All sacrifices to the dead, and all commemorations of them, have arisen from this opinion, and the Romish Church established upon it the most lucrative of all its deceitful practises. Indeed the belief in apparitions, could not prevail without it; and that belief, which was all but universal a century ago, is still, and ever will be held by the great majority of mankind. Call it a prejudice if you will: “what is an universal prejudice,” says Reginald Heber, “but the voice of human nature?”—And Shakespeare seems to express his own opinion when he writes, “They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.”
That the spirits of the departed are permitted to appear only for special purposes, is what the most credulous believer in such appearances would probably admit, if he reasoned at all upon the subject. On the other hand, they who are most incredulous on this point, would hardly deny that to witness the consequences of our actions may be a natural and just part of our reward or punishment in the intermediate state. We may well believe that they whom faith has sanctified, and who upon their departure join the spirits of the “just made perfect,” may at once be removed from all concern with this world of probation, except so far as might add to their own happiness, and be made conducive to the good of others, in the ways of Providence. But by parity of reason, it may be concluded that the sordid and the sensual, they whose affections have been set upon worldly things, and who are of the earth earthy, will be as unable to rise above this earth, as they would be incapable of any pure and spiritual enjoyment. “He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption.” When life is extinguished, it is too late for them to struggle for deliverance from the body of that death, to which, while the choice was in their power, they wilfully and inseparably bound themselves. The popular belief that places are haunted where money has been concealed (as if where the treasure was and the heart had been, there would the miserable soul be also), or where some great and undiscovered crime has been committed, shews how consistent this is with our natural sense of likelihood and fitness.
There is a tale in the Nigaristan of Kemal-Pascha-zade, that one of the Sultans of Khorassan saw in a dream, Mahmoud a hundred years after his death, wandering about his palace,—his flesh rotten, his bones carious, but his eyes full, anxious and restless. A dervise who interpreted the dream, said that the eyes of Mahmoud were thus troubled, because the kingdom, his beautiful spouse, was now in the embrace of another.
This was that great Mahmoud the Gaznevide, who was the first Mohammedan conqueror that entered India, and the first who dropt the title of Malek and assumed that of Sultan in its stead. He it was, who after having broken to pieces with his own hands the gigantic idol of Soumenat, put to death fifty thousand of its worshippers, as a further proof of his holy Mohammedan indignation. In the last days of his life, when a mortal disease was consuming him, and he himself knew that no human means could arrest its course, he ordered all his costliest apparel, and his vessels of silver and gold, and his pearls and precious stones, the inestimable spoils of the East, to be displayed before him,—the latter were so numerous that they were arranged in separate cabinets according to their colour and size. It was in the royal residence which he had built for himself in Gazna, and which he called the Palace of Felicity, that he took from this display, wherewith he had formerly gratified the pride of his eye, a mournful lesson; and in the then heartfelt conviction that all is vanity, he wept like a child. “What toils,” said he, “what dangers, what fatigues of body and mind have I endured for the sake of acquiring these treasures, and what cares in preserving them, and now I am about to die and leave them!” In this same palace he was interred, and there it was that his unhappy ghost, a century afterwards, was believed to wander.
CHAPTER XCIX.
A COUNTRY PARISH. SOME WHOLESOME EXTRACTS, SOME TRUE ANECDOTES, AND SOME USEFUL HINTS, WHICH WILL NOT BE TAKEN BY THOSE WHO NEED THEM MOST.
Non è inconveniente, che delle cose delettabili alcune ne sieno utili, cosi come dell' utili molte ne sono delettabili, et in tutte due alcune si truovano honeste.
LEONE MEDICO (HEBREO.)