Part 14

We looked into this marvelous city, its capital and palaces, its temples and amphitheatres. The great avenues were crowded with a vast and gorgeous procession. Many kings and queens and nobles were walking in chains, brought as prisoners from so many conquered countries. The treasures of these plundered captives were borne by thousands of slaves of all colors and nationalities, in massive and curiously-carved vessels of gold and silver. Specimens of wild animals from all regions of the Roman world, drawn in gilded cages, and of the more wonderful plants and flowers carried upon the shoulders of men, and screened from the sun by flaming canopies of silk, added to the picturesqueness and grandeur of the scene.

The Roman senators, generals and magnates were seen heading the different divisions of this vast multitude, riding in blazing chariots drawn by superb horses richly caparisoned. On both sides of the captives marched the victorious armies of Rome; so that the very air above them was golden with the flash of helmets, spears and shields, and the gleam of Roman eagles.

These were the spirits of that vain-glorious and indomitable race who had changed the geography of the natural world, and were now celebrating their victories with transcendent magnificence in the intermediate state. The sphere of their interior character was wafted to my spiritual perceptions, and I felt as I did in the Hall of Apollo when Hortensius and his guests fixed their haughty and contemptuous gaze upon Anthony and myself.

“How unutterably base, cruel and sensual,” exclaimed my father, “is the spirit of man when he loves himself supremely, and overreaches and overrides his fellow-creatures. Behold the spiritual side to this magnificent exterior!”

Thereupon the light from a higher sphere streamed down, and the pomp, the glory, the beauty of the whole scene disappeared. We beheld a vast crowd of beggars in filthy rags, and a confused heap of low buildings made of mud and straw. The proud and fierce Romans were all slaves themselves, wearing long chains and driven by infernal spirits in the shape of grinning apes. Where the Capitol had stood, appeared a pool of blood-colored water, in which a dragon of hideous dimensions lay, spouting from his mouth a stream of fire. A lurid twilight hung over all, prognosticating a wild and tempestuous night.

“Such,” said my father, “will be the fate of ambition when the Lord comes in judgment. Let us now descend to a lower region, and see a people greater than these, but who have sunk into darker depths; a people now destitute of spiritual pride or civil ambition; a degenerate, effeminate, corrupt race, dead to all genuine and ennobling aspirations, and immersed like beasts in the life of the senses.”

We seemed to go down to the sea-coast—for the blue ocean girdles also the world of spirits. Soon we came into the sphere of the Grecian souls who had risen from the dead, and who had reconstructed about them, according to spiritual laws, their own charming and ethereal country. The scene was not far from Athens, whose marble-crowned Acropolis gleamed in the distance, with clouds more beautiful than itself floating above it.

The poetic faculty, full of the inspiration of Grecian art, can alone appreciate what I next witnessed. The Hall of Apollo in the palace of Hortensius was a beggarly chamber in comparison with this great hall of nature in which Pan presided, and in which earth, sky and ocean had each its part. The guests also of the luxurious Roman were mere schoolboys in comparison with the august assembly before us, which was gathered to a feast in the imaginary heaven of the Greeks.

We seemed to be standing on a hill that sloped and fell by beautiful green terraces down to the silver beach of a placid sea. The summit of that hill was long, broad and level, and crowned with a grove of extraordinary beauty. The trees were far apart, and rose like emerald columns to a great height before they branched. Their foliage was pruned and led by threads of invisible wire to intertwine overhead, forming a delicate arch for a roof. The ground was carpeted with an inwrought tissue of living flowers, which yielded elastically to the tread, sending up continually a delicious perfume.

In this immense grove were spread a thousand tables seemingly of solid precious stones, and crowned with great vases of wine and cups of crystal, and adorned with ethereal fruits and flowers. At these tables were seated or reclining thousands and thousands of the ancient heroes and heroines of Greece, served by thousands of beautiful nymphs, Dryads and Naiads, who had left the woods and the waters to bestow their charms on these happy souls.

The gods and goddesses were also in attendance; for heaven and earth were thrown together in such admirable confusion that each partook the qualities of the other. The sky and the air were literally full of divinities. On a rose-and-purple cloud condensed into a throne, and lowered half-way between the ceiling and the floor, sat Venus, crowned with myrtles and presiding at the feast. The Graces were kneeling at her feet, while her swans and doves were grouped about her. Near by stood Cupid twanging his bow, and laughing at the sight of his empty quiver; for every heart in the crowd had been pierced by one of his golden arrows.

Looking out to the sea, we saw Neptune, of colossal proportions, riding in his chariot constructed of shells, and drawn by horses with brazen hoofs and gilded manes. Myriads of sea-nymphs and sea-monsters sported and gamboled about him, sometimes in the air, sometimes on the shining surface of the deep.

In mid-sky Apollo in person drove the chariot of the sun, attended by the Muses and the flying Hours. In the west, Iris the messenger of Juno, planted her rainbow on a passing cloud, and smiled in colors to the world. Afar off, in the east, the Seasons had opened the massive Gates of Cloud, and we had a glimpse of the old Olympian gods in conclave august, feasting upon ambrosial food.

Thousands of these beautiful figures were nude; and I saw the spiritual models which had inspired and immortalized Grecian art. Thousands also were draped, and with such infinite variety and beauty, that it seemed no work of human ingenuity, but as if Nature herself had invested them with her forms and colors.

“Oh, my father!” said I excitedly, “surely this is real; this is heaven. These things will not vanish also, or change into something hideous and terrible.”

A shade of sadness came over my father’s face; for he saw that the subtile and powerful sphere of this Grecian nature-worship had awakened the activities of my own sensuous life.

“Yes, my son; these are phantasms. These are wicked Grecian spirits who are personating their gods and goddesses, their heroes and heroines. You see before you what wonders spirits can achieve by magic and fantasy. This is the sphere which flows into and governs the present population of Greece. These spirits would, if they could, obsess and control the human race. The interior state of these souls is terrible.”

“O, do not show it to me yet,” I exclaimed. “Let me contemplate a little longer this marvelous scene.”

“When all these spirits are judged,” continued my father, “and cast out of the world of spirits, the Greece and Rome of the natural world will become feeble and death-stricken. Their oracles will become silent; their arts will fail; their glory perish; their civilization decay. Their very languages will die. Their exact modes of thought will no more be possible to men. Ages of bondage and darkness will ensue, after the light they have perverted and the liberty they have profaned.”

I scarcely heard these last words; for the vast assembly of gods and men, which had been in comparative repose, became suddenly animated by a wild excitement. There issued from the cool and leafy forests on all sides a crowd of beautiful nymphs headed by Diana, resplendent as a statue of pearl, clad in an apron of green leaves and flowers, and with a constellation of fire-flies in her hair.

Her merry troop of nymphs, arrayed like herself, were flying in affected fear from the jolly god Bacchus, who appeared in pursuit, crowned with vine leaves and berries and drawn by his Indian tigers striped with ebony and gold. He was followed by a rabble rout of Fauns and Satyrs and bacchanalian revelers, male and female. This beautiful chaos threw itself pell-mell, reeling and whirling and dancing, shouting and singing, into the midst of the brilliant assembly.

A scene of the wildest carnival followed. The heroes and heroines caught the contagious frenzy, and soon all were entangled in the embraces of the maddest dance that ever was witnessed. Neptune and his water-nymphs sprang high into the air to view the scene; and all the deities in Olympus crowded down to the Gates of Cloud, which they illumined afar off by the sun-like radiance of their presence.

I was gazing on this scene with the utmost astonishment, when my eyes fell suddenly upon Helena, the beautiful daughter of Calisthenes.

“My father,” said I, with profound emotion, “do you not see that superb figure of a woman more beautiful than all these goddesses, leaning against yonder tree and clapping her hands with delight at the drunken Bacchus making love to Venus? That is Helena of Athens! the dream of my life, the idol of my soul.”

“Not so,” said my father, “it is a phantasm—a spirit resembling your earthly Helena; perhaps some cunning Syren who has assumed her form to allure you to herself.”

“Oh no!” said I, “impossible!” feasting my eyes and heart on the lovely apparition.

“Every one,” continued my monitor, “fresh from the natural world, who enters this magical and fantastic sphere, sees, or thinks he sees, some wondrous woman, whom he declares to be the idol and dream of his soul. Beware, my son, of these seductive emotions. The light of heaven will dispel for us all these illusions.”

“Oh no!” said I, wildly, “it cannot; it must not. This, this, is heaven, and all else is illusion.”

My heart beat with passionate fervor, and I sprang forward to meet my beloved. My father suddenly disappeared from my sight! In the spiritual world, when two persons enter into totally different states of thought and feeling, they mutually vanish from each other’s sight. Heaven and hell are thus separated, and the existence of each is even unknown to the other. I noticed the fact that my father had vanished; but I cared nothing about it, for my infatuated soul thought only of Helena.

I advanced toward her. She turned upon me a look of beautiful recognition; and stretching out her ivory arms, exclaimed with a sun-burst of her old bewitching smiles:

“My boy-lover of Bethany! welcome! I thought I had killed you with love!”

“Then love me back into life!” I exclaimed.

When an appalling change came suddenly over all things. The light of heaven streamed down upon me, and those other lights were turned into shadows, the beauty into ugliness, the joy into horror, life into death. The deities became phantom skeletons grinning as they fled away into the darkness. The men assumed the forms of filthy swine or goats, and the women those of writhing vipers. The charming creature into whose delicate arms I was about throwing myself, became a scaly serpent of frightful size. I fell swooning to the ground, with the terrible sensations of one who is falling headlong from a precipice into the sea.

I returned slowly and painfully to consciousness, like one who has had a long sleep and harassing dreams, and finds it difficult to pick up the fallen thread of his yesterday’s life. I found myself pillowed on a soft green bank in a delicious atmosphere of repose. Without opening my eyes I reverted to all that had happened, and a feeling of desolation came over me, and a sense of deep shame and contrition. What a revelation of the sensual affinities of my own interior nature! What blindness! What madness! Alas! how low had I fallen! I was afraid to meet my father and the good John. I was wretched.

My meditations were interrupted by the voice of some one near me, singing in low sweet tones, pervaded by a certain divine sadness, the beautiful words of Scripture:

“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: When I fall I shall arise: When I sit in darkness The Lord shall be a light unto me.”

Then another voice overhead, clearer, more thoughtful, more musical than the first, sang sweetly:

“Jehovah upholdeth all that fall, And raiseth up all who are bowed down.”

Thereupon the first voice near me proceeded in the same low sweet tones full of sadness:

“But as for me, my feet were almost gone, My steps had well nigh slipped.”

The higher, nobler voice continued the heavenly consolations of Scripture:

“Nevertheless I am ever with thee!”

The voices, the music, the refrain, the holy words of the Psalmist, stirred in the tenderest manner the very depths of my soul. I wept. A new faith, a new hope, a new divine resolution were born within me.

Like a singer who has been overcome with emotion, but dries her tears and resumes her singing,—the sadness overshadowed by a modest courage,—the first voice was heard again:

“Thou hast held me by my right hand, Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, And afterward shalt receive me into glory.”

Then there was a burst of divine music as from a hidden choir of angels, in which the two voices joined; and this was the hymn:

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul!”

The strains died softly away, lingering long on my charmed ear and leaving my heart in a sacred calm.

I prayed with intense earnestness:

“From self-love and the love of the world; from self-righteousness, presumption and hypocrisy; from pride, ambition and sensuality; all of which I have seen so fearfully unmasked:

“Good Lord! deliver me.”

I opened my eyes, and my father and the seraph-faced forerunner of Jesus stood before me.

The latter took my hand tenderly in his own, and said:

“All the experiences of life, both in the world of men and in the world of spirits, are given to teach us the difference between good and evil, between the true and the false; to show us the deformity of sin and the beauty of holiness; to deliver our souls from the bondage of hell, and lift them into the peace of heaven.”

XIX.

_THE MAGICIANS IN HELL._

We had then a long conversation about the mysteries of regeneration or the new birth, scarcely any of which are known to mankind, or would be believed if they were revealed. This knowledge is so peculiarly spiritual and angelic that it seems useless for me to say anything about it. If a church on earth ever comprehends these divine arcana, it will only be when the Lord sees fit to open his heavens anew, and to unfold the spiritual meaning of his Word.

“You have now seen,” said my father, “the three great spheres which represent the three degrees of the human mind. That Jesus Christ met and resisted the powers of hell in all these spheres, is shown in his temptations in the wilderness. By conquering these evil spheres in his human form and through his divine power, He is enabled henceforth to deliver all men from similar infestations. This was the great purpose of his incarnation. His temptation will appear to men as an historical event enacted at a certain time and space. To angels it seems a condensed statement of his whole spiritual life, of his entire redemptive work, from the assumption of humanity to his final and perfect glorification.”

“Who is the devil,” said I, “that was capable of tempting the Holy One so severely?”

“The devil is no single individual, but the whole combined evil world, speaking and acting through one medium. You seem surprised; but nothing is more common in the spiritual world than for a whole society of spirits, even millions in number, to think, feel, and express themselves simultaneously through one of their number.

“Do you not remember that when Jesus asked a certain maniac his name, the devil within him replied:

“‘My name is Legion: for we are many.’”

This led to the strange subject of demoniac possession. I told my father that the Greek philosophers and physicians, who were considered the profoundest thinkers in the world, scouted the idea of evil spirits taking possession of men. They attributed all such cases to the effect of physical disease.

“They know nothing whatever,” said my guide, “of the relation between spirit and matter. Their philosophy of man, history, and nature is superficial and false. Their boasted light is darkness to our spiritual perceptions, and their scientific verbiage the merest babble.

“It is true, my son, that devils are continually aspiring to break through from hell into the world of spirits; and by means of evil spirits in this world, especially those fresh from the earth, to possess and govern men in the natural world. If the divine hand were not put forth to arrest this influx of hell into the world of nature, three centuries would not elapse before all mankind would be imbecile or insane, and would destroy each other like wild beasts.”

“Mankind,” said I, “are totally ignorant of the fearful dangers which hang over them.”

“Of course they are. These dangers come from the unseen spiritual side. They know nothing and believe nothing of the unseen.”

“Can you tell me anything of the spiritual philosophy of magic?”

“A sphere inconceivably subtle and wicked! It obtained its first foothold in Egypt ages before the historic period, and has penetrated thence, under different forms and names, into all the countries of the world.”

“We had some painful experiences with it soon after your departure from the natural world; but my philosophic studies at Athens led me to suppose that magic was an imposture based upon absurd superstitions.”

“Magic, my son, is at present a fearful reality. It is the means by which the wicked can summon around them the worst spirits, and obtain control over man and nature. By its means they can overcome physical obstacles; can see and hear at incredible distances; can produce dreams and illusions; can make one thing appear another; effect transformations which seem miraculous; call up the spirits of the dead; take absolute possession of the fancy and the will; and control their victim in all his thoughts and actions. They can give wise answers and frequently foretell future events. They can imitate good and heavenly things with such marvelous accuracy, as to impose themselves as illumined teachers and prophets upon mankind.”

“How could such a fearful thing have originated? Whence is its power?”

“From the perversion and profanation of holy things; from the abuse of the knowledge of correspondence, which is the secret bond between spirit and matter, and for that reason is now concealed from mankind. When the sons of Aaron put strange fire upon the altar of the Lord, they were consumed. When the sons of the prophet shred the wild vine into the pot, there was death in the pottage. That strange fire, that wild vine is magic. Magic is the perversion of truth—the science and the religion of hell.”

“Can you foresee the future of this terrible power?”

“Yes—so far as we can infer that certain material effects must flow in time from certain spiritual causes. The great judgment which Christ is now executing in this world of spirits, will cast all these magical powers into hell and shut them up for ever. This is a part of the saving work of the Redeemer. He delivers men, not from the punishment but from the bondage of sin. Magic will then cease upon earth. The fragments and shadows of it may annoy mankind for ages; but its central power will have been bruised and broken, and it will become such barefaced superstition, trickery, and sleight-of-hand, that future generations will find it difficult to believe that it ever was anything else.

“Come!” he added; “I am permitted to show you one of the old Egyptians at his work.”

We now descended into a dark cavern which appeared on our left, but which I had not noticed before. It sloped downward, with ragged black rocks protruding from its walls. The atmosphere was at first so stifling that I could hardly proceed. We emerged after a while into a level country under a sky of a dark gray color. A blood-red sun, never setting, stood low in the west, casting a lurid light over all things. Our path was along the bank of a large river, moving sluggishly and darkly between gigantic reeds and rushes. Huge crocodiles and monstrous beasts I had never seen before, lay here and there, half in the mud and half in the water. Away in the distance rose many colossal forms, pyramids, sphynxes, obelisks, palaces, temples—vast shadows as it were against the sky. Now and then we passed a statue of stone or bronze, higher than the tallest trees, and so sad, stern and lifelike, it was difficult not to believe that it was the lost soul of some old Egyptian king, doomed to perpetual misery in the outward form of eternal repose.

“You must know,” said my father, “that to enable us to enter these awful gateways of hell, an invisible guard of thousands of angels is necessary.”

I was relieved by this thought; for a sensation of fear had already begun to oppress me. I had learned enough of the spiritual world to know that all this wild and grotesque scenery was the outbirth of the life and memories of evil spirits, and could be dissipated in a moment, or changed into something horrible by the revealing light of heaven.

We now came to a great palace which seemed built of ebony, with foundations, doors, and cornices of bronze. The gates leading to its courtyard were of immense size, and constructed of dingy brass. A strange inscription ran across the arch, which I asked my father to interpret.

“That,” said he, “is the Ten Commandments reversed, representing the laws which govern in this evil sphere. Much of it is too dim for one to read; but see!

“Thou shalt kill.

“Thou shalt steal.

“Thou shalt commit adultery.”

“Hold!” said I, “what profanation! what blasphemy.”

“Yes, my son! Hell is the opposite of heaven.”

The courtyard was laid out in curious geometric figures, and adorned with many extraordinary plants and flowers, but mainly of yellow and purple hues.

“Flowers at the doorway of hell! I thought that flowers were the children of heaven, the fragments of divine wisdom showered upon men in the disguise of beautiful forms, fragrances and colors.”

“So they are,” said my father; “and the floral kingdom here is antipodal to the floral kingdom in heaven; the concentration of all that is malignant and baleful in the thoughts and feelings of the inhabitants of that doleful place.”

I shuddered as I passed these infernal flowers; and we mounted the iron steps of the palace, walking between the statues of two great brazen bulls as we entered the hall.

A servant came forward to receive us, of such hideous form that I started back in terror. He was nearly naked, and thousands of hieroglyphic figures had been burned into his body in black and red colors. His face was the face of an embalmed person, long dead, shriveled and ghastly.

While we were speaking to this frightful personage, a hoarse, sepulchral voice issued from a half-open door:

“Bring them in. I have felt their coming.”

We passed into a chamber of immense size,—for everything in the shadowy world seemed to me colossal. I instantly perceived that it was the counterpart of the chamber of magic in the house of Magistus, so minutely described to me by my sister Martha.

“Behold the source of inspiration to Simon Magus!” said I to myself.