In Both Worlds

by William H. Holcombe

An irresistible desire to look him full in the face seized me. Whether it was a secret magnetic attraction compelling me to do so, or whether I thought it might mitigate my painful and absurd tension of thought on the subject, I yielded at last. From that moment his triumph was complete. It was veritably the fascination of the bird by the serpent. I could not help gazing at him. [pg 283]He seemed to absorb my whole nervous life, to suck out the very spirit of my blood, so that I was left breathless, dizzy, bewildered, helpless, after each of his terrible visitations.

Thus I lived a daily death for many weeks; ignorant of all things without; never hearing the sound of a human voice; buried alive; until hope died in my bosom, and despair became my bedfellow, and fear my familiar, and even memory ceased to weave her beautiful airy tissues, consoling me for the loss of a future by her glorification of the past.

At first I used to love to review all the incidents of my life, both on earth and in the world of spirits. I spent my long and lonesome leisure in organizing my knowledge, analyzing my experiences, and building up from them a grand philosophy of mind and matter.

I saw plainly that such a philosophy was needed to give intellectual strength and stability to the young church of Christ. I knew that no height of piety, no fervor of faith, no frenzy of love can secure a church from the cold and critical assaults of the human understanding. Devotion may be the soul of a church, but Truth is its body: and no religion without an impregnable basis of philosophy, can be anything but a transient fervor. It must inevitably perish by a gradual disintegration. For this mode of thinking I was indebted to the Athenian philosophers.

The disciples of Christ had no such foundation upon which to erect the great theological truths they were going to teach. I saw plainly that such a philosophy cannot be discovered by the human intellect: and more[pg 284]over that it can only be revealed to mankind through some one who has lived consciously for a while in both worlds. By divine permission and protection I had so lived. I had been put into possession of truths of the utmost importance to the infant church and the world. Surely I could not thus perish in a dungeon! Surely the Lord who had raised me from the dead, would deliver me also from this great snare; so that I could delight and instruct mankind with what I had seen and heard in the spiritual world.

I therefore arranged all my ideas into philosophical form, and contemplated with intense pleasure the perfect system of spiritual and natural truth which I had eliminated from my accumulated materials. It is astonishing how one spiritual truth leads to another; how all things are connected together; so that the greatest things are repeated in the least, and the smallest fragment is an image of the whole.

With increasing debility and despair I ceased to think steadily of these grand and beautiful subjects. I spent much of the time in praying for deliverance, and much in brooding over the possible fate and sorrows of my poor sisters. After a while I discovered that my ideas were strangely confused, especially after those terrible visits of Magistus, which I began to regard with absolute horror. I could not distinguish between what had happened in one world and what in the other; between dreams and realities; between my hopes and my fears. The awful suspicion broke upon me that I was losing my reason, that I was on the verge of madness.

Then it was that my courage failed and my pride [pg 285]humbled itself; for when Magistus next appeared, I raised my hands supplicatingly to him and exclaimed:

“Oh, my uncle! why do you thus persecute an innocent and helpless creature? May God have mercy on your soul as you shall have mercy on me!”

He made no reply, but stared fixedly at me. Not a muscle of his face moved. No ray of emotion was visible on his features. He seemed to be as deaf and dumb as a statue. I might as well have appealed to a tiger or a crocodile for pity. I was about to repeat my supplication, but his look appalled me; and I sank, pale, rigid and stupefied under the old spell of fascination.