The summer sun beat oppressively down upon the heads of August Blair and Aimee Herne, as they walked their horses slowly down the hilly road. Aimee took off her hat and fanned her heated face: “Mercy! the lower regions can’t be much hotter than this!” August laughed as he flicked at the overhanging branches of the trees with his whip: “According to all accounts there isn’t very much shade there.”
“Just at present I could imagine only a mitigation of heat and a perpetual breeze, as fitly belonging to that plane of existence,” replied Aimee, in that light tone which either means nothing or hits the truth without positive conception of its being such.
“That speech embodies every person’s idea of heaven, doesn’t it? We wish most earnestly for the condition we find lacking to our comfort in this world; thus, to-day a cool wind and shade seem most desirable; next week it might be quite different——”
“A fire for instance,” said Aimee sarcastically.
“That is another of man’s ideas constructed from the purely material, and grafted into the spiritual tree; burning by fire is man’s conception 30of the worst possible torment. Our ideas of the hereafter—and incidentally of heaven—are very vague and uncertain; no mind can build higher than its purest ideal, and our knowledge gained only from the material world cannot grasp the spiritual. We speculate a little, and take a flight in this or that direction; but like a bird at night—bewildered by the arc lights in the street we fall back to earth—and material things for all our types of happiness.”
Aimee threw up her hand impatiently, “Oh, what ideas! I don’t want to talk about such things; I prefer thinking how pleasant it is under this great old oak. Let us rest here, August.”
“All right,” he answered as he alighted and assisted her from the saddle. They seated themselves on a grassy knoll at the foot of the tree, and restfully watched the horses crop the short, sweet grass.
August’s thought seemed to persistently linger on the subject of the beyond: “There could be nothing more heavenly than this—were one’s mind but in perfect accord with one’s surroundings,” said he.
“Which very seldom happens to be the case,” answered Aimee.
“Our own discordant restlessness is all that hinders this world from actually being heaven!” replied he emphatically.
“Oh, nonsense! This is earth, and that is good enough for me; I do not wish to think on such gruesome subjects; life is so pleasant. Some time I must prepare for eternity, I suppose; 31but I wish to enjoy myself now; it is time enough when I have grown old to be solemn, and give up all pleasures,” she half-pouted.
August laid his head back against the boll of the tree and laughed heartily. “So you think that one must be solemn to prepare for eternity? In the first place we are in eternity now—the present is just as much a part of eternity as the future state will be; eternity is only an expression, meaning all time; it always was and always will be, and it seems to me that the very best way to prepare for the future state is to be innocently happy in this——”
“I think that you are talking nonsense—you make me afraid!”
“Of what are you afraid? Afraid of opening the door to step into the next room? Afraid to go to sleep in the evening of life, to awaken in the sunlit morning of an advanced day? I’ll tell you what, Aimee, if I go before you do—and return is possible—I will come back and tell you what I find in the Beyond.”
Aimee jumped up nervously, and walked away without speaking.
August arose at the same time, and leaned against the trunk of the tree. “Come back here!” he called.
“No, indeed! I do not want to hear that kind of talk,” she replied irritably.
The clouds had been gathering in the west, and once or twice the thunder had growled menacingly; but in the shelter of the trees they had not observed the signals of the coming storm.
32A great drop of rain struck Aimee on the cheek, causing her to utter an exclamation of surprise.
“Come here, Aimee!” called August again, holding out his hands, a smile on his lips; her petulance amused him.
At that instant a bolt of lightning shot from the sky, blinding and bewildering Aimee; it appeared to be at her very feet; her scream of affright was drowned by the crash and reverberation of the thunder; she essayed to go to August for protection, but a numbness paralyzed her brain and limbs; the horses snorted wildly, and galloped away over the road toward home.
In a short time Aimee aroused herself, and called quaveringly, “August! August!” but received no reply.
She made an effort to cross the road, but her head swayed dizzily and her limbs refused to support her body; a cloud-like haze seemed to float between herself and August, where he sat apparently leaning back easily against the tree. A few great drops of rain plashed down—making miniature globes in the dust of the street—they pelted her in the face and served to revive her a little.
“August! August!” she called complainingly; still he made no reply. She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered at him wonderingly; she thought the sunlight was dazzling her vision, everything appeared blurred, distorted and out of proportion; she petulantly resented the smile upon August’s lips, she thought that he derided her fear.
33“It’s mean of you August!” she whimpered as she giddily crossed the dusty road, staggering from side to side as she walked.
The clouds had been gathering thick and fast, and the gloom of a late twilight prevailed; the heavy thunder crashed and roared, following—almost blending with—the blinding flashes of electricity.
As she dropped at his feet complainingly, the flood gates of heaven seemed opened; she crept to him, and reached up her arms to clasp his neck in a childishly confident way: “Oh, protect me, August! Do let us seek shelter!”
As her arms closed about his neck his head fell forward inertly, the body lurched over heavily, fell from her weak arms and rolled over sidewise. The heavy rumble of the thunder, the roar of the rain, the wild swaying of the sodden branches, and the flapping of the wet leaves drowned her frightened cries.
“Help! help!” she shrieked again and again; at times high and shrill, again, almost inarticulate—scarcely above a hoarse whisper—as clutching at his clothing she frantically tried to lift him and hold him erect.
“Oh, August, my darling, what ails you? Speak to me! Speak to me!” she cried wildly.
A half-dozen men came dashing down the hill; they had spoken with August and Aimee as they passed on their way; then when the storm was at its height, seeing the horses galloping by riderless, they knew that some accident must have befallen them.
34Aimee saw them coming, and redoubled her cries.
“What is the matter?” “Are you hurt?” “Were you thrown from your horses?” It was a babel of sounds; a confusion of questions.
“I do not know! Oh, it is August!” answered Aimee incoherently.
“Stand back,” said one who had been stooping over August. Continuing in a low tone, “He is dead, struck by lightning.”
“No! no! no!” shrieked Aimee shrilly: “He was speaking but an instant ago; can’t you see that he is not dead! Why, he is smiling!”
She clasped him more closely in her arms, and rocked herself back and forth as a mother soothes her child. Gently they loosed her hold, and through the sobbing trees bore their dripping burden to the nearest farmhouse, soothing Aimee’s frantic grief with sympathetic words.
August had been so amused at Aimee’s petulance and childish fear that he had reached out his hands to call her to him as he would have called a wayward child; in this attitude the descending bolt struck him. He experienced for one brief instant the shock and sense of earthly pain, followed immediately by a feeling of lightness and freedom—which none but children experience in the physical body, and they but seldom—glad to be, glorying in existence—which, instead of being lost through the change, had become intensified and augmented. It seemed that a film had been swept from his sight; all things were clearer and larger; and things which had appeared enveloped in mystery—difficult 35to understand—stood out plain and simple, like the white letters upon a blackboard.
His spirit, freed from earthly aches and pains, from the uncomfortable sense of incumbrance, rose like a bird on the wing; his first sense of bewilderment—caused by his rapid transit through space—gave place to an exalted delight as he beheld the wonderful panorama spread out before him—waves of silvery hue, tinged with violet shades—exactly proportioned one with another—like a softly lapping, iridescent sea; long, low slopes clothed in the same subdued color swept by him; he grew weary of the sameness, and wished that he might catch a glimpse of the mountains which should lie beyond those hills; their deep shadows and high lights would be a restful change. Even as the discontent swept over him he plunged into a gulf of shadows—shadows filled with silent voices—desire made manifest without sound or motion—the spiritual understanding of the purely spiritual.
The multitudinous shadows were on every side; pressing on the right, crowding on the left; before him and in the rear; close, closer—urging for companionship; shrieking for guidance through the gulf of the vast Unknown; through the trackless No Land which lies between the material and the spiritual world. He felt their silent despairing cry, that they were lost in this horrible void; they clutched at him as he swept past them, and although there was no sound all this reached his spiritual consciousness like the roar of the tempest, or the tumult 36and crash of falling worlds, so magnified was his understanding of all things.
The commotion horrified him; instincts of the plane of life now left behind prompted resentment; he would have fought the impalpable—given physical blows to things of no substance—to shadows. He felt a strange, incongruous sense of mirth as he realized the absurdity of it—was he not a disembodied spirit among a countless throng like unto himself? A wave of pity for himself and all that surging throng swept over him.
He was carried rapidly onward, although he realized no volition of his own; darker, darker grew the way; all the accompanying shadows disappeared until there was nothing to stir the deadly silence and gloom; his longing for sound became torture—it was like holding the breath expecting disaster—he felt an agonized desire to scream, and thus break this horrible, waveless void into billows of uproar. This laying off the flesh—and retaining all of the spiritual activity augmented by being set so entirely free from all limitations of the material plane, yet without chart or compass on the unknown spiritual sea, was suggestive of difficulties bordering upon punishment, instead of the unalloyed happiness expected.
He grew very weary of this continued progress, with no known end in view; it is the hope of accomplishment which makes all things—even waiting—bearable. He whimsically likened himself to a fly in a sea of ink; he was but a somber atom in a shroud of darkness, just a trifle more dense than his environment.
37After that which seemed to him ages of time and limitless space—forgetful that beyond the physical life there could exist neither time nor space, as both are of man’s comprehension—the density lightened a trifle; a seeming wall rose somberly before him, a tantalizing suggestion of a means of ingress; and as he looked in fear and amaze a door opened, from which there issued a blinding light, and illumined by its rays he beheld a creature more beautiful than the imagination of man ever conceived.
The strong, onward-bearing current seemed at once to set in that direction; thus, he became aware that his wish, his desire, governed the current; heretofore he had drifted aimlessly—having no body to control—and failing to comprehend that the spirit could be directed. The knowledge came to him as does that which we call intuition—which is nothing more nor less than spiritual understanding—that his wish controlled the spirit, as his desire had governed the body.
We often hear the departed spoken of as the “shade;” he found that upon which he now gazed quite the reverse; a luminosity—outlining a charming vagueness—a suggestion of the beautiful rather than a fact. The reality never yet possessed the lure for man which suggestion holds; there was a delusion of starry eyes, flowing hair, lips glowing with the enticement of kisses, like the bewilderment of an entrancing dream; a seeming vague roundness of form, which was but a figment of the desire.
38Warm and languorous grew the compelling current; fear fell away, a mad desire for possession taking its place. His gaze seemed fixed upon the entrancing vision. He was almost within the portal when a shudder ran through his spirit as a chill goes through the body; a sudden wavering of the spiritual vision, then—an appalled shrinking.
The dismay caused a quick turning of the onward-bearing force, which shot him out into the darkness; the door closed behind him, and his intelligence collapsed for a brief space of time.
That which had so frightened him was an abysmal pit, filled with fighting, struggling fiends, each bearing a horrible impress of his particular sin stamped upon his pain-distorted, shadowy semblance of a human face, in characters as legible as words upon a written page. Their sins continually mocked them; all their evil desires remained, accentuated by their inability to gratify the evil propensities. His most poignant fright was caused by recognizing many whom he had known in the material life, who had stood high in the world’s esteem, and had worn a cloak of superior sanctity.
Helplessly he floated on; in his awful collapse he was unable to will his course—if indeed he had known any course or destination. The awful, crowding shadows seemed to bear him with them; he thought that he had escaped them, yet here they were, and he was again but one of a gruesome, soundless throng.
He soon recovered from his fright, and was 39carried forward, if not more hopefully, yet more resignedly, and thus he came to another door; inscribed thereon in mellow radiance was this legend, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
With a thrill he remembered his earthly teaching. He drew near in fear and awe—he thought to gently knock. Alas! Hands he had not!
Grief surged through his spirit: “Ah, if I could but knock, that I might enter in out of the shadows and despair!” he sighed. Even as the wish formed, the door seemed to roll gently away; a soft glow enveloped him; sweet odors encompassed him; a warm wave wafted him onward; the door silently slid into place. With joy he realized that his humble desire had typified knocking. All within was light, glory and beauty.
Fear seized him; shame of his imperfections held him motionless.
On every side, wafting around him, were creatures of surpassing loveliness; no blemish visible in any one of them. In the body absolute perfection of mind or matter is not to be found; here, the rule seemed to be reversed—there existed not the slightest variation from lines of perfect symmetry. Waves of intelligence floated out from each released spirit, pure as the flawless diamond, and as calm as the waveless sea; it seemed to him that over all there rested—not a chill—but the absence of warmth; warmth and love are not compatible with absolute perfection.
All human love is more or less riotous and 40selfish; the passion is like an ocean, whose billows roll high, or rock in a gentle lullaby, but never, never an unbroken calm. Also, ardor and warmth are the fruit of desire, not necessarily sinful, but of the leaven of humanity.
He felt, in the presence of these spirits of purity, the taint of the world clinging to him like a soiled garment; he fancied he could smell the mold of the grave, the odor of his decaying body.
He looked with amaze upon those spirits from whom no thought emanated save eternal worship of the Eternal One, seated forever on a “Great White Throne” in their midst; before which even the fronded palms seemed to lift up their heads in adoration.
All have read that the floor of heaven is laid over “with gold and precious stones;” and whose “walls are of jasper and onyx, and all things costly and precious.”
All other emotions now gave place to wonder. How could the earthly be so mixed up with the spiritual? How could the love of “all things costly” remain, and no taint of humanity linger? The desire for gold was born of greed; and the love of precious stones was sired by selfishness.
No one of all that vast throng seemed to observe him; the spiritual vision of all seemed to be fixed upon Him who sat on high. A great number seemed to have no vocation except to float around and around the throne; the concourse seemed incessant, interminable. Another mighty number twanged invisible harps.
41Here was fresh cause for amazement. How could a bodiless spirit touch the strings of a harp? How could sound exist where there were no ears? Does not science demonstrate that there is no such thing as noise, unless there are ears to hear? This then was another figment of the spiritual intelligence.
His ideas became so tangled that it worried him, but he finally summed up in this manner; each intelligence received that which was desired purely, or believed implicitly; music, worship, beauty; each but an expression of adoration. A narrow limit, truly!
Many vapory forms floated around him, gently touching him with shadowy wings. One sweet spirit ever pressed closely to his side as they neared him in their slowly circling around that central figure—like motes in the sun. A thought wave flowed from her intelligence to him, which he interpreted, “Come join with me. Let us worship together!”
He hesitated; the movements looked very dreamy and poetic, but what had that to do with spirituality?
Each spirit beamed with benignant light; eternal sweetness wafted around them like the odor of innumerable flowers heavy with dew. Thought waves rippled from spirit to spirit, transparent as a pellucid sea, gentle as when the sweet south wind fans it into low, languid swells; pure as are the lilies, and sweet unto faintness, as is their odor. His desire hungered piteously: “Oh, for the scarlet of the passion flower and the gold of the homely dandelion!” The sweet 42spirit gently touched him with filmy wings; a thought wave reached his consciousness: “Cease rebelling; you disturb the heavenly harmony. Oh come! Come with me!”
It seemed that a sigh floated past him—it could not be—but oh, all things were so unreal! Even the holiness and perfection seemed dreamy and untrue—too cold and calm.
A shiver ran through his spirit, he felt his earthiness cling about his spirituality as had sodden garments adhered to his physical form; he was weighted down by a sense of unworthiness and imperfection. The teachings of his humanity so held him in thrall that he could not climb the heights of exaltation on a single thought as all these souls appeared to do.
The alluring spirit came again; pressing still more closely, pleading yet more fervently; a hint of earthly love in her prayer—vaguely suggestive—as were all things else.
He felt the Lofty Intelligence looking him through and through, and his mind turned with a mighty longing to his former habitation; to him it seemed that the limitations of the flesh were not so narrow as this circumscribed routine. In this place was no progression; on earth, one might at least make an effort.
Reproachfully, compellingly, the Immaculate gazed upon him.
Sweetly, gently, the fair spirit lured him, until his will was compelled, and side by side with her who had so sweetly entreated, he joined the slowly revolving circle.
Having once consented, turning back was an 43impossibility; therein they differed from those in the flesh. We easily slip from our effort after higher things, and when we fall, fall far; they, having once turned their spiritual gaze upward, could not turn away. As he floated on, side by side with the Beauteous One, her sweet magnetism enveloped him like the odor of wild wood flowers.
His amazement increased; what worth in all this if he possessed no free will? Compulsory virtue is of no avail. He wondered what purpose they served floating about like butterflies on a summer breeze; and if it was any particular pleasure to the Lord of All to behold them gyrate? Oh dear! And did He never tire of even the Great White Throne?
He thought, with a chill of repulsion, that the Perfect One, who did nothing but sit on a throne to be worshiped, was a less beautiful expression of the Deity than the flowers of the field, or the birds that wing their glad flight through the ether; also, that the incessant twanging of harps was not so sweet a music, or so filled with worship, as the babbling of the brook, or the whisper of the wind, to Him who created them.
He was so weary of it all, even to the vapory, melodious voices of the shadowy choir; he wondered if they never rested; also, if it was because of the taint of his humanity that he could not appreciate the beauty and sublimity of it.
He remembered that from childhood he had been taught that heaven was as he now saw it, and whenever he had been given a hard task it 44had appeared to him that the height of enjoyment would be in having nothing to do; and that heaven was a place of eternal rest, had ever been held out as an inducement to exalted virtue, and—excessive labor. He found the inactivity terribly irksome, it reminded him of worldly ennui; then, the unreality bewildered him—it was like pressing the fingers upon the eyelids—persons, places and things are vividly seen, and yet we know that it is but a chimera of the brain; a vision of the intelligence. So he grew to doubt the reality of everything. He could not keep his spirituality keyed up to the proper pitch; his intelligence would wander back to earth and mortal love. The purely spiritual seemed to him to be lacking. It is only given to humanity to burn hot and cold; to reach the heights of bliss and the depths of despair; even that which we call despair has its amelioration, for never yet was it so dark but, given a little time, humanity looks upward to where the sun is shining, and hopes and strives to reach the illuminated summit; but here—there could be but this endless sameness through all eternity, without even the pleasure of striving, “thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.”
He rebelled madly; he preferred the trials and the pains of the body, with the power to control his actions, to the spiritual and no will of his own. Eternal leisure has its unpleasant features, though many seem to suppose that eternal leisure and eternal felicity are synonymous.
He looked back with positive longing to the 45hard work, and consequent weariness; from bodily fatigue rest had been sweet; but the unending spiritual lassitude of eternity was terrible to contemplate. A sad, reproachful thought wave met his pessimistic, spiritual cry; with shame and terror, he felt that the Perfect One saw all his discontent and rebellion—still he could not but wonder. Had all these placid souls been as easily swayed while in the body, as they were in the spirit? Their very sweetness and complaisance exasperated him; he thought, with a very human perverseness, that he should like to see one of them get angry, so as to get up a little excitement; instead, they were as sweet as the dripping sap of the budding maple, and—as insipid. Things and persons can be too good. Better a thunderstorm and a purified atmosphere than a sultry, lifeless day.
The exasperation grew upon him. The thought wave from his companion was like a perpetual sigh; a curious blending of the wish to adore, and the desire to be loved. He felt the reproach of the myriad souls who brushed him with filmy wings. Sad reproof fell upon him from Him seated over all.
Waves of love and adoration rose and fell on the soft, enervating air, like strains of languid music, the perfect rhythm madly suggestive to him of the sweetness and longing of human love. This love of his companion spirit revolted him; it was like a draught of tepid water to the traveler dying of heat and thirst; her thought wave had the effect of clinging hands, which 46would not let him go, and he grew almost to hate her.
As they once more came around that endless circle he saw the door sliding noiselessly open, a spirit was for an instant outlined against the darkness without; the door had already commenced to close; he madly broke away from the compelling current of the She, who would have held him. His consciousness felt her despairing cry breaking the placidity of that spiritual atmosphere, as the tornado sweeps the ocean, lashing it into frightful waves.
The All Seeing looked at him with awful wrath and majesty. He but sped the faster. The door was closing rapidly; he forgot the terrors of the darkness without—he forgot the multitude of drifting souls, and their horrible contact—he forgot that he knew not where he should go in all that limitless gloom; he strove madly to reach the door ere it closed, to once more shut him into that horrible inactivity, and forced semblance of adoration.
He reached the door—yet a little space open; the guardian angel paused in amazement—it sufficed. He darted through; but instead of floating off on the magnetic current as he had expected, he plunged downward—down, down, down! Would he never reach a resting-place?
Oh, for a voice to cry aloud! Oh, for the company of even the gruesome shadows! Though he loathed and feared them, this absolute isolation held a greater terror, the fear that this state 47might be perpetual. One of the first principles of all life is resistance, and deprived of all motive—which is but another way of saying of all power of resistance—he felt as though in the throes of a spiritual vertigo.
He struggled frantically to cry aloud, he imagined that a ray of light pierced the gloom in the distance; with a mad effort he struggled upward, unseen hands caught and held him down, and still that tantalizing ray of light flickered and glowed like a beckoning ray of hope.
Within its radius grew a face—his swooning soul revived—it bore the lineaments of Aimee; she too must have passed over to the Beyond.
Like sweetest music a sound reached him; sweeter than all the mythical harps are the tones of the human voice—and succeeding the deadly silence through which he had passed—it flooded his whole being with delight. Aimee was stooping over him caressingly, her words were very simple: “August, dear, are you better?”
His fingers closed feebly over her hand, as he whispered faintly, “Oh, I fell so far! How came you to catch me?”
She answered him soothingly, and held an invigorating drink to his lips; he drank obediently and immediately dropped into a refreshing slumber.
When through the rush and roar of the storm the frightened men bore August’s body to the farmhouse there was no disfiguring trace upon him except a slight blue line, like a faint pencil mark, extending from brow to chin; he lay like 48one asleep, that faint, sweet smile still upon his lips. In a state of mental collapse Aimee accompanied them, and for days her condition bordered upon insanity; when they made preparations to bury August, she cried so piteously that he was not dead, that they were forced to delay the final ceremonies; this was repeated until her persistence won a measure of unwilling belief, and a council of physicians was called, who decided that he was in a cataleptic condition.
Aimee scarcely left his bedside until he recovered consciousness.
About a week after this occurred, as he lay on a couch drawn up to the open window, languidly looking at the softly rustling leaves, the green grass, the glowing flowers, he sighed restlessly.
Aimee was at his side instantly: “What is it, August? Are you in pain?”
“Oh, no! I was only thinking how much nicer this is than heaven, and wondering why it is that people are not more content in this beautiful world; we have such infinite variety, such happy conditions, and yet humanity is so unsatisfied.” He paused a moment, then asked, “Didn’t you know that I was in heaven while I was dead?”
“I know that you are talking fearful nonsense!” answered Aimee severely.
“Do you think it nonsense that I think this world so beautiful?” he asked teasingly.
“You know that I do not mean that; but that is nonsense about your going to heaven.”
“But I did go there and it made me awful 49tired! I am glad that I returned to earth again,” said he.
“Oh, August! You are perfectly horrid!” was Aimee’s shocked rejoinder.
He smiled, but went on to relate his strange experience.
“But you were not really dead, you know,” she replied as he finished the recital.
“Do you think that?” he answered thoughtfully; “I should like to have some one—some person who really knows—explain the difference between that which is called trance, and death, except as to duration. Where was my soul during all that time? Not in the body of a certainty. I know that my spirit went to heaven; everything there was just as I had been taught from childhood that it would be; that teaching could not by any possibility be wrong!” he added conclusively, but with a merry twinkle in his eye.
Later on, sweetly and seriously he said, “I shall always love and appreciate nature so much more for that experience; of things infinite we know not the method; we behold the result, and we know that the Creator is. All nature unites into a rhythm of grandest praise to Him who is part and parcel of all things good. The leaf on the tree whispers of his abiding presence; the flower that springs from the mold lifts its face to the sun and air, and speaks of the Life, glorifying Him with its beauteous colors. God is the very principle of all life. He is not an Idle God; his work goes on forever, without haste, without cessation. We are created in his 50image; not as to the physical, which must change its form, and subserve in other ways, but as to the spiritual, which, if we will not pervert our higher natures—will grow to sublime heights of purity and goodness—the higher we place our standard the nearer we approach the Divine.
“We sin continually against our better selves, our physical bodies and our spiritual natures, we gorge the body and starve the mind; we overwork the perishable physical, and let the mental and spiritual rust, while we heap up a little gold and silver for those who shall come after us to squander and quarrel over. We strive after a heaven in the future, and neglect that which only is ours to-day. Why wait for an impossible time, and a mythical place? We had best take a share of it each day; it is here if we will accept it; for, dearest Aimee, what does heaven mean but happiness?”