults cannot altogether conceal from her, for she knows that\nthey are not my life, but the trouble of it. So also is my love for\nher. I love her not only for her present self, but for the sake of the\nself she is seeking to be--the self which in some measure indeed she\nnow is; for that which in our truer moments we have striven to be; the\nIdeal upon which our eyes are ever fixed, to which (no matter how\nsorely we may have sinned against it in the struggle of the day) our\nthoughts return at night with but the more unutterable if despairing\nlonging and love--_that_ in some manner we are, and shall be,\nnotwithstanding our ever-recurrent failure and sin.\n\n\"I do not ask or expect that she shall be always true to her high\nideal, for I know that to none of us is it given to walk with\nunfaltering feet. I remember, too, that she is no angel, but a woman\nwith womanly weakness and human faults, for all of which I am touched\nwith true and tender sympathy, to love her not the less, but the more.\nBut that she should _have_ such an ideal, and be capable of such an\naim--for that reason, if for no other, I must love and honour her with\nthe deepest love and honour of my soul. I am not so blind as to suppose\nit will be all summer and sunshine in the life which she and I will, I\nhope, one day lead together. I know my own evil nature too well not to\nbe aware that there will be times when she will find it hard to prevent\nlove being turned into loathing and confidence into contempt; and I\nthink, with sinking of spirit, of the sore disappointment she will feel\nwhen she finds what a shabby-souled common-place creature her husband\nis, compared with the being into whom her love had idealized him. At\nsuch times of despondency, however, I try to remember what Miss Muloch\nhas said about wedded life--and who has written more helpful words than\nshe? 'I would have every woman marry,' she says, 'not merely liking a\nman well enough to accept him as a husband, but loving him so wholly\nthat, wedded or not, she feels she is at heart his wife, and none\nother's, to the end of her life. So faithful that she can see all his\nlittle faults (though she takes care no one else shall see them), yet\nwould as soon think of loving him the less for these, as of ceasing to\nlook up to heaven because there are a few clouds in the sky. So true\nand so fond that she needs neither to vex him with her constancy nor\nburden him with her love, since both are self-existent and entirely\nindependent of anything he gives or takes away. Thus she will marry\nneither from liking nor esteem, nor gratitude for his love, but from\nthe fulness of her own. If they never marry, as sometimes happens ...\nGod will cause them to meet in the next existence. They cannot be\nparted; they belong to one another.'\n\n\"These are helpful words, and true; but there is a passage by poor\nGeorge Eliot (alas for that adjective!), which to me is still more\nbeautiful, and with which I cannot do better than conclude. 'What\ngreater thing is there,' she says, 'for two human souls, than to feel\nthat they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labour,\nto rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all\npain,' and, 'to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories\nat the moment of the last parting?'\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI was interested in this article as well as in the writer, and asked\nhim for further contributions. He responded by sending a couple of\nsonnets, and although the \"swing of his arm\" was, to quote Rossetti,\n\"freer in prose than in verse,\" I accepted, and printed them in the\njournal of which I had charge. When I came to know him afterwards, I\nfound that he was young, and of that highly-strung nervous and poetic\ntemperament which often proves little less than a calamity to its\npossessor. A more morbidly sensitive being I never met. The emotional\npart of his nature seemed in excess, and he felt all--the small as\nwell as the great, the pleasant as well as the painful--intensely. His\nnervous vitality was too near the surface. He was easily \"worked-up,\"\nand took life, or rather its incidents, too seriously. The one\nintellectual thing which men of such a temperament would be wise to\nrefrain from doing, is not seldom the very thing they do--abandon\nthemselves passionately to the pursuit of poetry. After that there is\nlittle hope for them. The world may be the richer by many a work of\nart, but from thenceforth and for ever Sorrow will have them for her\nown. \"Poetry strikes as nothing else does, deep into the roots of\nthings,\" says Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and \"one finds everywhere some\nstrain at the roots of one's heart.\" Moreover, the pursuit of poetry\nis a practice which as surely grows upon one as does the use of drug\nor opiate, and my advice to the men and women of a highly-strung and\nsupersensitive temperament--if they wish to make comfort their first\nconsideration--is, \"Avoid poetry as you would poison, making instead\na study of that which is animal and coarse. Music and all other\n'softening' influences you will, in accordance with the contention\nof Plato in 'The Republic,' deliberately eschew, striving rather\nto acquire that delightful pachydermatous condition of feeling and\nenviable indifference to the susceptibilities of others, which add so\nimmeasurably to the comfort of life.\"\n\nHowever, to return to the writer of \"The Strange Confessions.\" The\nnumber of the journal containing his article had not been published\nmore than a couple of days, before I received a letter signed by a\nlady who was unknown to me, asking that I would favour her with the\naddress of the contributor. I replied, of course, that I could not\ndo so without his permission, but that if she wished to be put into\ncommunication with him, and would send a letter addressed to the office\nof the paper, it should be duly forwarded. She did so, and when, as\nwas natural enough, he wrote a cordial reply, she found something\nelse in his letter about which to question him, and a correspondence\nconsequently ensued. Whether she was or was not a heartless and\naccomplished flirt I never knew; but if ever a woman deliberately\nset herself to win, and--as subsequent events showed--to break a\nman's heart, it was this lady. I learned afterwards that she was very\nbeautiful, and as she herself wrote occasional tales and verses for\nthe magazines, it was not to be wondered at that my contributor should\nbe greatly interested in her epistles. She succeeded before long in\nmaking his acquaintance, and set herself to carry on in earnest the\nwork which her insinuating letters had begun. She did not, however,\nfind him quite the easy prey which she had perhaps expected; for though\nit is certain that he loved her from the moment of meeting, he was shy\nand self-depreciatory, and sought persistently to avoid her. But she\npaused at nothing to effect her purpose. She had set her heart upon \"a\nscalp,\" and by looks, words, and deeds, she strove to convince him that\nshe loved him, and strove at last successfully. I remember meeting him\none morning, and thinking, as I watched the light which came into his\nface when he spoke of her, of the graceful lines in Mr. Austin Dobson's\n\"Story of Rosina.\" In the poem, however, it is the woman, and not the\nman, who is heart-broken:--\n\n  \"As for the girl, she turned to her new being,\n    Came, as a bird that hears its fellow call;\n  Blessed as the blind that blesses God for seeing;\n    Grew as a flower on which the sun-rays fall,\n  Loved if you will; she never named it so;\n    Love comes unseen, we only see it go.\"\n\nWhen I saw him again all was over. I had sought him out in his\nchambers, not having heard from him for a month, and he did not hear\nme enter. Her portrait (the one she had given him) was before him, and\nhe had fallen by the table, half-kneeling, half-lying, with his head\non his arm. It is a fearful thing to hear a strong man sob as he was\nsobbing then! God grant that I may never hear another, or see a face of\nsuch hopeless haggard misery as was his when he raised it!\n\nIt is not of him, however, that I wish now to speak, but of her. Of\nall the faces which I saw in hell, there was one which had for me a\nfascination beyond any other. It was the face of a beautiful woman,\nqueenly of manner and fair of figure as a full-blown lily, and with\nthose deep dark eyes that _seem_ to shine out from soul-depths, deep as\nthe distant heaven, and yet _may_ mean no more than does the shallow\nfacing of quicksilver behind a milliner's mirror. I recognised her\ninstantly by the portrait, and never out of hell have I seen such\nmisery on any woman's face as I saw on hers. The sentence in punishment\nof her sin was a strange one. It was that she should now love him\nwhose heart she had broken, with the same passionately intense but\nhopeless love with which he had loved her. It was a just but awful\nretribution. As some death-stricken and hunted creature presses\nfrantically on as if to escape the arrow that it carries in its breast,\nso, heedless of all that was passing around her, heedless of shadow or\nshine, she pressed on and on through the realms of hell, her eyes fixed\nand wide-distended in agony, and her hands clutching ceaselessly at\nher bosom, as if the heart of her were being riven in twain. \"O God!\"\nI heard her cry, as she passed me, \"my heart is broken! my heart is\nbroken! and, alas, one cannot die of a broken heart in hell.\"\n\nI saw her once again. She had fallen to the ground, and with hopeless\nhands pressed against burning brows was writhing as if in physical\npain, and with her very soul consumed of passion. One whom I knew--it\nwas his sister--was kneeling beside her, and with gentle words\nbesought her to calm herself, but she pushed the ministering hand away\ndespairingly, crying out: \"A heart cannot break as mine is breaking\nwithout a shriek. If I had loved him, and he me, and he had died,\" she\nsaid, \"I could have borne it, knowing that I should meet him hereafter,\nbut to live loveless through a loveless Eternity, _that_ is the thought\nwhich kills me;\" and then with a great cry of, \"Oh! why should a\nmerciful God let any of His creatures suffer as I am suffering now?\"\nshe rose up, and fled away before me.\n\nI never saw her again, nor do I know whether or not it was given her\nto win back the love she had lost; but, after she had gone, I turned\nto his sister--the woman who had striven to comfort her brother's\nbetrayer--saying that I thought the punishment greater than the sin.\n\n\"Greater than the sin!\" was the reply. \"It may be that, being his\nsister, I judge her harshly; but if yours is the most awful crime which\nyour sex can commit against womanhood, then it seems to me that hers--a\nlike breach of trust--is the blackest sin which a woman can commit\nagainst a man. Nor can it be said of hers that it was the deed of a\nmoment--a moment of over-mastering passion, for it was deliberate and\ncruel. I say that that woman killed my brother!\" she cried fiercely;\n\"killed him body and soul, and sent him away heart-broken, and bereft\nof faith in womanhood and in God. And to gratify what? her vanity--a\npassion as selfish and hateful, if less brutal, than your own. You\nhave recognised the loathsomeness of your act; but she, God help her!\nthinks of nothing but herself, and while she so thinks, heaven itself\nwould be but hell to her, and in all hell there is as yet for her no\nhope of heaven.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\n_THE MYSTERY OF \"THE DEAD WHO DIE.\"_\n\n \"Of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such abject\n horror and dread as the mystery of 'the dead who die.'\"\n\n      \"Through many days they toil; then comes a day\n    They die not,--never having lived,--but cease;\n  And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.\"\n\n  _Rossetti_--\"The Choice.\"\n\n\nIt may occur to those of my readers who have neglected to bear in mind\nthe concluding words of Chapter VIII., that notwithstanding the remorse\nwhich I have pictured myself as suffering in Hades, I do not appear\nto have been altogether indifferent to the consolations of social\nintercourse, and that existence in the Unseen, as represented in the\npages of this diary, would seem to consist largely of conversation\nbetween the \"spirits in prison.\" But because I have confined myself in\nmy last three chapters to the relation of such facts in regard to the\ncondition of others, as, either through observation or conversation,\ncame to my knowledge in the course of my singular experiences, it must\nnot be supposed that my own sufferings had in any way ceased. What\nthose sufferings were as described by me in my sixth chapter, they\ncontinued to be during the whole of the time in which it was ordained\nthat I should remain in Hades, and each of the conversations here\nrecorded took place during that comparatively painless interval of\nwhich I have elsewhere spoken, and was separated from the conversation\npreceding or following it by a space of terrible pain. With which\nnecessary reminder I pass on to tell of \"the dead who die.\"\n\nDuring the time of my wanderings in the spirit world, it happened that\nI had occasion to speak to one to whom I was personally unknown, but\nwho had lived for many years in a country town in which I had myself\nonce resided. Though comparatively guiltless, as I learned he was, of\nany criminal offence, he seemed to be incessantly consumed by a spirit\nof strange unrest, and I noticed that, even in his moments of reprieve,\nhe appeared unable to free himself from some singularly disturbing\nthought. I was aware that he had at one time been intimate with a\nformer neighbour of mine, and something in our conversation recalling\nthis man's name to my memory I asked my companion if he knew \"what had\nbecome of Henry Marshall?\"\n\nThe words had scarcely fallen from my lips before there passed over his\nfeatures a spasm of uncontrollable fear, and with a quick gasping cry,\nand covering his face with his hand, as if to shut out some ghastly\nvision, he exclaimed: \"He is dead; he is dead--but why do you speak of\nhim? Know you not that he is of the dead who die?\"\n\n\"Of the dead who die?\" I repeated wonderingly; \"I do not understand\nyou. Surely all who are dead must die?\"\n\nTo this he made no answer, and seeing that he was strangely moved, I\nforbore to question him further, but by-and-by he became calmer and of\nhis own accord continued the conversation.\n\n\"You asked me about Henry Marshall,\" he said, \"and I will tell you\nall I know about him; but first let me explain that, next to the love\nof money which has been my ruin, my sorest hindrance on earth was my\nunbelief and faithlessness; and that here in hell the punishment of\nthe unbeliever is that he shall be consumed by the anguish of his own\nunbelief. Once when I _might_ have believed, I would not, and now,\nthough I would believe, I cannot, but am for ever torn by hideous\napprehensions and doubts as to my own future and the future of those\ndear to me. Moreover, there are many things which, clear and plain\nas they may be to the faithful of heart and to the believing, are to\nmy doubting eyes wrapt around in mystery and in gloom. Into these\nmysteries it has been ordained as part of my punishment that I shall\never desire to look, and of all these mysteries there is not one which\nfills me with such abject horror and dread as the mystery of the dead\nwho die.\"\n\n\"Of the dead who die?\" I said again; \"what do you mean by those strange\nwords?\"\n\n\"They are my words,\" he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh,\n\"mine, mine; the words I use to myself when I think of the mystery\nwhich they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all\ntheir cunning I have discovered. Listen, and I will tell you about it.\nWhen I first came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces\nof most of the dead whom I had known on earth, but some faces there\nwere (Henry Marshall's was one of them) which I missed, and which from\nthat time to this I have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked\nmyself, 'since neither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has\nGod some fearful fate in store for the sinner, which may one day fall\nupon me and mine, as it has already fallen upon them?' As I felt the\nshadow of that dark misgiving resting on my heart, I knew that for me\nanother horror had arisen in hell, and that rest thenceforth there\ncould be none until I had solved the mystery.\n\n\"And so it came about that all the moments of my release from suffering\nwere spent in the search for those missing faces. Sometimes I took\ncounsel with those who were in hell as I was, but they could teach\nme only that which I already knew; sometimes I asked the help of the\nsouls in Paradise, but they told me nothing save that I must be no more\nfaithless but believing. And then I sought to know of the angels where\nwere those lost ones, but with a look of sad and pitiful meaning, they\npassed on and left me unanswered. Ah! but they could not hide their\nsecrets from me! No, no, I was not one of the credulous, nor was I to\nbe put off with a frown, and I have found out their mystery, and you\nshall share it.\n\n\"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is\nmade in the image of God, and is born with an immortal soul. But they\ndid not tell us that just as neglected diseases can kill the body, so\nunchecked sin can kill the soul, and that we have it in our power to so\ndeface the Divine Image that we become like unto, if not lower, than\nthe beasts which perish, and die out at our deaths as they. But it is\nso, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom you asked was\n'of the dead who die.'\n\n\"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad, and that you cannot\ncredit such a statement. Well, perhaps I am mad--mad with the horror\nof my unbelief; but why should it not be as I say, I ask you? I have\nbrooded over it all a thousand times, and am convinced that I have\nsolved the riddle, and I will tell you why I think so.\n\n\"God is answerable to Himself for His actions, and when He made man,\nHe made a man, and not a puppet--a being of infinite possibilities\nfor good as well as for evil, and to whom it was given to choose for\nhimself between the doing of the right or the wrong. But God knew that\nmany of those whom He so made would sin away all memory of their Divine\norigin. God did not _will_ it so, for He made us men, not machines,\nand the evil we do is of our own choosing, but God _foreknew_ it; and,\nfore-knowing that, God owed it to Himself not to call a creature into\nbeing, the result of whose creation would be that creature's infinite\nand eternal misery. No, even the Omnipotent dared not perpetrate so\nwanton and wicked a deed as that, for God is the inexorable Judge who\nsits in judgment upon God; and hence it was that He decreed that those\nfor whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their\ndeaths like the brutes. Doesn't that seem to you a probable solution?\nand isn't it rational and feasible upon the face of it? Our life--such\nas it is--is from God, and may not God take His own again, and withdraw\nthat life if He wish it? and could anything better happen to many\npeople whom you and I know, than that they should be allowed to die\nout, and the very memory of them pass away for ever?\"\n\nI was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with\nthe horror of his unbelief; but I was interested in what he had to say,\nand in his singular fancies.\n\n\"Tell me more of these missing faces, and of the 'dead who die,'\" I\nanswered. \"Who are they, for the most part?--murderers and criminals of\nthe most bestial nature?\"\n\n\"Not always,\" he replied excitedly, \"not always; and that is the reason\nwhy I am so fearful about my own future. Most of them are those who in\ntheir lifetime were regarded as belonging to the respectable classes,\nand who, so far from having come at any time within reach of the law,\nwere looked upon as good citizens and estimable members of society.\nShall I tell you what killed the immortal soul in them, and in me, and\nturned us into mere animated clay, fit only to die out like the beasts\nwhich perish? It was money--money, the love of which is often more\ndeadening to the spiritual nature than actual vice or sin.\n\n\"I set out in life with one steadfast purpose before me--the purpose of\ndevoting myself body and soul to business and to the making of money.\nIt was not that I was indifferent to the attractions of a profession,\nand still less that I was wanting in appreciation of higher things,\nfor I liked books and pictures and music. Sometimes, too, when I was\nlistening to my sister's singing of Herrick's lines, 'To Anthea,' or to\nBen Jonson's 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' I felt bitterly the\nlittleness of my aims, and seemed to know, as I never knew at any other\ntime, what it was to love a woman with that high, whole-hearted, and\ndeathless devotion which brings redemption and ennoblement to the soul\nof the man to whom it comes. But I said to myself: 'Patience; first of\nall let me grow rich; let me make all the money I can get together, and\nthen, when I have sufficient for all my requirements, I will forsake\nthe money-making, and turn my thoughts to love and poetry and pictures;\nand through them, perhaps on to religion, for I knew even then that\nthough love and poetry are not religion, that they yet serve, before a\nhigher faith has been called into being, to keep the life of the soul\nalive, and to open up the way for holier things.\n\n\"And so I became what is called a good business man. I made business\nthe motive of my life. I thought of nothing else, and read nothing\nbut the papers, and these I only scanned for the purpose of observing\nthe influence of political or other passing events upon the markets.\nAt last I became rich. And with what result? That when I no longer\nneeded business, I found I could live no longer without it; that it had\nbecome my life, and I its slave, and that I could awaken no lasting\ninterest in anything which did not pertain to the making of money. It\nis true that I had at that time a wife and children (the former of\nwhom I had married chiefly for her fortune), and was not without a\ncertain half-selfish love for them as part and parcel of myself; that I\npossessed a handsome house and gardens in which I took pride as being\nof my own acquirement; and that I went into society with enjoyment;\nand found a certain pompous pleasure in extending my patronage to\nSunday-schools, bazaars and Young Men's Christian Associations. But\nwhere my treasure was, there my heart was also, and at heart I was\na business man, and nothing more. I did not know myself then as I\ndo now, and so far from being in any way dissatisfied, I had no more\nsuspicion that I was other than one of the most enviable of men, than\nhas the grinning savage with his handful of beads. But I know now the\nthing I am, and what I have missed, and I tell you that the most sorely\nswindled simpleton in existence is the man whose business capability\nis so keen, that though he has never been bested in a bargain, he has\nbartered away his own happiness for a bauble, and (so skilful a schemer\nto defraud us is old Satan) has become bankrupt of all that makes life\nworth the living, in order that he may boast a heavy balance at his\nbanker's!\n\n\"Yes, I was a good business man--a smart and shrewd business man, as\nbusiness men go--and I know much of such men and of their transactions;\nand I tell you that, since the days of Judas Iscariot, the money-lover\nand grubber who sold his God for thirty pieces of silver, as thousands\nare selling their infinite souls this day, there have been no more\nsoulless and selfish creatures upon God's earth, than the men who have\nmade what should be a means to an end an end in itself, and who live\n_for_ business, instead of _by_ it.\n\n\"They go to church, many of them, on Sundays, and subscribe liberally\nto coal clubs and soup kitchens, thinking, poor fools! to offer such\nacts as those as a set-off to God for the sordid self-seeking which\nhas been the secret of their success in their commercial calling;\nnever suspecting that in their respectable selfishness and sordidness\nof spirit, they are lower in the scale of being and farther from the\nkingdom of heaven than is the lurking prostitute shivering at the\nstreet corner, or the drunken sot reeling home after a night's debauch.\n\n\"That they must die out at their deaths, as do the beasts, I am\nconvinced, for what can God find for such men to do in heaven?--men to\nwhom the earth, its prototype, is nothing but a gigantic shop, and to\nwhom Music, Art, and Song are but as dead letters and foolishness; men\nwho are susceptible to no emotion save the greed for gain; and who have\nlet the infinite soul within them pine away and perish for the want of\nthe wherewithal to keep that soul alive.\n\n\"And I, I am one of them, and am of the dead who die! I have bartered\naway love and life and happiness for such Dead Sea fruit as this; I who\nonce was young, and not altogether, as I now am, a soulless creature\nof clay! For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful\nfaces and music set stirring always some strong emotion within me, in\nwhich it seemed that I saw hidden away in a crystal cell in the depths\nof my own strange heart, the shining form of a white-robed Soul-maiden,\nwho cried out to me, 'Ah! cannot you make your life as pure and\nbeautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may set me free?'\n\n\"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up body and soul to the\ngreed for gain. And often in the hour when, tempted by an evil thought,\nI turned to do some shameful or selfish action, I seemed to see the\nwhite arms of the Soul-maiden uplifted in piteous entreaty to heaven,\nuntil at last the time came when her voice was silent, and when I knew\nthat I had thrust her down and down into a darkness whence she would\nnever again come forth!\n\n\"And now nor picture, nor poem, nor music moves me more, for the soul\nof me is dead!--is dead! and I have become like unto the beasts that\nperish, and know not that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent\ntaper, and become as the dead who die!\"\n\nSo saying, he burst into a shriek of insane and unearthly laughter, and\nfoaming at the mouth like a madman, turned from me, and fled gibbering\ninto the night.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\n_I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST._\n\n\n\"You believe probably in God, in Christ, and in Immortality, and you\nlook with joy and gladness to the life beyond the grave. Probably,\ntoo, you have suffered, as we all have at some time, from bodily pain,\nmental affliction or bereavement, until your heart has been broken and\ncrushed, and you have felt that you could bear your burden no longer\nwere it not for the consolation that sorrow can last no longer than\nlife, and that the next world will set this world right. But have you\nnever asked yourself, 'How if it should _not_ be so after all? How\nif I should open my eyes in the next world to find again all the old\nsorrows, the old heart-burnings, and the thousand and one trivialities\nwhich have made this world so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable?'\nHave you never considered that the mere fact of the existence of these\nsorrows in this world--the only one of which you know anything--is in\nitself a reason why it is likely that such sorrows, or similar ones,\nshould exist in the world of which you know nothing? And have you\nnever recognised that your failures have been the life-element of your\nsuccesses, and that, since failure is the law of progress, an existence\nin which all your endeavours were successful would probably become\nmonotonous and tame?\"\n\nThe above is an extract from a letter (it lies on the desk before me)\nfrom one whom I had known in my early boyhood, and who had been for\nmany years my constant companion and friend. Had she continued to be my\ncompanion it is possible that my story might have been a different one,\nbut she went to live in America some months before I was twenty, and I\nnever saw her again until the day that she and I stood face to face in\nthe spirit-world--I in hell and she in heaven.\n\nAfter we had exchanged greetings, and each had told the other what was\nnecessary to be known of the past, the conversation turned upon the\nsubjects which we had so often discussed in our letters. \"Tell me,\" I\nsaid, \"now that you really find yourself in heaven, if you are in every\nway peacefully and perfectly happy.\"\n\n\"One moment, before I give you an answer,\" she replied. \"You are not\naltogether wrong in calling this heaven, although it is little more\nthan the ante-chamber between earth and heaven. It is my heaven at\npresent, but it will not be my heaven always, any more than it will be\nalways your hell, and although it is heaven, it is not _the_ heaven.\nOf that neither you nor I can form any shadowy conception. Now for\nyour question. There is only one thing which troubles me, and that is\nignorance. I had always thought that in the spirit-world one would know\neverything. I don't mean that I expected to find myself omniscient,\nbut I did think that I should know all one would wish to know. I need\nhardly tell you I was wrong. With whatever knowledge we have acquired\nand with whatever intellectual ability we have developed up to the\npoint of our leaving the earth-world, with that, and with no more, do\nwe make our first start in the spirit realm. I do think our capability\nof intuitionally apprehending truth is in some way intensified by\nthe transition which you speak of as death: but of intellectual\nchange there is absolutely none; and there are things relating to the\nafter-life, as well as to the earthly one, concerning which (never\nhaving studied them whilst I was in the body) I am far more ignorant\nthan are many dwellers under the sun.\"\n\n\"That I can well believe,\" I replied; \"but putting aside the fact that\nyou are troubled sometimes by a consciousness of ignorance, tell me if\nin other respects you are happy.\"\n\n\"No good can come to one of being in a place where everything is\ntoo easy,\" she answered, \"and if heaven were the abode of perfect\nhappiness--this heaven, I mean--I think we should find it somewhat\nwearisome. When I was on earth I longed for heaven, _not that I might\nbe delivered from sorrow, but from sinfulness_; and I think I may say\nthat I am as happy here as my failures will let me be.\"\n\n\"Your failures!\" I exclaimed, wonderingly, \"your failures!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"my failures. On earth failure is, as you know, the\nlaw of progress, and even here progress is only achieved through that\nwhich is, after all, in some degree a non-success. I don't quite\nknow how to make my meaning clear to you, but perhaps we can't do\nbetter than look back to the old earth-life for an illustration. That\nearth-life--the life which we lead on earth, I mean--is, as you know,\npoor, pitiable and paltry; we feel it so, we cannot but feel it so,\nwhen it is viewed in the lofty light of our possibilities. Each morning\nfinds us beginning the world afresh, and with the high hope that at\nlast the time has come when we shall be true to ourselves and to our\naspirations, that at last we shall veritably and indeed do some lasting\nwork for God and for our fellow-creatures. And each evening! ah! each\nevening! is it not ever the same sad story, ever the same old bitter\nexperience? You have spoken of it yourself in those verses you sent me\nso many years ago:\n\n  \"'Each morning hails a new Endeavour's birth,\n  Each evening weeps its pitiful corpse before.'\n\n\"Hardly has the freshness faded out of the morning air before the world\nspirit is at our side again; she is whispering in our ear; her white\nwooing arms are around us; her warm breath is on our cheek; there is\na brief,--how brief and feeble!--attempt at resistance, and then, ah!\nthen, we are broken and undone. And often as, with lips hot and dry,\nwith cheeks fevered and flushed, we look back to that serene-souled\nself, which but a few short hours ago stood in rapt adoration under the\nsilence of a midnight sky, and held high communion with its Creator, we\ncan hardly bring ourselves to believe that we and it are one and the\nsame being. Yet, in spite of the paltriness of the earth-life, in spite\nof the vice, and the shame, there is one element in the strife which\nlends dignity even to our very failures, for in our battling against\nthe ever-present evil, and in our struggle towards the ever-unattained\ngood, we come within sight of a possibility, higher, perhaps, than\nthat of which even angels can conceive. The _sin and the shame are\nafter all but human; the effort and determination to overcome them are\nDivine_.\n\n\"Well, without some sense of difficulty to be overcome, some sense even\nof comparative failure, this effort and this determination could never\nbe; and in heaven, the place of infinite progress and possibilities,\nthere is a certain Divine discontent which I know not how to explain\nbetter to you than by calling it the heavenly counterpart of this\nearthly effort.\n\n\"But now tell me about yourself,\" she said, after a moment's pause,\n\"for I can see that you have been through sore suffering since you came\nhere.\"\n\nThrough sore suffering I had indeed been, and had already grown old in\nhell, but the lines which she had quoted from my boyish verses, and\nthe words she had said about the \"divine discontent\" of heaven, had set\nstirring some hidden spring in my memory, and at the time she spoke I\nwas thinking of what Robert Louis Stevenson has said about \"that little\nbeautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and\nmourned--the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be.\" She\nmust have known what was in my thoughts, for, taking my hand in her\nown, she repeated some verses which she had written and sent to me on\nthat Easter morning (a morning which must ever shine out white and fair\nin my memory) when she and I had knelt side by side after confirmation\nto take our first communion. I remember that she called them \"This\nOnly,\" and had headed them with the words, \"Why call ye Me Lord, Lord,\nand do not the things which I say?\"\n\n  \"O feeble lips that lapse from fervent prayer,\n    To smile at sin, and lightly laugh at shame,\n  That in the chamber loud your love declare,\n    And in the world scarce dare to breathe His name,\n          Whence would _ye_ call Him Lord?\n\n  \"O changeful soul! now mounting like thin fire,\n    Skyward and Godward; now like thing of night,\n  Low-grovelling, smirched, and mid foul mud and mire\n    Trailing white pinions given for starry flight,\n          Darest _thou_ call Him Lord?\n\n  \"O morning's hope! O evening's dull despair!\n    O lofty purpose! puny, paltry deed!\n  O high resolve! heart big with longings fair!\n    O loveless life that bears nor flower nor seed!\n          Dare _ye_ to call Him Lord?\n\n  \"Yea, I would call Him Lord, and all the more\n    For this my sin, else were I sore undone;\n  Say, who should seek Him, if not I? He wore\n    This fleshy garb, yet in Him sin was none,\n          So may I call Him Lord.\n\n  \"No heaven I ask, no crystal-shining shore,\n    Nor realm of flowers--this only would I pray,\n  That mid all sinnings, stumblings sad and sore,\n    I still may cling to Thee, dear Lord, alway,\n          And still may call Thee Lord.\"\n\nShe ended, and as her voice died away into a whisper sweet and low as\nthe restful ripple of the rain, I hid my head between my hands and\nsobbed aloud, for something there was in the words and in her way of\nrepeating them, which carried me back in thought to that vanished\nseason of Youth and Hope when pictures and poetry, flowers and music,\nas well as sunrise, sunset, and the play of evening light upon the sea,\nhad seemed but as the visible embodiment of my own thoughts, and were\nindeed to me as a part of my aspiration towards a loftier, lovelier\nlife.\n\nAnd then I remembered what manner of man I was, and as the\nshadow-horror of my sin arose spectre-like between myself and my\ndistant childhood, I saw that \"little brother,\" the child that I once\nhad been, shrink back and back with sad reproachful eyes, until with a\nsudden cry of anguish and despair he turned from me, and fled into the\nnight.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\n_A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST._\n\n\n\"Do you see that young man with the dark, delicate features?\" she\ncontinued, giving an unexpected turn to the conversation. \"I mean the\none with the brown eyes that have so strange a look in them. He is a\npoet, and when he was on earth he was blind, but his songs were sad as\nthe sighing of the wind in the pine trees, and sweet with sound, and\nperfume, and the love of woman. He and I were then, as now, the most\ndevoted of friends, and it was our custom to spend one evening at least\nin each week together. Sometimes we talked of places or of pictures\n(in both of which, notwithstanding his blindness, he took a singular\ninterest), sometimes of poetry or flowers. Not seldom he would sketch\nout for me the plot of some story he was writing, and often I would\nread aloud while he sat listening with tranquil face and closed eyes in\nhis accustomed place by the fireside. I remember that on one occasion\nthe piece which we thus read together was Jean Paul's Dream of the Dead\nChrist saying there is no God, and that when next I saw my poet-friend,\nhe told me that after I had left him, he had fallen asleep, and dreamed\na dream which he spoke of as 'the most impudent piece of plagiaristic\nimitation which ever was perpetrated,' and which he called his 'Dream\nof Eternal Rest.'\n\n\"'As I sat here in the darkness which has now become to me like a house\nof which I am the only tenant,' he said, 'I fell asleep and dreamed\nthat I saw my life lying behind me like the line of phosphorescent\nlight which marks the track of a fallen star--a line traced in\ndarkness, and which arising in darkness dies away into darkness again;\nand in my dream an angel appeared unto me, and, laying his hand upon my\nshoulder, said, \"Thou who probest the mysteries of life, and peerest\ninto the time which is to be, arise, come with me, and I will show thee\nsomething of that which thou seekest.\" So saying, he stretched forth\nhis hand, which I clasped, and we set forth on our infinite journey.\n\n\"'What abysmal realms of space we passed I know not, for I was as one\nbewildered by the swiftness of our flight and by the rushing beat of\nthe angel's pinions. I remember that ever and anon there swam up\nin the darkness a gleam of light that was at first no bigger than a\nsingle star, but which, as I looked, loomed out ever larger and larger,\nand each moment seemed to double in magnitude, until I trembled lest\nit should break the bounds of the heavens; but even as I trembled,\nit swept whirling by with a sound like that of infinite thunders,\nand, receding again, lessened before my eyes as visibly as it had\nincreased, and finally dwindling to a mere point of light, died away\ninto darkness. Ere long, however, there appeared a flush in the distant\neast, and as we drew nearer I saw that, below me and afar, there lay\na land in which the sun shone with such exceeding splendour, that the\natmosphere, light-filled and luminous unto sparkling, was in colour\nlike unto the colour of a rainbow. And I saw also that the rays neither\ndazzled nor scorched, as do the rays of the earthly sun. And far as\nthe eye could reach stretched shining hills, seen through soft vistas\nof purple and gold, and sunny meadows wherein bloomed flowers beautiful\nas the blush of a maiden, and pure as an angel's thought. And winding\nin and out among the meadows ran many a rippling river; and fountains\nalso I saw, the waters of which, as they rose and fell scintillating\nlike a shower of starbeams or spray of diamonds, discoursed music\nsweeter than the sighing of \u00c6olian harps. Then as I looked yet closer,\nI saw, wandering hand in hand among the meadows, many white-clad\nfigures, whereat my soul wept for gladness; and I turned to the angel\nsaying, \"Surely this is that Heaven whereof we read and wherein I would\nrest for ever? for I am sore wearied with the toil and the labour\nof earth.\" But he answered me, \"Mortal, thou knowest not what thou\naskest. Lift up thine eyes, and see if thou beholdest aught else.\"\n\n\"'And I looked to the right hand and to the left, yet saw I only the\nsunny meadows and rivers of the land of flowers, and the blue distance\nof the bordering hills. Then I turned me round and gazed whence we\ncame, but could nothing discern save remote plains of darkness, athwart\nthe gloom of which I saw flash ever and anon (as one sees flash the\neyes of a beast at midnight) the glimmer of a moving world. Then the\nangel stretched forth his hand, pointing me yet again to the distant\neast, and far away beyond the beauteous realm I beheld a vast plain of\ndesolation, and beyond that a land whereof I could nothing see, save\nthat a darkness, as of a twilight in which there is no moon, brooded\nabove it like a cloud.\n\n\"'Whereat a shuddering horror seized me, so that I could look no more,\nand turning to the angel, I said, \"Alas! lieth the region of endless\nnight so nigh unto the realm of eternal day?\" But he answered me\nsternly, \"Mortal, thou speakest that of which thou art ignorant. Come,\nlet us go thither, that thou mayest see, and seeing, learn.\" And I cast\na longing look upon the beauteous land, and, lo! on the faces of those\nwho walked therein, I saw a shadow as of something incomplete--not\ndiscontent, neither sorrow nor care, but the look as of an unfulfilled\naspiration; but, even as I gazed, the angel smote the air with eagle\npinion, and I beheld no more until we came nigh unto our journey's end.\nThen, every stroke of his wing bringing us nearer, he turned to me,\nonce again bidding me \"See, and seeing, learn,\" but at my heart lay\nsuch a nameless terror that I was as one spell-bound, and durst not\nlook upon his face. And with trembling voice I made answer, \"Suffer me\nrather to depart, I pray thee! for I would not that mine eyes should\nbehold the horrors whereof I have heard, and my soul longeth to return\nto the land of flowers wherein they toil not, neither sorrow, and where\nI shall cease from labour and be at rest.\"\n\n\"'But for the third time he bade me \"See, and seeing, learn;\" and as I\nlooked upon the land which lay below me, I saw--instead of the realm\nof endless night--a shining city of such unimaginable beauty, that my\nheart sank within me in breathless awe. Then the angel spread forth his\nwings still and motionless, and we reposed on the azure air as a planet\nfloats upon the purple bosom of night; and though neither sun nor moon\nwas set in the peaceful heaven, I saw that there rested over the\ncity the soft splendour as of a world of far-off stars. There was but\none gate, and over that was written in letters of light, \"_My Father\nworketh hitherto, and I work_,\" at which I marvelled exceedingly; and\ninside the gate walked beings of such divine dignity and soul beauty\nthat I could have knelt worshipping before them, were it not that they\ntoo were of human form and feature; and I saw that all were earnestly\nbut unhastily engaged in some manner of work, at which they toiled\nserenely. And on every forehead was set the seal of a high purpose,\nand over the city there rested the calm of an immeasurable peace. Then\nsilently upstole in the sky the dawnings of a great light, deep and\nwide as the infinite of Heaven, and athwart the glory thereof there\nspread the fore-splendours as of the approach of an Awful Presence.\n\n\"'And around me fell a darkness like unto midnight, and, turning to me\nyet again the angel said, \"Mortal, thou mayest behold no more. Return\nto thy home and to thy labour, never more to murmur or complain, and\nwhen thou longest after the repose of the world to come, know for a\nsurety that there is no rest either in earth or in heaven, save in the\nfulfilment of the work which God would have thee to do;\" and so saying,\nhe too passed away into the darkness, and--I awoke.'\"\n\n\"That is a singular dream,\" I said, \"although it was scarcely necessary\nto have mentioned that your friend had been making a study of Jean\nPaul. But I suppose there really _is_ work to do in Heaven?\"\n\n\"It is very much as it is on earth in that respect,\" she answered,\n\"excepting that here one loves one's work, and, although here\ntoo, there are alternate periods of labour and repose, it would be\ndifficult for some of us to say which is the sweeter. I could tell\nyou which _I_ love the more, but then all our work is of our Father's\nordering, and He knows just what is best for each of us. Some who\ncome here (never mind my smile! I was thinking of the 'tired woman'\nwho was 'going to do nothing for ever and ever') have to take a very\nlong holiday before they are allowed to put hand to anything; and\nothers there are whose first task it is to learn those lessons which,\nthrough unfavourable circumstances or the accidents of their birth,\nit was hardly to be expected they could have learned on earth. There\nare some of the poorest of the poor in East London, among whom by our\nFather's direction I am now working, who I believe have had scarcely\nmore opportunity of knowing what Christianity means to them than have\nthe very heathen. Some, when they come here, have to start from the\nbeginning, so you can believe that for you who can write, as well as\nfor those who can preach, there is every opportunity for the exercise\nof God's gifts--only remember!\" she added sadly, but with a smile,\n\"that the popular preacher of earth, be he poet or parson, is not\nalways the man who can do most good in heaven, for here one is expected\nto practise as well as to preach.\"\n\n\"So you are entrusted with the task of ministering to certain of the\npoor in East London?\" I said; \"I had no idea that our Father permitted\nthose who had once left the world to return to it again.\"\n\n\"Half of our work, and more, is on earth,\" she made answer. \"It was to\ntell you of that that I pointed out my poet-friend, the dreamer of\ndreams, to you. Himself a poet, he was the son of a poet, who had lived\nto see all else he loved on earth pass away before him; and when this\nboy, his darling hope and only companion, was also taken, the old man\nwas left lonely, desolate and infirm. But not so lonely as one might\nimagine, for his boy seldom leaves him, and the work which God has set\napart for the poet-son, and which is to him the resting-work of heaven,\nis to be with his father in all sorrow, to minister to him in all\npain, and to be with him in every wakeful or weary moment, his unseen\ncomforter and friend.\"\n\nI was interested in what she related, for I remembered that when I was\nsitting one evening with the poet-father, he had told me that, for\nall his loneliness, he was never alone. \"No, I am never lonely,\" he\nsaid, \"although you will perhaps think what I am going to tell you is\nbut an old mans' fancy. A night or two after my dear boy died, I was\nthinking of my dead youth, and of my dead wife, of my dead friends and\nmy dead children, until it seemed to me as if I, too, ought long since\nto have been buried, for I was lingering on (like a spectral moon when\nthe sun is high) the living ghost of a vanished past. The generation\nhad departed which I knew, and the one which was growing up around me\nwas too busy listening to the songs of its own singers to give ear to\nmine. As the thought of my loneliness, my loveless life, and my boy's\nnewly-made grave, away out in the dreary cemetery, came over me, I did\nthat which was cowardly and faithless, and dropped my head upon my\nhands and wept. Then it was that there came a touch upon my arm, and a\nvoice in my ear, and though I knew none else was in the room, I was not\nafraid, but answered without looking up: 'Who is it?'\n\n\"'It is only I, dear father,' the voice replied, 'only your boy. You\nmust not be unhappy about me, for though I have greatly sinned, yet I\nhave been greatly forgiven, and am perfectly, peacefully happy.'\n\n\"My son then went on to tell me,\" the old man continued, \"that for me\nthere was to be no more loneliness, for that in all my sleepless nights\nand sorrowful days, he would be with me ever and always, my constant\ncompanion and comforter, until for me too the time shall come when,\n\n  \"'Midnight waking, twilight weeping, heavy noontide--all are done.'\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"That is a very touching incident,\" said my friend, when I had\nrelated this conversation to her. \"If all earth-dwellers were as\nspiritually-minded as yonder poet's poet-father, and were as capable\nof apprehending how real a thing spiritual companionship may be, our\ndead would soon cease to be called our 'lost ones,' and death would no\nlonger be spoken of as the 'great parting.' Death gives us more friends\nthan he takes from us, and often brings us nearer to those who have\ngone before, than we were during their lifetime. Though it is nineteen\nhundred years since our Master, Christ, trod the earth a visible\nPresence, yet He is more to the world to-day, and nearer to each\nseparate soul in it, than ever He was to the men and women who touched\ngarments with Him when He walked the fields of Palestine. _Then_ such\nas sought His aid had often to wait His coming in weariness and\nweakness of soul, whilst not seldom it happened that they could not\nobtain access to him 'because of the throng,' and we read even of one\nwho was fain to climb a tree to catch a glimpse of Him in passing.\n_Now_ He stands by each of us, waiting and willing to hear. _Then_ they\nhad to go to Him; _now_ He comes to us, and is with us always and in\nevery place. I tell you that Jesus Christ is as real a Presence to-day\nin the streets of London or Boston, as He was in the homes of Nazareth\nor Jerusalem. He is as near to us now as He was to Martha and to Mary,\nand is as willing to help and hear you or me, as He was to heal the\nsick, or to pardon the dying thief;\" and then in a low, sweet voice she\nrepeated the following lines from Whittier's poem, \"Our Master\":--\n\n  \"But warm, sweet, tender, even yet\n    A present help is He;\n  And faith has still its Olivet,\n    And love its Galilee.\n\n  \"The healing of His seamless dress\n    Is by our beds of pain;\n  We touch Him in life's throng and press,\n    And we are whole again.\n\n  \"Through Him the first fond prayers are said,\n    Our lips of childhood frame,\n  The last low whispers of our dead\n    Are burdened with His name.\"\n\n\"The thought that the 'last low whispers' of the loved ones who have\nleft us were 'burdened' with the Name which we first learned to lisp\nat our mother's knee is a very tender and beautiful one,\" she said\nreverently, after a moment's silence. \"We seem to see our own fathers\nand mothers, and their fathers and mothers, linked to ourselves, and\nthrough us to our children and our children's children, until all the\ngenerations of the world--past, present, and future--become as one\nfamily in a great bond of fellowship, even as all the joy and sorrow of\nhumanity find one common home in the heart of the Lord Christ who loves\nus.\"\n\n\"I am not sure that I realize this love of His of which you speak,\" I\nsaid sadly. \"It is so vague and vast that I become lost, and feel that\nI have no personal hold upon it. How can He love the whole world, and\nyet love each separate individual in it with an affection as distinct\nas that which I feel for my wife and children?\"\n\n\"You cannot realize it as existing in yourself,\" she made answer,\n\"although even you love all your children, and yet love each one of\nthem with a distinct and personal love; but then you cannot order the\nsuccession of the seasons, or stay a planet upon its course, and you\nmight just as well try to measure God's power by your power, as try to\napprehend the love which passeth understanding by likening it to your\nown. But you will know what Christ is to us one day.\"\n\n\"Tell me more of Him,\" I whispered eagerly; \"tell me more of Him. Did\nyou love Him as earnestly and believe in Him as trustfully when you\nwere on earth as you do now?\"\n\n\"Not always,\" she answered sadly, \"not always (and, oh! it was such\n'cold comfort'--the talk of the Pantheists and the Deists to whom\nI had gone), but I came at last to see that the Cross of Christ is\nhumanity's only hope. I came, too, to think that I could better bear\nto disbelieve in a God at all than to disbelieve in the Saviour. 'By\nAtheism,' I said to myself, 'I lose only a Deity of whom (excepting\nfor the gospel-revelation) I know practically nothing, but in losing\nChrist I lose all--this world's hope as well as the next's.' There is\nnot a creed which has been offered us during the last eighteen hundred\nyears as a substitute for faith in the Saviour which does not take the\nvery basis of its being from Christianity.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said; \"but many people will tell you that Christianity is\nnothing more than a skilfully-framed fable, cunningly devised to adapt\nitself to our human needs.\"\n\n\"Christ was, and Christianity was before humanity or its needs came\ninto being,\" she made answer; \"and the sacrifice of the Cross was no\nafterthought given as a concession to our human requirements. On the\ncontrary, our human requirements were given us that we, through them,\nmight come by way of Calvary to the feet of Christ; and it is because\nit has been God's purpose from all eternity to save the sinner by the\nsacrifice of Himself that you and I feel our need of a Saviour.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I do indeed feel that whatever help comes to me must be\nsomething outside myself, and that no sorrowing of mine can atone for\nthe past; but I feel also that I, and I only, am responsible for what I\nhave done, and that to lay that responsibility upon another is utterly\ninadequate to satisfy even my limited sense of justice--besides which\nI never can and never will believe in the possibility of the innocent\nbeing allowed to suffer for the guilty.\"\n\n\"But the innocent do suffer for the guilty,\" she said, \"even in the\nvery earth-world, by the laws of which you wish to judge the heavenly\none. You profess yourself willing to abide by the evidence of your\nsenses, and if you will only look back upon the earth-life which you\nhave left, you will see that the sins of the fathers are visited upon\nthe children, and that the innocent are suffering for the guilty every\nday, and that God, for some good reason of His own, allows it to be so.\nAs for what you say about your sense of justice, I agree with you that\nif a man run into your debt--run into your debt by wilful and wicked\ncourses--he must be held answerable for the repayment of the money.\nBut supposing one comes forward who loves him, and who has watched his\nsinnings with sorrow, and says, 'I will pay for my friend that which he\ncannot pay for himself,' would not your sense of justice be satisfied?\"\n\n\"Even then the moral obligation remains,\" I objected.\n\n\"Yes, but that obligation has been transferred,\" she said, \"although\nas a matter of fact, it is against God rather than against man, that\nour blackest sins are committed. But, independently of that side of\nthe question, Christ has taken the consequences of your sin, and of\nthe wrong you did Dorothy--the consequences to her, as well as to\nyourself--upon Himself, and has suffered for you and for her in His own\nperson, and if He be willing to forgive, then are you forgiven indeed!\n\n\"That reconciliation by the Saviour should at any time have been to\nme an intellectual stumbling-block is now beyond my comprehension,\"\nshe continued earnestly. \"In its very adaptability to our human needs,\nChristianity bears the stamp of its divine origin. Left to himself, the\nvery best of us must feel his inability either to atone for the evil\nhe has already done, or to withstand the temptations which yet await\nhim in the future, and though he struggle right manfully to clamber\nout of the gulf into which he has fallen, the dead-weight of his sins,\nwhich he carries and must carry chained log-like about him, is ever the\nheaviest clog to drag him back. But Christianity does more for a man\nthan merely forgive him his debts. It sets the bankrupt upon his legs\nagain, a solvent man and sane, with a clean bill of health, and with\na fresh start in life. It is _the_ religion of Hope, for none is too\nsinful for the Saviour to save, and to the man who brings his sins,\nas well as his inability to resist his sins, to the feet of Christ,\nthere is indeed a present Help and Hope in all his troubles! There is\nmuch--very much--in Christianity that I cannot and do not pretend to\nunderstand, but I can understand enough to make me very loving and\nvery trustful. The only mystery which still sometimes troubles me is\nthat most terrible of all mysteries--the mystery of human suffering.\nBut even that I am content to leave, for is not our God Himself a\nsuffering God? and who that witnessed the sufferings of Jesus Christ\n(and what sufferings were ever like to His?) could have foreseen that\nthe cruel Cross whereon He hung should hereafter be the finger-post\nto point the way to heaven? or that beneath His cry of agony in the\ngarden, God heard the triumph-song of a ransomed world?\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\n_HOPE._\n\n\nAt last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay\nso heavily upon me, that I felt I could bear it no longer, and that if\nsuccour there came none, the very soul of me must wither away and die.\nIt was not that I wanted to evade the punishment of my crime, for I\nwas willing and wished to undergo it to the uttermost. No, that which\nwas so terrible to me was the thought that not all the sufferings of\neternity could avail to wipe away the awful stain upon my spirit, or\nto undo the evil which I had brought upon the woman I had ruined. Of\nmyself and of my future, save for the continual crying-out of my soul\nafter its lost purity, I scarcely cared now to think. It was of Dorothy\nthat my heart was full; it was for Dorothy that I never ceased to\nsorrow, to lament, and--sinner, though I was--to pray. I saw then the\ninevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her pictured forth in\nall their horror. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh\nupon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the\nknowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her, \"not knowing where to\nturn for refuge from swiftly-advancing shame, and understanding no more\nof this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and\nfarther in the nightfall,\" stealing stealthily forth at dusk to hide\nherself from her fellow-creatures.\n\nI saw her, when the secret of her shame could no longer be concealed,\nrecoiling in mute terror from the glance of coarse admiration on the\nfaces of sensual men, or shrinking in quivering agony from the look\nof curious scorn in the eyes of maids and mothers, who drew aside\ntheir skirts as she passed them, as if fearful of being contaminated\nby her touch. And then--driven out from their midst by the very\nChristian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand\nto save her--I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into brazen\nindifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy\nand sin.\n\nNor did the vision pass from me until, out of that seething vortex\nof lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of an immortal\nsoul which was lost for ever, crying out unto God and His Christ for\njudgment upon the seducer!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs these hideous spectres of the past arose again before me, I fell to\nthe ground, and shrieked out under the burden of my sin, as only he can\nshriek who is torn by hell-torture and despair. But even as I shrieked,\nI felt that burden lifted and borne away from me, and then I saw, as in\na vision, One kneeling in prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could\nbear the burden of my sin no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not\nonly my sin, but the sins of the whole world, and that He stooped of\nHis own accord to receive them. And as I looked upon the Divine dignity\nof that agonized form--forsaken of His Father that we might never be\nforsaken, and bowed down under a burden, compared to which, all the\nhorrors of hell were but as the passing phantom of a pain--I saw great\nbeads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung\nfrom Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from\nhuman lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find\nmyself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of\nthe wings of hope--the hope which I had deemed dead to me for ever.\n\n_Could_ it be--O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might\nnot be too late?--that there was indeed One who could make my sin as\nthough it had never been?--who of His great love for Dorothy and for\nme, would bear it and its consequences as His own burden? and who by\nthe cleansing power of the blood which He had shed upon the cross,\ncould wash her soul and mine whiter than the whiteness of snow?\n\nBut to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonized thought:\n\"How if there be no Christ?\" leapt out at me, like the darkness which\nlooms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell gat\nhold on me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my\near: \"And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?\"\n\nI reeled at that cry, and the darkness seemed once more to close in\naround. A horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed\nlike vermin in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending\nfiends upon my face; a hundred hungry hands laid hold on me, and strove\nto drag me down and down as to a bottomless pit; but with a great cry\nto God, I flung the foul things from me; and battling, beating, like a\ndrowning man for breath, I fell at the feet of a woman, white-veiled,\nand clad in robes like the morning, whose hand it was that had plucked\nme from the abyss in which I lay.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\n\n_HEAVEN._\n\n\nIt seemed to me then that I fell into a sleep, deep, and sweet, and\nrestful, in which I dreamt that I was a child lying upon the bosom of\nGod. I remember that, as I lay, I stirred in my slumber, and, raising\nmyself, chanced in opening my eyes to look below, but that with a\ncry of terror I turned and clung like a frighted babe to my Father's\nbreast,--for beneath me and afar, there yet yawned the mouth of hell,\nfrom which, ever and anon, rolled dense clouds of hot and hissing\nsmoke, that seemed to twist and writhe like souls in agony, and which\nin colour were like unto the colour of blood.\n\nAnd I thought that, seeing my fear, my Father stooped to me as a mother\nstoops to comfort her frightened babe, and that as He stooped I beheld\nHis face, and knew it for the face of the Lord Jesus, and that He bade\nme be of good cheer, \"for underneath thee are the everlasting arms.\"\n\nAs He so spake I awoke, and saw that she whose hand had plucked me out\nof the abyss of horror into which I had fallen, yet knelt beside me in\ntender ministry and prayer, and that she was singing a hymn softly to\nherself whereof I heard only a verse:--\n\n  \"I know not where His islands lift\n    Their fronded palms in air;\n  I only know I cannot drift\n    Beyond His love and care.\"\n\nShe ceased, and I arose, but ere I had time to question her, I\nwas conscious of a sudden stillness, like the hush which follows\nbenediction after prayer. \"Don't you hear it?\" she whispered eagerly,\nas with upraised hand enjoining silence, she turned her head as if to\ncatch some far-off murmur, \"Don't you hear it? They are praying for you\nat home: kneel down!\" And as her words died away, there seemed to float\ntowards me the sound of air-borne music that stayed for one moment\nto fold me round with the sweet consolations of loving companionship\nand of peace, and in the next stole swiftly and softly away as if\njourneying onward and upward to the throne of God.\n\nAnd with a great cry of anguish I fell to my knees and prayed: \"O Lord\nChrist! I am foul and selfish and sinful! I do not know that I love\nThee! I do not know that I have repented of my sins even! I only know\nthat I cannot do the things I would do, and that I can never undo the\nevil I have done. But I come to Thee, Lord Jesus, I come to Thee as\nThou biddest me. Send me not away, O Saviour of sinners. Amen.\"\n\nAs I ended, it seemed that my companion turned to leave me, and I fell\nto sobbing and sorrowing, until at last for very anguish I could sob\nno more. But soon I heard again her returning footsteps, and, looking\nup, I saw One who stood beside her, thorn-crowned, and clad in robes of\nwhite. _His features were the features of a man, but His face was the\nface of God!_\n\nAnd as I looked upon that face, I shrank back dazed and breathless\nand blinded;--shrank back with a cry like the cry of one smitten of\nthe lightning; for beneath the wide white brow there shone out eyes,\nbefore the awful purity of which my sin-stained soul seemed to scorch\nand shrivel like a scroll in a furnace. But as I lay, lo! there came a\ntender touch upon my head, and a voice in my ear that whispered, \"Son.\"\n\nAnd as the word died away into a silence like the hallowed hush\nof listening angels, and I stretched forth my arms with a cry of\nunutterable longing and love, I saw that He held one by the hand--even\nshe who had plucked me out of the abyss into which I had fallen--and I\nsaw that she was no longer veiled. It was Dorothy--Dorothy whom He had\nof His infinite love sought out and saved from the shame to which my\nsin had consigned her, and whom He had sent to succour me, that so He\nmight set upon my soul the seal of His pardon and of His peace. And to\nHim be the praise. Amen.\n\n[Illustration: THE END.]\n\n\n\n\n_AN INEXPENSIVE LIBRARY OF INDISPENSABLE BOOKS._\n\nTHE\n\nMINERVA LIBRARY OF FAMOUS BOOKS.\n\nEdited by G.T. BETTANY, M.A., B.Sc., F.L.S.\n\n_An Illustrated Series of first-class books, averaging from_ 400 _to_\n600 pages, _strongly and attractively bound in cloth_.\n\nPRICE TWO SHILLINGS EACH VOLUME,\n\nWITH CUT OR UNCUT EDGES.\n\nIn Half Calf or Half Morocco, Price Five Shillings Each Volume.\n\n\nThe Design and Plan of the MINERVA LIBRARY OF FAMOUS BOOKS have been\namply justified by the remarkable favour with which it has been\nreceived by the press and the public. The design is to provide _at\nthe lowest possible cost_ books which every intelligent reader will\nwish to possess, in a form readable, attractive, and lasting. The\nissue at monthly intervals, not so frequent as to distract, not so\nintermittent as to lose the advantage of regularity, enables readers to\nadd to their library at an almost imperceptible cost. Thus for about\none pound a year, every man may form a library which will afford an\never-increasing source of gratification and cultivation to himself and\nhis family. There will be no doubt, as in buying the novelties of the\nday, as to whether the new volume will prove to be of permanent value\nand interest. It will have already stood the test of time and of good\ncritics, though frequently it may have been unattainable except at a\nheavy cost. The Minerva Library will only include works of widespread\npopularity, which have proved themselves worthy of a permanent place in\nliterature.\n\nVariety will be studied in the selection of books, so that all classes\nof the best literature of all nations may be represented. The adoption\nof the name \"Minerva\" will be justified by the abundant wisdom,\nthought, and imaginative and inventive power which the books will be\nfound to contain.\n\nEach volume contains an introduction by the Editor, in which a\nbiography of the author, or critical or explanatory notes, place the\nreader in sympathy with the author and his work. In some of the books\nadditional elucidations and illustrations of the text are given, and in\nothers side-notes indicate the subjects of the paragraphs.\n\nThe number of separate Plates as well as illustrations in the text\nforms a marked feature of the series. As far as possible an authentic\nportrait of every author will be given. An inspection of the books only\nis needed to make their attractiveness evident.\n\nEvery Englishman who reads and thinks, and wishes to possess the BEST\nBOOKS, should have every book in the Minerva library.\n\nThe Youth beginning to form a Library of books for lifelong\ncompanionship cannot do better than subscribe to the Minerva Library.\n\nSchools, Mechanics, and Village Libraries, and literary institutions of\nall kinds, should provide themselves with a number of copies of this\ninexpensive library of indispensable books.\n\nThe Artisan and the Shop-assistant will find their means and\nopportunities consulted in this series. They cannot buy the best books\nin the English language in a better and cheaper form combined.\n\nNaturally every Englishman wants to possess the choice works of the\ngreatest Englishmen; and to complete his ideas as a citizen of the\nworld, he needs a selection of the greatest writings of the geniuses\nof other countries. Both these wants it is the object of the Minerva\nLibrary to supply.\n\n\nVOLUME I.--EIGHTH EDITION.\n\n CHARLES DARWIN'S JOURNAL During the Voyage of H.M.S. \"Beagle\" Round\n the World. With a Biographical Introduction by the Editor, Portrait of\n Darwin, and Illustrations.\n\n\"'The Minerva Library,' the new venture of Messrs. Ward & Lock, has\nmade an excellent start.... No better volumes could be chosen for\npopular reading of a healthy sort than 'Darwin's Journal of Researches\nduring the Voyage of the Beagle,' and 'Borrow's Bible in Spain.' The\npaper is good, the type is tolerable, the binding is in excellent\ntaste, and the price is extremely low.\"--_Athen\u00e6um._\n\n\nVOLUME II.--FOURTH EDITION.\n\n THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS. With a Critical Introduction by the Editor,\n Portrait of the Author, and reproductions of the celebrated\n Illustrations by Phiz and Cruikshank.\n\n\"This series, which is edited by Mr. G.T. Bettany, is neatly bound,\nwell illustrated, and nicely printed.\"--_Graphic._\n\n\"The determination of the publishers of the 'Minerva Library' to\nrender the series attractive and representative of English literature\nof all kinds, is strikingly displayed in this volume.... The book is\nwell printed and bound, and will be eagerly welcomed by all desiring\nto obtain at a small cost a good edition of the works of the famous\nhumourist.\"--_Liverpool Courier._\n\n\nVOLUME III.--THIRD EDITION.\n\n BORROW'S BIBLE IN SPAIN: The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments\n of an Englishman, in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the\n Peninsula. By George Borrow, Author of \"The Gipsies of Spain.\" With a\n Biographical Introduction by the Editor, and Illustrations.\n\n\"Lovers of good literature and cheap may be commended to the 'Minerva\nLibrary' edition of 'The Bible in Spain,' edited by Mr. G.T. Bettany.\nThis is an excellent reprint, with neat binding, good type, and fair\nwoodcuts.\"--_Saturday Review._\n\n\nVOLUME IV.--FOURTH EDITION.\n\n EMERSON'S PROSE WORKS: The complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo\n Emerson. With a Critical Introduction by the Editor, and Portrait of\n the Author.\n\n\"The series, judging by the initial volumes, will be endowed with\neverything that makes reading pleasant and agreeable.... The printing\nis a marvel of clearness, the slurs that too often characterise\ncheap volumes being conspicuous by their absence.... The binding is\nboth elegant and durable.... If the excellence of the first volumes\nis maintained in the future, the series will enjoy a success both\nwidespread and prolonged.\"--_City Press._\n\n\nVOLUME V.--THIRD EDITION.\n\n GALTON'S SOUTH AFRICA: The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical\n South Africa: being an Account of a Visit to Damaraland in 1851. By\n Francis Galton, F.R.S. With a New Map and Appendix, together with a\n Biographical Introduction by the Editor, Portrait of Mr. Galton, and\n Illustrations. Containing also Vacation Tours in 1860 and 1861, by Sir\n George Grove, Francis Galton, F.R.S., and W.G. Clark, M.A.\n\n\"Be it understood the 'Minerva Library' presents itself in a form\nthat even the lover of luxurious books could scarcely find fault\nwith.\"--_Warrington Guardian._\n\n\"The 'Minerva Library' will be hailed with delight, we are sure, by all\nreaders.\"--_The Weekly Times._\n\n\nVOLUME VI.--THIRD EDITION.\n\n THE BETROTHED LOVERS (I Promessi Sposi). By Alessandro Manzoni. With a\n Biographical Introduction by the Editor, and Portrait of the Author.\n\nOf this great Work Goethe wrote:--\"Manzoni's romance transcends all\nthat we have knowledge of in this kind. I need only say that the\ninternal part, all that comes from the core of the poet, is thoroughly\nperfect, and that the external part, all the notes of localities and\nso forth, is not a whit behind its great inner qualities.... The work\ngives us the pleasure of an absolutely ripe fruit.\"\n\n\nVOLUME VII.--THIRD EDITION.\n\n GOETHE'S FAUST (Complete). Translated in the Original Metres, with\n copious Critical and Explanatory Notes by Bayard Taylor. With a\n Critical Introduction by the Editor, Portrait of Goethe, and Retzsch's\n Illustrations.\n\nThis is a full and complete reprint of Bayard Taylor's unrivalled\nrendering of Goethe's masterpiece. It is published by special\narrangement with Mrs. Bayard Taylor, and contains the whole of the\nTranslator's copious and extremely valuable Notes, Introductions, and\nAppendices.\n\n\nVOLUME VIII.--SECOND EDITION.\n\n WALLACE'S TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON: Travels on the Amazon and Rio\n Negro. By Alfred Russel Wallace, Author of \"The Malay Archipelago,\"\n \"Darwinism,\" etc. Giving an account of the Native Tribes, and\n Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the\n Amazon Valley. With a Biographical Introduction, Portrait of the\n Author, and Illustrations.\n\n\"It would be impossible to overrate the service which Mr. Wallace, the\nco-discoverer of Darwinism, has done.\"--_Times, September 11th, 1889._\n\n\nVOLUME IX.--THIRD EDITION.\n\n DEAN STANLEY'S LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. The Life and Correspondence of\n Thomas Arnold, D.D. (Head-Master of Rugby School). By Arthur Penrhyn\n Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. With a Portrait of Arnold, and\n Full Page Illustrations.\n\n\"One of the most remarkable and most instructive books ever\npublished--a book for which Arnold himself left abundant materials\nin his voluminous correspondence, supplemented by a large quantity\nof miscellaneous matter added by his friend and former pupil, Dean\nStanley.\"--_Morning Advertiser._\n\n\nVOLUME X.--SECOND EDITION.\n\n POE'S TALES OF ADVENTURE, MYSTERY, AND IMAGINATION. By Edgar Allan\n Poe. With a Biographical Introduction by the Editor, Portrait of the\n Author, and Illustrations.\n\n\"Contains over forty of Poe's marvellous stories, certainly among the\nmost exciting and sensational tales ever written. The volume itself is\na marvel, comprising, as it does, over 560 pages, strongly and neatly\nbound, for two shillings.\"--_Newcastle Chronicle._\n\n\nVOLUME XI.\n\n COMEDIES BY MOLI\u00c8RE: Including The Would-Be Gentleman; The Affected\n Young Ladies; The Forced Marriage; The Doctor by Compulsion;\n Scapin's Rogueries; The Blunderer; The School for Husbands; The\n School for Wives; The Miser; The Hypochondriac; The Misanthrope;\n The Blue-Stockings; Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite. Newly Translated by\n Charles Mathew, M.A. The Translation revised by the Editor, with a\n Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction.\n\n\nVOLUME XII.\n\n FORSTER'S LIFE OF GOLDSMITH: The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith.\n By John Forster, Author of \"The Life of Charles Dickens,\" etc. With\n a Biography of Forster by the Editor, and Numerous Illustrations by\n Maclise, Stanfield, Leech, and Others.\n\n\nVOLUME XIII.\n\n LANE'S MODERN EGYPTIANS: The Manners and Customs of the Modern\n Egyptians. By Edward William Lane, Translator of \"The Arabian Nights'\n Entertainments.\" With a Biographical Introduction by the Editor,\n Sixteen Full Page Plates, and Eighty Illustrations in the Text.\n\n\nVOLUME XIV.\n\n TORRENS' LIFE OF LORD MELBOURNE: Memoirs of William Lamb, Second\n Viscount Melbourne. By W.M. Torrens. Revised by the Author. With an\n Introduction by the Editor, and Portrait of Melbourne.\n\n\nVOLUME XV.\n\n THACKERAY'S VANITY FAIR: A Novel Without a Hero. By William Makepeace\n Thackeray. With a Biographical Introduction by the Editor, Portrait of\n the Author, and Thirteen Full-Page Illustrations.\n\n\n  WARD, LOCK & CO., London, New York, and Melbourne.\n  _And at all Booksellers' and Railway Bookstalls._\n\n\n\n\nSTANDARD WORKS BY GREAT WRITERS.\n\nTHE WORLD LIBRARY\n\nOF STANDARD BOOKS.\n\n_A Series of Standard Works, including many of the acknowledged\nMasterpieces of Historical and Critical Literature, made more\naccessible than hitherto to the general reader by publication in a\ncheap form and at a moderate price._\n\n\nCrown 8vo, cloth gilt or buckram, label on back, uncut edges.\n\n\n\n\n 1 Hallam's Constitutional History of England. With Lord Macaulay's\n Essay on the same. 970 pp., _5s._ Library Edition, demy 8vo, _7s.\n 6d._; half-calf, _12s._\n\n\n 2 Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages. By the Author of \"The\n Constitutional History of England.\" 720 pp., _3s. 6d._ Library\n Edition, 894 pp., demy 8vo, _6s._; half-calf, _10s. 6d._\n\n\n 3 Hallam's Church and State. By the Author of \"The Constitutional\n History of England.\" 400 pp., _2s. 6d._\n\n\n 4 The Wealth of Nations (Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of). By\n Adam Smith. 832 pp., _3s. 6d._; half-calf, _7s. 6d._ Library Edition,\n demy 8vo. _6s._; half-calf, _10s. 6d._\n\n\n 6 M'Culloch's Works: Principles of Political Economy, Notes, &c., to\n \"Smith's Wealth of Nations,\" &c. 700 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 7 Adam Smith's Essays: Moral Sentiments, Astronomy, Physics, &c. 476\n pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 8 Hume's History of England. In Three Vols. 2,240 pp., _10s. 6d._\n Library Edition, demy 8vo, _18s._; half-calf, _31s. 6d._\n\n\n 9 Hume's Essays: Literary, Moral, and Political. _3s. 6d._\n\n 10 Montaigne's Essays. Complete. 684 pp., _3s. 6d._; half-calf, _7s.\n 6d._ Library Edition, 920 pp., _6s._; hf.-calf, _10s. 6d._\n\n\n 11 Warton's History of English Poetry, from the Eleventh to the\n Seventeenth Century. 1,032 pp., _6s._\n\n\n 12 The Court and Times of Queen Elizabeth. By Lucy Aikin. 530 pp.,\n _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 13 Edmund Burke's Choice Pieces. Containing the Speech on the Law\n of Libel, Reflections on Revolution in France, on the Sublime and\n Beautiful, Abridgment of English History. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 14 Herbert's Autobiography and History of England under Henry VIII. By\n Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 770 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 15 Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England. By Horace Walpole. 538\n pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 17 Locke's Essays: On Toleration, Education, Value of Money. 700 pp.,\n _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 18 Bolingbroke on the Study and Use of History. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 19 Essays on Beauty and Taste: On Beauty, by Francis, Lord Jeffrey; On\n Taste, by Archibald Alison, LL.D. 324 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 20 Milton's Early Britain. With More's England under Richard III., and\n Bacon's England under Henry VIII., 430 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 21 Marvell's Poems and Satires. With Memoir of the Author. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 22 Macaulay: Reviews, Essays, and Poems. 650 pp., _3s. 6d._;\n half-calf, _6s._ Library Edition, demy 8vo, _6s._\n\n\n 23 Sydney Smith's Essays, Social and Political. _3s. 6d._; Library\n Edition, demy 8vo, _6s._\n\n\n 24 Lord Bacon. Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Historical\n Sketches and Essays. 530 pp., _3s. 6d._; half-calf, _6s._; Library\n Edition, demy 8vo, _6s._\n\n\n 25 Essays by Thomas de Quincey. Confessions of an Opium Eater, Letters\n to a Young Man, &c. 550 pp., _3s. 6d._; Library Edition, demy 8vo,\n _6s._\n\n\n 26 Josephus (The Complete Works of). By Whiston. Life and Marginal\n Notes. 810 pp., _3s. 6d._ Library Edition, _6s._\n\n\n 27 Paley's Works: \"The Evidences of Christianity,\" \"Hor\u00e6 Paulin\u00e6,\" and\n \"Natural Theology.\" With Life and Notes. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 28 Taylor's Holy Living and Dying. With Life, Introduction, and Notes.\n _2s. 6d._\n\n\n 29 Dean Milman's History of the Jews. 520 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 30 Macaulay: Reviews and Essays. Second Series. _2s. 6d._\n\n\n 31 Locke on the Human Understanding. 670 pp., _3s. 6d._; half-calf,\n _7s. 6d._\n\n\n 32 Plutarch's Lives. By Langhorne. 750 pp., _3s. 6d._; half-calf, _7s.\n 6d._\n\n\n 33 Addison's Essays from \"Spectator.\" 600 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 34 Shakespere's Complete Works. With Life and Glossary. 1,000 pp.,\n _3s. 6d._ Library Edition, _6s._\n\n\n 35 Cook's Boston Monday Lectures. 640 pp., _5s._\n\n\n 36 Todd's Complete Works. Sunday School Teacher, Lectures for Young\n Men, &c. 920 pp., _5s._\n\n\n 37 D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation. 870 pp., _3s. 6d._;\n half-calf, _7s. 6d._\n\n\n 38 The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 430 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 39 Heroes for the Faith: Scottish Worthies who suffered during the\n Reformation. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 40 Martyrs for the Truth. Last Words and Dying Testimonies of the\n Scottish Worthies. Revised, with Notes. _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 41 Cook's Boston Monday Lectures. 1st Series. 340 pp., _2s. 6d._\n\n\n 42 Cook's Boston Monday Lectures. 2nd Series. 300 pp., _2s. 6d._\n\n\n 43 Newman Smyth's Works. Containing \"Old Faiths in New Light,\" \"The\n Religious Feeling,\" and \"Orthodox Theology.\" _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 44 Hallam's Literature of Europe during the 15th, 16th, and 17th\n Centuries. Complete. 900 pp., _5s._\n\n\n 45 Lamb's Essays of Elia and Eliana. 850 pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 46 History of Rome. By D. Rose. Edited by H.W. Dulcken, Ph.D. 500 pp.,\n _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 47 History of Greece. By D. Rose. Edited by H.W. Dulcken, Ph.D. 480\n pp., _3s. 6d._\n\n\n 48 Palgrave's History of the Anglo-Saxons. _2s. 6d._\n\n\nWARD, LOCK & CO., London, Melbourne, and New York.","title":"A dead man's diary : $b written after his decease","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":33054}