In Both Worlds

by William H. Holcombe

I know not whether this was a dream or a genuine vision. But I repeated the Lord’s Prayer feebly and with folded hands. The effect was wonderful. A great light shone around me. The air was full of little cherub forms. Heavenly music was heard in the distance. The deepest chords of my being were touched. The flood-gates of contrition were reopened. Faith returned. I wept. I was happy—oh, so happy!

This also may have been a dream, but it was a potent medicine; for after that, my recovery was amazingly rapid. I then entered into a second and very different phase of my spiritual life. The devil, after casting me repeatedly into the water and the fire, and rending me sorely, had departed. But I knew full well that he only departs for a season—that his return is as sure as the rising of the tides. I knew that the only way to keep him out, was to refurnish my house on the heavenly model.

Now my knowledge of spiritual things came to be of [pg 361]immense advantage. Not an abstract, theoretical knowledge of them, but a knowledge derived from sight and hearing. I had seen, felt and studied the angelic sphere of life. I knew what it was. I had discovered three great elements in that sphere, and determined to put them all into action in my own life, so as to bring my spirit into interior communion with angels and the Lord.

The first element was profound humility and reverence. God only enters the soul which is thoroughly emptied of self. A proud Christian is a devil in disguise. The angels are so thoroughly divested of the selfhood, that they live and labor only for others’ good; and that is living and laboring for God.

Prayer is the means by which humility and reverence are cultivated. It does not change the Unchangeable; it only brings the soul into that state in which it is receptive of the divine love and wisdom. I determined, therefore, to pray—for I had long neglected prayer—and to pray regularly, systematically, earnestly, and especially in the form or after the manner that the Lord himself had appointed.

The second element of angelic life was cheerfulness. The cheerfulness of angels flows from the peace and joy in which they live. They cannot be present in a sphere of gloom and darkness. The silent, tearful, mourning, austere, ascetic Christian, cuts himself off from angelic consolations, and renders his regeneration doubly painful and difficult. Tears and fastings and scourgings and solitude and fantastic self-denials do not lead to heaven. They block up the way thither with needless difficulties.

I determined, therefore, to be cheerful; to accept my [pg 362]lot with graceful resignation; to have a genial word and pleasant smile for every one; to avoid reveries and broodings which kept the past continually in painful contrast with the present; to make a final surrender of all my grand ambitions and glorious expectations; and to take a heartfelt pleasure in the trifles of life, such as may be found even within the walls of a prison.

The third element of the angelic life was useful activity. An idle angel is an impossibility. They are all busy as bees; and like those little preachers to mankind, each labors intently, not for his own special benefit, but for the good of all the rest. Their cheerfulness and usefulness run in equal and parallel streams, and they are both proportioned to their reverence and humility.

I determined therefore to work willingly; to accept my hard tasks as those appointed of God; to be no longer an eye-servant but an earnest, faithful, intelligent co-operator in building, repairing and improving the magnificent temples, baths, aqueducts, walls, quays and fortifications of Antioch; to treat my fellow-laborers as brethren, not by descending to their gross level, but by striving to lift them as well as myself up to the height of a noble and unselfish manhood.

All this was facile and beautiful in theory, difficult and painful in practice. The struggle was intense; and many, many dark and miserable days alternated with my bright ones. It was the great warfare of my life, less imposing than my struggles with Magistus and Helena, but far more productive of results. It was a process by which good was substituted for evil; but as fast only as the evil was thoroughly repented of and put away. It was a process [pg 363]of growth by which the germ of the heavenly life, penetrating through the dead shell of the old nature, passed upward into a serener light and larger liberty. It was a death and a resurrection. How small an affair was my first resurrection in comparison with this!