“Cut off, even in the blossom of its sin,
Unhouselled, disappointed, unaneled;
No reckoning made, but sent to its account
With all its imperfections on its head.”
It seems also to be gathered from experience, that those whose lives have been rendered wretched, “rest not in their graves;” at least, several accounts I have met with, as well as tradition, countenance this view; and this may originate in the fact that cruelty and ill-usage frequently produce very pernicious effects on the mind of the sufferer, in many instances inspiring, not resignation or a pious desire for death, but resentment, and an eager longing for a fair share of earthly enjoyment. Supposing, also, the feelings and prejudices of the earthly life to accompany this dispossessed soul—for, though the liberation from the body inducts it into certain privileges inherent in spirit, its moral qualities remain as they were (“as the tree falls, so it shall lie”)—supposing, therefore, that these feelings, and prejudices, and recollections, of its past life, are carried with it, we see at once why the discontented spirits of the heathen world could not rest till their bodies had obtained sepulture, why the buried money should torment the soul of the miser, and why the religious opinions, whatever they may have been, believed in the flesh, seem to survive with the spirit. There are two remarkable exceptions, however, and these are precisely such as might be expected. Those who, during their corporeal life, have not believed in a future state, return to warn their friends against the same error. “There is another world!” said the brother of the young lady who appeared to her in the cathedral of York, on the day he was drowned; and there are several similar instances recorded. The belief that this life “is the be-all and the end-all here,” is a mistake that death must instantly rectify. The other exception I allude to is, that that toleration, of which, unfortunately, we see much less than is desirable in this world, seems happily to prevail in the next; for, among the numerous narrations I meet with, in which the dead have returned to ask the prayers or the services of the living, they do not seem, as will be seen by-and-by, to apply by any means exclusively to members of their own church. The attrait which seems to guide their selection of individuals is evidently not of a polemical nature. The pure worship of God, and the inexorable moral law, are what seem to prevail in the other world, and not the dogmatic theology which makes so much of the misery of this.
There is a fundamental truth in all religions: the real end of all is morality, however the means may be mistaken, and however corrupt, selfish, ambitious, and sectarian, the mass of their teachers may and generally do become; while the effect of prayer—in whatever form, or to whatever ideal of the Deity it may be offered, provided that offering be honestly and earnestly made—is precisely the same to the supplicant and in its results.
I have reserved the following story, which is not a fiction, but the relation of an undoubted and well-attested fact, till the present chapter, as being particularly applicable to this branch of my subject:—
Some ninety years ago, there flourished in Glasgow a club of young men, which, from the extreme profligacy of its members, and the licentiousness of their orgies, was commonly called the “Hell-Club!” Besides their nightly or weekly meetings, they held one grand annual saturnalia, in which each tried to excel the other in drunkenness and blasphemy; and on these occasions there was no star among them whose lurid light was more conspicuous than that of young Mr. Archibald B——, who, endowed with brilliant talents and a handsome person, had held out great promise in his boyhood, and raised hopes, which had been completely frustrated by his subsequent reckless dissipations.
One morning, after returning from this annual festival, Mr. Archibald B—— having retired to bed, dreamed the following dream:—
He fancied that he himself was mounted on a favorite black horse, that he always rode, and that he was proceeding toward his own house—then a country-seat embowered by trees, and situated upon a hill, now entirely built over, and forming part of the city—when a stranger, whom the darkness of night prevented his distinctly discerning, suddenly seized his horse’s rein, saying, “You must go with me!”