Well, then, supposing this being to exist somewhere—and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the souls of the inhabitants of each planet continue to hover within the sphere of that planet, to which, for anything we can tell, they may be attached by a magnetic attraction—supposing it to find itself in space, free of the body, endowed with the memory of the past, and consequently with a consciousness of its own deserts, able to perceive that which we do not ordinarily perceive, namely, those who have passed into a similar state with itself—will it not naturally seek its place among those spirits which most resemble itself, and with whom, therefore, it must have the most affinity? On earth, the good seek the good, and the wicked the wicked: and the axiom that “like associates with like,” we can not doubt will be as true hereafter as now. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions,” and our intuitive sense of what is fit and just must needs assure us that this is so. There are too many degrees of moral worth and of moral unworth among mankind, to permit of our supposing that justice could be satisfied by an abrupt division into two opposite classes. On the contrary, there must be infinite shades of desert; and, as we must consider that that which a spirit enters into on leaving the body is not so much a place as a condition, so there must be as many degrees of happiness or suffering as there are individuals, each carrying with him his own heaven or hell. For it is a vulgar notion to imagine that heaven and hell are places; they are states; and it is in ourselves we must look for both. When we leave the body, we carry them with us: “As the tree falls, so it shall lie.” The soul which here has wallowed in wickedness or been sunk in sensuality, will not be suddenly purified by the death of the body: its moral condition remains what its earthly sojourn has trained it to, but its means of indulging its propensities are lost. If it has had no godly aspirations here, it will not be drawn to God there; and if it has so bound itself to the body that it has known no happiness but that to which the body ministered, it will be incapable of happiness when deprived of that enjoyment. Here we see at once what a variety of conditions must necessarily ensue—how many comparatively negative states there must be between those of positive happiness or positive misery!
We may thus conceive how a soul, on entering upon this new condition, must find its own place or state; if its thoughts and aspirations here have been heavenward, and its pursuits noble, its conditions will be heavenly. The contemplation of God’s works, seen not as by our mortal eyes, but in their beauty and their truth and ever-glowing sentiments of love and gratitude—and, for aught we know, good offices to souls in need—would constitute a suitable heaven or happiness for such a being; an incapacity for such pleasures, and the absence of all others, would constitute a negative state, in which the chief suffering would consist in mournful regrets and a vague longing for something better, which the untrained soul, that never lifted itself from the earth, knows not how to seek; while malignant passions and unquenchable desires would constitute the appropriate hell of the wicked; for we must remember, that although a spirit is independent of those physical laws which are the conditions of matter, the moral law, which is indestructible, belongs peculiarly to it—that is, to the spirit—and is inseparable from it.
We must next remember, that this earthly body we inhabit is more or less a mask, by means of which we conceal from each other those thoughts which, if constantly exposed, would unfit us for living in community; but when we die, this mask falls away, and the truth shows nakedly: there is no more disguise; we appear as we are—spirits of light, or spirits of darkness;—and there can be no difficulty, I should think, in conceiving this, since we know that even our present opaque and comparatively inflexible features, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, will be the index of the mind; and that the expression of the face is gradually moulded to the fashion of the thoughts. How much more must this be the case with the fluent and diaphanous body which we expect is to succeed the fleshly one!
Thus, I think, we have arrived at forming some conception of the state that awaits us hereafter: the indestructible moral law fixes our place or condition; affinity governs our associations; and the mask under which we conceal ourselves having fallen away, we appear to each other as we are;—and I must here observe, that in this last circumstance must be comprised one very important element of happiness or misery; for the love of the pure spirits for each other will be for ever excited, by simply beholding that beauty and brightness which will be the inalienable expression of their goodness;—while the reverse will be the case with the spirits of darkness; for no one loves wickedness, in either themselves or others, however we may practise it. We must also understand, that the words “dark” and “light”—which, in this world of appearance, we use metaphorically to express good and evil—must be understood literally when speaking of that other world where everything will be seen as it is. Goodness is truth, and truth is light—and wickedness is falsehood, and falsehood is darkness; and so it will be seen to be. Those who have not the light of truth to guide them, will wander darkly through this valley of the shadow of death; those in whom the light of goodness shines will dwell in the light, which is inherent in themselves. The former will be in the kingdom of darkness—the latter in the kingdom of light. All the records existing of the blessed spirits that have appeared, ancient or modern, exhibit them as robed in light, while their anger or sorrow is symbolized by their darkness. Now, there appears to me nothing incomprehensible in this view of the future; on the contrary, it is the only one which I ever found myself capable of conceiving or reconciling with the justice and mercy of our Creator. He does not punish us—we punish ourselves: we have built up a heaven or a hell to our own liking, and we carry it with us. The fire that for ever burns without consuming, is the fiery evil in which we have chosen our part; and the heaven in which we shall dwell, will be the heavenly peace which will dwell in us. We are our own judges and our own chastisers. And here I must say a few words on the subject of that apparently (to us) preternatural memory which is developed under certain circumstances, and to which I alluded in a former chapter. Every one will have heard that persons who have been drowned and recovered, have had—in what would have been their last moments, if no means had been used to revive them—a strange vision of the past, in which their whole life seemed to float before them in review; and I have heard of the same phenomenon taking place, in moments of impending death, in other forms. Now, as it is not during the struggle for life, but immediately before insensibility ensues, that this vision occurs, it must be the act of a moment; and this renders incomprehensible to us what is said by the seeress of Prevorst, and other somnambules of the highest order, namely, that the instant the soul is freed from the body, it sees its whole earthly career in a single sign: it knows that it is good or evil, and pronounces its own sentence. The extraordinary memory occasionally exhibited in sickness, where the link between the soul and the body is probably loosened, shows us an adumbration of this faculty.
But this self-pronounced sentence we are led to hope is not final; nor does it seem consistent with the love and mercy of God that it should be so. There must be few, indeed, who leave this earth fit for heaven; for, although the immediate frame of mind in which dissolution takes place is probably very important, it is surely a pernicious error, encouraged by jail chaplains and philanthropists, that a late repentance and a few parting prayers can purify a soul sullied by years of wickedness. Would we at once receive such a one into our intimate communion and love? Should we not require time for the stains of vice to be washed away and habits of virtue to be formed? Assuredly we should! And how can we imagine that the purity of heaven is to be sullied by that approximation which the purity of earth would forbid? It would be cruel to say, and irrational to think, that this late repentance is of no avail; it is doubtless so far of avail, that the straining upward and the heavenly aspirations of the parting soul are carried with it, so that when it is free, instead of choosing the darkness it will flee to as much light as is in itself, and be ready, through the mercy of God and the ministering of brighter spirits, to receive more. But in this case, as also in the innumerable instances of those who die in what may be called a negative state, the advance must be progressive; though, wherever the desire exists, I must believe that this advance is possible. If not, wherefore did Christ, after being “put to death in the flesh,” go and “preach to the spirits in prison”? It would have been a mockery to preach salvation to those who had no hope; nor would they, having no hope, have listened to the preacher.
I think these views are at once cheering, encouraging, and beautiful; and I can not but believe, that were they more generally entertained and more intimately conceived, they would be very beneficial in their effects. As I have said before, the extremely vague notions people have of a future life prevent the possibility of its exercising any great influence upon the present. The picture, on one side, is too revolting and inconsistent with our ideas of Divine goodness to be deliberately accepted; while, with regard to the other, our feelings somewhat resemble those of a little girl I once knew, who, being told by her mother what was to be the reward of goodness if she were so happy as to reach heaven, put her finger in her eye and began to cry, exclaiming, “Oh, mamma, how tired I shall be singing!”
The question which will now naturally arise, and which I am bound to answer, is, how have these views been formed? and what is the authority for them? And the answer I have to make will startle many minds when I say, that they have been gathered from two sources; first and chiefly from the state in which those spirits appear to be, and sometimes avow themselves to be, who, after quitting the earth, return to it and make themselves visible to the living; and, secondly, from the revelations of numerous somnambules of the highest order, which entirely conform in all cases, not only with the revelations of the dead, but with each other. I do not mean to imply, when I say this, that I consider the question finally settled as to whether somnambules are really clear-seers or only visionaries; nor that I have by any means established the fact that the dead do sometimes actually return; but I am obliged to beg the question for the moment, since, whether these sources be pure or impure, it is from them the information has been collected. It is true that these views are extremely conformable with those entertained by Plato and his school of philosophers, and also with those of the mystics of a later age; but the latter certainly, and the former probably, built up their systems on the same foundation; and I am very far from using the term mystics in the opprobrious, or at least contemptuous, tone in which it has of late years been uttered in this country; for, although abounding in errors, as regarded the concrete, and although their want of an inductive methodology led them constantly astray in the region of the real, they were sublime teachers in that of the ideal; and they seem to have been endowed with a wonderful insight into this veiled department of our nature.
It may be here objected, that we only admire their insight, because, being in entire ignorance of the subject of it, we accept raving for revelation; and that no weight can be attached to the conformity of later disclosures with theirs, since they have no doubt been founded upon them. As to the ignorance, it is admitted; and, simply looking at their views, as they stand, they have nothing to support them but their sublimity and consistency; but, as regards the value of the evidence afforded by conformity, it rests on very different grounds; for the reporters from whom we collect our intelligence are, with very few exceptions, those of whom we may safely predicate, that they were wholly unacquainted with the systems promulgated by the Platonic philosophers, or the mystics either, nor, in most instances, had ever heard of their names; for, as regards that peculiar somnambulic state which is here referred to, the subjects of it appear to be generally very young people of either sex, and chiefly girls; and, as regards ghost-seeing, although this phenomenon seems to have no connection with the age of the seer, yet it is not usually from the learned or the cultivated that we collect our cases, inasmuch as the apprehension of ridicule on the one hand, and the fast hold the doctrine of spectral illusions has taken of them on the other, prevent their believing in their own senses, or producing any evidence they might have to furnish.
And here will be offered another subtle objection, namely, that the testimony of such witnesses as I have above described is perfectly worthless; but this I deny. The somnambulic states I allude to, are such as have been developed, not artificially, but naturally; and often, under very extraordinary nervous diseases, accompanied with catalepsy, and various symptoms far beyond feigning. Such cases are rare, and, in this country, seem to have been very little observed, for doubtless they must occur, and when they do occur they are very carefully concealed by the families of the patient, and not followed up or investigated as a psychological phenomenon by the physician; for it is to be observed that, without questioning, no revelations are made; they are not, as far as I know, ever spontaneous. I have heard of two such cases in this country, both occurring in the higher classes, and both patients being young ladies; but, although surprising phenomena were exhibited, interrogation was not permitted, and the particulars were never allowed to transpire.
No doubt there are examples of error and examples of imposture, so there are in everything where room is to be found for them; and I am quite aware of the propensity of hysterical patients to deceive, but it is for the judicious observers to examine the genuineness of each particular instance; and it is perfectly certain and well established by the German physiologists and psychologists, who have carefully studied the subject, that there are many above all suspicion. Provided, then, that the case be genuine, it remains to be determined how much value is to be attached to the revelations, for they may be quite honestly delivered, and yet be utterly worthless—the mere ravings of a disordered brain; and it is here that conformity becomes important, for I can not admit the objection that the simple circumstance of the patients being diseased invalidates their evidence so entirely as to annul even the value of their unanimity, because, although it is not logically impossible that a certain state of nervous derangement should occasion all somnambules, of the class in question, to make similar answers, when interrogated regarding a subject of which, in their normal condition, they know nothing, and on which they have never reflected, and that these answers should be not only consistent, but disclosing far more elevated views than are evolved by minds of a very superior order which have reflected on it very deeply—I say, although this is not logically impossible, it will assuredly be found, by most persons, an hypothesis of much more difficult acceptance than the one I propose; namely, that whatever be the cause of the effect, these patients are in a state of clear-seeing, wherein they have “more than mortal knowledge;” that is, more knowledge than mortals possess in their normal condition: and it must not be forgotten, that we have some facts confessed by all experienced physicians and physiologists, even in this country, proving that there are states of disease in which preternatural faculties have been developed, such as no theory has yet satisfactorily accounted for.