Religion and philosophy were alike neglected. I experienced that apathy which a great desolation of heart produces, and which men attribute to moroseness or stupidity. I was feeding with the intense hunger of love upon my treasured memories of Helena; devouring every word she had spoken, every look, every tone, every changing form, every shifting light of her miraculous beauty.
My love for Helena, for reasons which I did not then comprehend, was not of a soothing, enn.o.bling, purifying type. It was a disquieting, paralyzing, corroding pa.s.sion. The sphere of this woman, wholly incapable of the heavenly duties of wife and mother, did not lead me, encouraged and strengthened, into the sweet and useful activities of life. Like an evil spirit rather, it drove me into the wilderness; tempted me with stones which were not bread; and haunted me with wild dreams and insane ambitions.
Thus many weeks pa.s.sed away, and the fever of my soul had so worn and wasted me that my sisters became seriously alarmed at my condition, not knowing the cause; for I had never divulged my pagan G.o.ddess to these pious little ones.
One day I was suddenly lifted out of the cavern of despair into the serenest sunlight of hope. I received a message from Helena that she was traveling with her father to the most noted places in Asia, and would spend a few days in Jerusalem; that she was the guest of Alastor, a wealthy Greek merchant of the city, and that her visit would be devoid of genuine pleasure unless she could see once more her esteemed friend, who had saved the life of her brother.
Now occurred a most curious mental phenomenon. The sudden reaction of joy in the feeble and excited state of my nervous system, overpowered my brain. I became the victim of an absurd, grotesque illusion. I leaped at once from the abyss of self-abas.e.m.e.nt to the maddest height of presumption. I transferred my entire experiences of heart and mind to Helena. She, I imagined, was pining with unconquerable pa.s.sion for me. She was wasted and worn by unrevealed, unrequited love. She had suffered and faded in silence until longer concealment was death. Her father had brought her under cover of travel really to meet me again, to draw me once more to her feet, to obtain my confessions, and to receive new hope and life from my words. I was filled with an unspeakable tenderness, with a generous compa.s.sion. I would fly to her; I would console her; I would make her life and happiness secure by giving her my own.
Busied with these mad fancies, and muttering them to myself as I went along, I hurried to the house of Alastor. Ushered into the presence of Helena, I was surprised and abashed by the serene and smiling expression of her countenance, and her splendid physique, upon which neither time nor love had yet written the faintest trace of ravage. She received me without the least embarra.s.sment in the gay and sparkling manner of a cold and polished queen of society. I saw in a moment that I was not loved, that she had never thought of me, that my hopes were dreams, my pa.s.sion a madness. I read my doom in the charming suavity of my reception.
Disappointed, chilled, bewildered, heartsick, miserable, I maintained a broken conversation for a little while, until Helena, perceiving with her woman"s wit, something, and perhaps all of my secret, broke off the interview.
"You are sick," said she tenderly, "you are feverish, you are in pain. You should not have come until to-morrow."
"Go home now," she continued, taking my hand kindly in hers, "go home and be cared for. When you get better you must come again, and we will talk of Athens and art, of poetry and love; and of all the beautiful things that ravish the hearts of men and women."
I do not remember what I said, or how I parted from her. On the portico I met a man going in, whose presence sent a strange shudder through my frame. My diseased nerves were very sensitive. He was a person of handsome face, imposing appearance and gracious address. He began speaking to me, but suddenly stopped and fixed his great, black, l.u.s.trous eyes fiercely on me. My first impulse was to resent this conduct as an insult; but I quickly perceived that my mind was becoming confused, bewildered, fascinated by his gaze, and I averted my face with a great effort and hurried down the steps.
I did not dare to look back. At the foot of the stairs I ran heedlessly against our old relative and enemy, Magistus, whom I had not seen since my return from Rome. Seizing him by the shoulders I gasped,
"Who is this man on the portico?"
"Simon Magus," said he, with a coa.r.s.e laugh,-"Simon Magus, the prince of Egyptian magic, and he has evidently cast the evil eye upon you. Woe to you!"
I fled precipitately through the streets. When I reached home I was in a burning fever. At night I was in a raging delirium. It was a brain fever of malignant type. My mad and grotesque illusion about Helena was really the beginning of my illness. Days and nights of alternate excitement and stupor pa.s.sed away; days and nights of physical torture and mental suffering. My sweet sisters watched and wept and prayed by my side.
Horrible fantasies besieged my fevered imagination. I thought that Mary was under the magician"s knife, and that he would accept no subst.i.tute for her bleeding heart but that of Helena. I opened my eyes and started with horror; for Mary was seated by my side, with the heart, as I supposed, torn out of her bosom. Then again, Hortensius was cutting up the beautiful body of Helena for his fish-ponds, while the Egyptian held me fascinated by his terrible eye, so that I could not stir for her help.
I grew worse and the end approached. I had not realized my condition: I had neither fear nor hope: I had no thought of death or of Jesus. At last, however, when I was dying, I heard my sisters calling frantically on his name. The name must have touched some silver chord of memory. The sweet, benevolent face appeared before me, Mary Magdalen in her dark robe kneeling behind. The tender words, "Thy sins are forgiven," echoed in my ears. Mary and Martha seemed to me like two shining angels floating up into heaven. A sudden halo blazed around the head of Jesus. I reached out my arms to him with wonder and delight, fell back and expired with a smile upon my lips.
Yes! I was dead: and, wonder of wonders! I live again, to describe my sensations, and to inform my fellow-men what I saw and heard behind the veil which separates the two worlds-that veil which is so thin and yet seems so impenetrable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
XIV.
_MY SPIRITUAL BODY._
[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]
Our sleep is an awakening: our death is a birth; our burial a resurrection.
The slumber of a babe upon its mother"s breast, drawing from her bodily warmth the secret magnetism of life, is a picture of the true state of every human soul, leaning unconsciously upon the bosom of G.o.d at the moment when bereaved friends are exclaiming,
"He is dead! he is dead!"
They called me dead. My sisters and their companions rent their garments and covered their heads with ashes. Unconscious of their grief, I pa.s.sed beyond the shadows of this world, beyond these voices and sorrows, into the pure light of a spiritual realm.
Dead, indeed! I lived most when I seemed to live least. Death is nothing but a name for a change of condition.
The first thing I remember on returning to consciousness, was a soft strain of distant and ravishing music. I could not open my eyes, nor did I care to do so. It was perfect bliss to lie there in sweet repose, and listen to those heavenly sounds which came nearer and nearer. I have been asked if there was music in heaven. Why, the least motion of the air there is musical. Music is to the ear what light is to the eye; and the sounds of heaven are as sweet as its colors are beautiful.
I next became aware of presences about me. How can I describe the new sense which informed me of their nearness! I did not see or feel or hear them. I perceived them, intuitively as it were, by a holy atmosphere of love and purity and beauty which came with them. So the flowers, without senses like our own, when the dark and chilly night is over, must feel the tremulous waves of light gladdening around them.
These invisible, inaudible attendants were engaged in some office of love about me. What it was I did not understand; but I felt as if my body was being drawn out of something, as a hand is withdrawn from a glove,-although no one seemed to touch me. I entered into a state of exalted and blissful sensations, totally new to me, and quite incomprehensible to men still lingering in the flesh. My affections seemed to be concentrated or detained upon pure, tender, lovely and holy things, so that nothing painful or doubtful or sorrowful should stain the shining mirror of the soul.
I do not know how long this exquisite state of happiness lasted. It must have been rounded off with a delicious sleep; for it seemed itself like a sweet and mysterious dream, when I discovered that I was wider awake than before, and surrounded by a different though still delightful and purifying sphere of impressions.
From the presences about me I seemed to absorb the power of thinking and remembering distinctly. I could not open my eyes, but I seemed to be contemplating a luminous atmosphere, an infinite variety of splendid and dazzling colors, a whole universe of light. The ecstasy of Joy with which, bewildered and fascinated, I studied this inexpressible chaos of light, is beyond my power of description. In the midst of it I felt that two persons were near me, one at my head and one at my feet. One of them seemed to bend over me, and to be reading my face as one reads a book. He then said to the other in a gentle voice:
"It is good. His last thoughts were about the Lord."
I pondered these words and asked myself whether I was dead or dreaming or in a trance.
My invisible friend then pa.s.sed his hands several times gently over my face. He next drew a fine film from my eyelids and breathed upon my forehead. I instantly recovered my sight and looked around me. There were two men before me with beautiful and n.o.ble faces, and clad in robes of shining linen. I could not remove my eyes from them, there was something so inexpressibly tender and brotherly in their looks and motions.
"You are in the world of spirits, my brother," said one of them with ineffable sweetness. "Be not afraid, but rejoice! The world of spirits is the vast realm betwixt earth and heaven into which all men come when they are first raised from the dead."
"Raised from the dead?" said I, in extreme bewilderment.
"Yes-you have been raised from the dead. You have left the earth upon which you were born; you have left your natural body, which your friends will bury in the ground; you are now in a spiritual body and a spiritual state of existence."
I looked at myself and looked around me.
"I cannot understand it," said I, sorely puzzled. "You are certainly strangers to me, and you look so unlike any of the men I have ever seen, that I can readily believe you are angels. Nor do I see my beloved sisters, Martha and Mary, who, I know, would not leave my bedside for a moment. But this body is the same body I have always had; this is the room in which I have been sick so long; and looking out of that window, I see the Mount of Olives and the familiar sky of Judea. Explain how this can be."
They looked at each other smiling, and one of them replied:
"The last impressions made upon the mind linger a while after death; so that the transition from natural to spiritual life may not be too sudden, and the sensation of personal ident.i.ty may be fully preserved. This will change to you presently. We do not see the room that you see, nor the Mount of Olives, nor the Judean sky. These will all vanish from your sight after a little, and you will find yourself differently clad and moving about among novel and beautiful scenes."
"But,"-said I, incredulously,-"but this body of flesh and blood, in which I live, move and think, how came it here?"
"That body of flesh and blood you have left behind you. The soul is a spiritual substance organized in the shape of its natural body. The natural body resembles the spiritual as a glove resembles the hand contained within it. You have dropped the glove. You see the naked hand."
"Our mission," he continued, "is now ended, and another takes our place.
We a.s.sist in the resurrection."
They made a motion of departure, but I seized one of them by the hand.