In Both Worlds Part 26

"When all these spirits are judged," continued my father, "and cast out of the world of spirits, the Greece and Rome of the natural world will become feeble and death-stricken. Their oracles will become silent; their arts will fail; their glory perish; their civilization decay. Their very languages will die. Their exact modes of thought will no more be possible to men. Ages of bondage and darkness will ensue, after the light they have perverted and the liberty they have profaned."

I scarcely heard these last words; for the vast a.s.sembly of G.o.ds and men, which had been in comparative repose, became suddenly animated by a wild excitement. There issued from the cool and leafy forests on all sides a crowd of beautiful nymphs headed by Diana, resplendent as a statue of pearl, clad in an ap.r.o.n of green leaves and flowers, and with a constellation of fire-flies in her hair.

Her merry troop of nymphs, arrayed like herself, were flying in affected fear from the jolly G.o.d Bacchus, who appeared in pursuit, crowned with vine leaves and berries and drawn by his Indian tigers striped with ebony and gold. He was followed by a rabble rout of Fauns and Satyrs and baccha.n.a.lian revelers, male and female. This beautiful chaos threw itself pell-mell, reeling and whirling and dancing, shouting and singing, into the midst of the brilliant a.s.sembly.

A scene of the wildest carnival followed. The heroes and heroines caught the contagious frenzy, and soon all were entangled in the embraces of the maddest dance that ever was witnessed. Neptune and his water-nymphs sprang high into the air to view the scene; and all the deities in Olympus crowded down to the Gates of Cloud, which they illumined afar off by the sun-like radiance of their presence.

I was gazing on this scene with the utmost astonishment, when my eyes fell suddenly upon Helena, the beautiful daughter of Calisthenes.

"My father," said I, with profound emotion, "do you not see that superb figure of a woman more beautiful than all these G.o.ddesses, leaning against yonder tree and clapping her hands with delight at the drunken Bacchus making love to Venus? That is Helena of Athens! the dream of my life, the idol of my soul."

"Not so," said my father, "it is a phantasm-a spirit resembling your earthly Helena; perhaps some cunning Syren who has a.s.sumed her form to allure you to herself."

"Oh no!" said I, "impossible!" feasting my eyes and heart on the lovely apparition.

"Every one," continued my monitor, "fresh from the natural world, who enters this magical and fantastic sphere, sees, or thinks he sees, some wondrous woman, whom he declares to be the idol and dream of his soul.

Beware, my son, of these seductive emotions. The light of heaven will dispel for us all these illusions."

"Oh no!" said I, wildly, "it cannot; it must not. This, this, is heaven, and all else is illusion."

My heart beat with pa.s.sionate fervor, and I sprang forward to meet my beloved. My father suddenly disappeared from my sight! In the spiritual world, when two persons enter into totally different states of thought and feeling, they mutually vanish from each other's sight. Heaven and h.e.l.l are thus separated, and the existence of each is even unknown to the other. I noticed the fact that my father had vanished; but I cared nothing about it, for my infatuated soul thought only of Helena.

I advanced toward her. She turned upon me a look of beautiful recognition; and stretching out her ivory arms, exclaimed with a sun-burst of her old bewitching smiles:

"My boy-lover of Bethany! welcome! I thought I had killed you with love!"

"Then love me back into life!" I exclaimed.

When an appalling change came suddenly over all things. The light of heaven streamed down upon me, and those other lights were turned into shadows, the beauty into ugliness, the joy into horror, life into death.

The deities became phantom skeletons grinning as they fled away into the darkness. The men a.s.sumed the forms of filthy swine or goats, and the women those of writhing vipers. The charming creature into whose delicate arms I was about throwing myself, became a scaly serpent of frightful size. I fell swooning to the ground, with the terrible sensations of one who is falling headlong from a precipice into the sea.

I returned slowly and painfully to consciousness, like one who has had a long sleep and hara.s.sing dreams, and finds it difficult to pick up the fallen thread of his yesterday's life. I found myself pillowed on a soft green bank in a delicious atmosphere of repose. Without opening my eyes I reverted to all that had happened, and a feeling of desolation came over me, and a sense of deep shame and contrition. What a revelation of the sensual affinities of my own interior nature! What blindness! What madness! Alas! how low had I fallen! I was afraid to meet my father and the good John. I was wretched.

My meditations were interrupted by the voice of some one near me, singing in low sweet tones, pervaded by a certain divine sadness, the beautiful words of Scripture:

"Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: When I fall I shall arise: When I sit in darkness The Lord shall be a light unto me."

Then another voice overhead, clearer, more thoughtful, more musical than the first, sang sweetly:

"Jehovah upholdeth all that fall, And raiseth up all who are bowed down."

Thereupon the first voice near me proceeded in the same low sweet tones full of sadness:

"But as for me, my feet were almost gone, My steps had well nigh slipped."

The higher, n.o.bler voice continued the heavenly consolations of Scripture:

"Nevertheless I am ever with thee!"

The voices, the music, the refrain, the holy words of the Psalmist, stirred in the tenderest manner the very depths of my soul. I wept. A new faith, a new hope, a new divine resolution were born within me.

Like a singer who has been overcome with emotion, but dries her tears and resumes her singing,-the sadness overshadowed by a modest courage,-the first voice was heard again:

"Thou hast held me by my right hand, Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, And afterward shalt receive me into glory."

Then there was a burst of divine music as from a hidden choir of angels, in which the two voices joined; and this was the hymn:

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul!"

The strains died softly away, lingering long on my charmed ear and leaving my heart in a sacred calm.

I prayed with intense earnestness:

"From self-love and the love of the world; from self-righteousness, presumption and hypocrisy; from pride, ambition and sensuality; all of which I have seen so fearfully unmasked:

"Good Lord! deliver me."

I opened my eyes, and my father and the seraph-faced forerunner of Jesus stood before me.

The latter took my hand tenderly in his own, and said:

"All the experiences of life, both in the world of men and in the world of spirits, are given to teach us the difference between good and evil, between the true and the false; to show us the deformity of sin and the beauty of holiness; to deliver our souls from the bondage of h.e.l.l, and lift them into the peace of heaven."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

XIX.

_THE MAGICIANS IN h.e.l.l._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]

We had then a long conversation about the mysteries of regeneration or the new birth, scarcely any of which are known to mankind, or would be believed if they were revealed. This knowledge is so peculiarly spiritual and angelic that it seems useless for me to say anything about it. If a church on earth ever comprehends these divine arcana, it will only be when the Lord sees fit to open his heavens anew, and to unfold the spiritual meaning of his Word.

"You have now seen," said my father, "the three great spheres which represent the three degrees of the human mind. That Jesus Christ met and resisted the powers of h.e.l.l in all these spheres, is shown in his temptations in the wilderness. By conquering these evil spheres in his human form and through his divine power, He is enabled henceforth to deliver all men from similar infestations. This was the great purpose of his incarnation. His temptation will appear to men as an historical event enacted at a certain time and s.p.a.ce. To angels it seems a condensed statement of his whole spiritual life, of his entire redemptive work, from the a.s.sumption of humanity to his final and perfect glorification."

"Who is the devil," said I, "that was capable of tempting the Holy One so severely?"

"The devil is no single individual, but the whole combined evil world, speaking and acting through one medium. You seem surprised; but nothing is more common in the spiritual world than for a whole society of spirits, even millions in number, to think, feel, and express themselves simultaneously through one of their number.

"Do you not remember that when Jesus asked a certain maniac his name, the devil within him replied: