Part 14
In a majority of deaths, the accompanying physical conditions hide from the spectators whatever psychological phenomena may be taking place. The sun of our poor human life mostly sets behind an impenetrable cloud. Of all forms of death, the commonest appears to be the awful “agony” with its unconscious groans and stertorous breath. The dying person seems to sink lower and lower, as if beneath the waters of an unfathomable sea; a word, a motion, a glance, rising up at longer and longer intervals, till the last slow and distant sighs terminate the woful strife, and the victory of Death is complete. When this is the mode of dissolution, it is of course hopeless to look for any indication of the fate of the soul at its exodus; and the same holds good as regards death in extreme old age, or after exhausting disease, when the sufferer very literally “falls asleep.” Again, there are deaths which are accompanied by great pain or delirium, or which are caused by sudden accidents, altogether hiding from our observation the mental condition of the patient. Only in a small residue of cases, the bodily conditions are such as to cause neither interference with nor yet concealment of the process of calm and peaceful dissolution in the full light of mental sanity; and it is to these only we can look with any hope of fruitful observation. I ask whether in such cases instances have ever been known of occurrences having any significance taken in connection with the solemn event wherewith they are associated. Does our forerunner on the hill-top show by his looks and actions, since he is too far off to speak to us, that he beholds from his “Peak in Darien” an Ocean yet hidden from our view?
I should hesitate altogether to affirm positively that such is the case; but, after many inquiries on the subject, I am still more disinclined to assert the contrary. The truth seems to be that, in almost every family or circle, a question will elicit recollections of death-bed scenes, wherein, with singular recurrence, appears one very significant incident,--namely, that the dying person, precisely at the moment of death, and when the power of speech was lost, or nearly lost, seemed _to see something_; or rather, to speak more exactly, to become conscious of something present (for actual sight is out of question) of a very striking kind, which remained invisible to and unperceived by the assistants. Again and again, this incident is repeated. It is described almost in the same words by persons who have never heard of similar occurrences, and who suppose their own experience to be unique, and have raised no theory upon it, but merely consider it to be “strange,” “curious,” “affecting,” and nothing more. It is invariably explained that the dying person is lying quietly, when suddenly, in the very act of expiring, he looks up,--sometimes starts up in bed,--and gazes on (what appears to be) vacancy with an expression of astonishment, sometimes developing instantly into joy, and sometimes cut short in the first emotion of solemn wonder and awe. If the dying man were to see some utterly unexpected but instantly recognized vision, causing him a great surprise or rapturous joy, his face could not better reveal the fact. The very instant this phenomenon occurs, death is actually taking place, and the eyes glaze even while they gaze at the unknown sight. If a breath or two still heave the chest, it is obvious that the soul has already departed.
A few narrations of such observations, chosen from a great number which have been communicated to the writer, will serve to show more exactly the point which it is desired should be established by a larger concurrence of testimony. The following are given in the words of a friend on whose accuracy every reliance may be placed:--
“I have heard numberless instances of dying persons showing unmistakably by their gestures, and sometimes by their words, that they saw in the moment of dissolution what could not be seen by those around them. On three occasions, facts of this nature came distinctly within my own knowledge; and I will therefore limit myself to a detail of that which I can give on my own authority, although the circumstances were not so striking as many others known to me, which I believe to be equally true.
“I was watching one night beside a poor man dying of consumption. His case was hopeless, but there was no appearance of the end being very near. He was in full possession of his senses, able to talk with a strong voice, and not in the least drowsy. He had slept through the day, and was so wakeful that I had been conversing with him on ordinary subjects to while away the long hours. Suddenly, while we were thus talking quietly together, he became silent, and fixed his eyes on one particular spot in the room, which was entirely vacant, even of furniture. At the same time, a look of the greatest delight changed the whole expression of his face, and, after a moment of what seemed to be intense scrutiny of some object invisible to me, he said to me in a joyous tone, ‘There is Jim.’ Jim was a little son whom he had lost the year before, and whom I had known well; but the dying man had a son still living, named John, for whom we had sent, and I concluded it was of John he was speaking, and that he thought he heard him arriving. So I answered,--
“‘No. John has not been able to come.’
“The man turned to me impatiently, and said: ‘I do not mean John, I know he is not here: it is Jim, my little lame Jim. Surely, you remember him?’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I remember dear little Jim who died last year quite well.’
“‘Don’t you see him, then? There he is,’ said the man, pointing to the vacant space on which his eyes were fixed; and, when I did not answer, he repeated almost fretfully, ‘Don’t you see him standing there?’
“I answered that I could not see him, though I felt perfectly convinced that something was visible to the sick man, which I could not perceive. When I gave him this answer, he seemed quite amazed, and turned round to look at me with a glance almost of indignation. As his eyes met mine, I saw that a film seemed to pass over them, the light of intelligence died away, he gave a gentle sigh and expired. He did not live five minutes from the time he first said, ‘There is Jim,’ although there had been no sign of approaching death previous to that moment.
“The second case was that of a boy about fourteen years of age, dying also of decline. He was a refined, highly educated child, who throughout his long illness had looked forward with much hope and longing to the unknown life to which he believed he was hastening. On a bright summer morning, it became evident that he had reached his last hour. He lost the power of speech, chiefly from weakness; but he was perfectly sensible, and made his wishes known to us by his intelligent looks. He was sitting propped up in bed, and had been looking rather sadly at the bright sunshine playing on the trees outside his open window for some time. He had turned away from this scene, however, and was facing the end of the room, where there was nothing whatever but a closed door, when all in a moment the whole expression of his face changed to one of the most wondering rapture, which made his half-closed eyes open to their utmost extent, while his lips parted with a smile of perfect ecstasy. It was impossible to doubt that some glorious sight was visible to him; and, from the movement of his eyes, it was plain that it was not one, but many objects on which he gazed, for his look passed slowly from end to end of what seemed to be the vacant wall before him, going back and forward with ever-increasing delight manifested in his whole aspect. His mother then asked him, if what he saw was some wonderful sight beyond the confines of this world, to give her a token that it was so by pressing her hand. He at once took her hand, and pressed it meaningly, giving thereby an intelligent affirmative to her question, though unable to speak. As he did so, a change passed over his face, his eyes closed, and in a few minutes he was gone.
“The third case, which was that of my own brother, was very similar to this last. He was an elderly man, dying of a painful disease, but one which never for a moment obscured his faculties. Although it was known to be incurable, he had been told that he might live some months, when somewhat suddenly the summons came on a dark January morning. It had been seen in the course of the night that he was sinking; but for some time he had been perfectly silent and motionless, apparently in a state of stupor, his eyes closed and his breathing scarcely perceptible. As the tardy dawn of the winter morning revealed the rigid features of the countenance from which life and intelligence seemed to have quite departed, those who watched him felt uncertain whether he still lived; but suddenly, while they bent over him to ascertain the truth, he opened his eyes wide, and gazed eagerly upward with such an unmistakable expression of wonder and joy that a thrill of awe passed through all who witnessed it. His whole face grew bright with a strange gladness, while the eloquent eyes seemed literally to shine, as if reflecting some light on which they gazed. He remained in this attitude of delighted surprise for some minutes, then in a moment the eyelids fell, the head drooped forward, and with one long breath the spirit departed.”
* * * * *
A different kind of case from those above narrated by my friend was that of a young girl known to me, who had passed through the miserable experiences of a sinful life at Aldershot, and then had tried to drown herself in the river Avon, near Clifton. She was in some way saved from suicide, and placed for a time in a penitentiary; but her health was found to be hopelessly ruined, and she was sent to die in the quaint old workhouse of St. Peter’s at Bristol. For many months, she lay in the infirmary, literally perishing piecemeal of disease, but exhibiting patience and sweetness of disposition quite wonderful to witness. She was only eighteen, poor young creature, when all her little round of error and pain had been run; and her innocent, pretty face might have been that of a child. She never used any sort of cant (so common among women who have been in Refuges), but had apparently somehow got hold of a very living and real religion, which gave her comfort and courage, and inspired her with the beautiful spirit with which she bore her frightful sufferings. On the wall opposite her bed, I had hung by chance a print of the “Lost Sheep”; and Mary S., looking at it one day, said to me, “That is just what I was and what happened to me; but I am being brought safe home now.” For a long time before her death, her weakness was such that she was quite incapable of lifting herself up in bed, or of supporting herself when lifted; and she, of course, continued to lie with her head on the pillow, while life gradually and painfully ebbed away, and she seemingly became nearly unconscious. In this state she had been left one Saturday night by the nurse in attendance. Early at dawn next morning,--an Easter morning, as it chanced,--the poor old women who occupied the other beds in the ward were startled from their sleep by seeing Mary S. suddenly spring up to a sitting posture in her bed, with her arms outstretched and her face raised, as if in a perfect rapture of joy and welcome. The next instant, the body of the poor girl fell back a corpse. Her death had taken place in that moment of mysterious ecstasy.
A totally different case again was told me by the daughter of a man of high intellectual distinction, well known in the world of letters. When dying peacefully, as became the close of a profoundly religious life, he was observed by his daughter suddenly to look up as if at some spectacle invisible to those around, with an expression of solemn surprise and awe, very characteristic, it is said, of his habitual frame of mind. At that instant, and before the look had time to falter or change, the shadow of death passed over his face, and the end had come.
In yet another case, I am told that at the last moment so bright a light seemed suddenly to shine from the face of a dying man that the clergyman and another friend who were attending him actually turned simultaneously to the window to seek for the cause.
Another incident of a very striking character was described as having occurred in a family united very closely by affection. A dying lady, exhibiting the aspect of joyful surprise to which we have so often referred, spoke of seeing, one after another, three of her brothers who had long been dead, and then, apparently, recognized last of all a fourth brother, who was believed by the bystanders to be still living in India. The coupling of his name with that of his dead brothers excited such awe and horror in the mind of one of the persons present that she rushed from the room. In due course of time, letters were received announcing the death of the brother in India, which had occurred some time before his dying sister seemed to recognize him.
Again, in another case, a gentleman who had lost his only son some years previously, and who had never recovered from the afflicting event, exclaimed suddenly when dying, with the air of a man making a most rapturous discovery, “I see him! I see him!”
Not to multiply such anecdotes too far,--anecdotes which certainly possess a uniformity pointing to some similar cause, whether that cause be physiological or psychical,--I will now conclude with one authenticated by a near relative of the persons concerned. A late colonial bishop was commonly called by his sisters “Charlie,” and his eldest sister bore the pet name of “Liz.” They had both been dead for some years, when their younger sister, Mrs. W., also died, but before her death appeared to behold them both. While lying still and apparently unconscious, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked earnestly across the room, as if she saw some one entering. Presently, as if overjoyed, she exclaimed, “O Charlie!” and then, after a moment’s pause, with a new start of delight, as if he had been joined by some one else, she went on, “And Liz!” and then added, “How beautiful you are!” After seeming to gaze at the two beloved forms for a few minutes, she fell back on her pillow and died.
An instance--in many respects especially noteworthy--of a similar _impression_ of the presence of the dead conveyed through another sense besides sight is recorded in Caroline Fox’s charming _Journals_, Vol. II., p. 247. She notes under date September 5, 1856, as follows:--
“M. A. Schimmelpenninck is gone. She said just before her death, ‘Oh, I hear such beautiful voices, and the children’s are the loudest.’”
Can any old Italian picture of the ascending Madonna, with the cloud of cherub heads forming a glory of welcome around her as she enters the higher world, be more significant than this actual fact--so simply told--of a saintly woman in dying hearing “_beautiful voices, and the children’s the loudest_”? Of course, like all the rest, it may have been only a physiological phenomenon, a purely subjective impression; but it is at least remarkable that a second sense should thus be under the same glamour, and that again we have to confront, in the case of _hearing_ as of _sight_, the anomaly of the (real or supposed) presence of the beautiful and the delightful, instead of the terrible and the frightful, while Nature is in the pangs of dissolution. Does the brain, then, unlike every known instrument, give forth its sweetest music as its chords are breaking?
Instances like those recorded in this paper might, I believe, be almost indefinitely multiplied, were attention directed to them, and the experience of survivors more generally communicated and recorded. Reviewing them, the question seems to press upon us, Why should we _not_ thus catch a glimpse of the spiritual world through that half-open portal wherein our dying brother is passing? If the soul of man exist at all after the extinction of the life of the body, what is more probable than that it should begin at the very instant when the veil of the flesh is dropping off to exercise those spiritual powers of perception which we must suppose it to possess (else were its whole after-life a blank), and to become conscious of other things than those of which our dim senses can take cognizance? If it be not destined to an eternity of solitude (an absurd hypothesis), its future companions may well be recognized at once, even as it goes forth to meet them. It seems indeed almost a thing to be expected that some of them should be ready waiting to welcome it on the threshold. Is there not, then, a little margin for hope, if not for any confident belief, that our fondest anticipations will be verified; nay, that the actual experience of many has already verified them? May it not be that, when that hour comes for each of us which we have been wont to dread as one of parting and sorrow,--
“The last long farewell on the shore Of this rude world,”
ere we “put off into the unknown dark”,--we may find that we only leave for a little time the friends of earth to go straight to the embrace of those who have long been waiting for us to make perfect for them the nobler life beyond the grave? May it not be that our very first dawning sense of that enfranchised existence will be the rapture of reunion with the beloved ones whom we have mourned as lost, but who have been standing near, waiting longingly for our recognition, as a mother may watch beside the bed of a fever-stricken child, till reason reillumines its eyes, and with outstretched arms it cries “Mother.”
There are doubtless some to whom it would be very dreadful to think of thus meeting on the threshold of eternity the wronged, the deceived, the forsaken. But for most of us, God be thanked, no dream of celestial glory has half the ecstasy of the thought that in dying we may meet--and _meet at once_, before we have had a moment to feel the awful loneliness of death--the parent, wife, husband, child, friend of our life, soul of our soul, whom we consigned long ago with breaking hearts to the grave. Their “beautiful” forms (as that dying lady beheld her brother and sister) entering our chamber, standing beside our bed of death, and come to rejoin us for ever,--what words can describe the happiness of such a vision? It _may_ be awaiting us all. There is even, perhaps, a certain probability that it is actually the natural destiny of the human soul, and that the affections which alone of earthly things can survive dissolution will, like magnets, draw the beloved and loving spirits of the dead around the dying. I can see no reason why we should not indulge so ineffably blessed a hope. But, even if it be a dream, the faith remains, built on no such evanescent and shadowy foundation, that there is One Friend,--and He the best,--in whose arms we shall surely fall asleep, and to whose love we may trust for the reunion, sooner or later, of the severed links of sacred human affection.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] There is an argument which, I believe, now influences more or less consciously the minds of many intelligent persons against the belief in the immortal life. It amounts to this: Granted that there is a God, and that he is absolutely benevolently disposed toward mankind, it does not follow (as commonly assumed) that He will bestow immortality on man, because _it is quite possible that there may be an inherent absurdity and contradiction in the idea of an immortal finite creature_,--it may, in short, be no more within the scope of divine power to create an immortal man than to make a triangle with the properties of a circle. If we could be first assured that the thing were _possible_, then arguments derived from the justice and goodness of the Deity might be valuable, as affording us ground for believing that He will do that possible thing. But, while it remains an open question whether we are not talking actual nonsense when we speak of an ever-living created being, such reflections on the moral attributes of God are beside the mark. No justice or goodness can be involved in doing that which, in the nature of things, is impossible.
Now, of course, there is a little confusion here between a _future_ life--a mere _post-mortem_ addition of so many years or centuries to this mortal existence--and an _immortal life_, which, it is assumed, will continue either in a series of births and deaths or in one unbroken life forever and ever. In the former idea, no one can find any self-contradiction. It is only the latter notion of immortality, strictly so described, which is suspected of involving a contradiction. Practically, however, the two ideas must stand or fall together; for almost every argument for the survival of the soul after death bears with double force against its extinction at any subsequent epoch of its existence.
Taking then the future life of a man as, to all intents and purposes, the immortal life, we are bound to confront the difficulty,--“What right have we to assume that immortality and creaturehood are compatible the one with the other?”
_A priori_ argument on such a matter is altogether futile. We know and can reason literally nothing about it. For anything we could urge _antecedent to the observation of a man’s actual state_, it was, apparently, just as probable that he could not be made immortal as that he could be made so by any conceivable power in the universe. But we are not quite in the position of lacking all such _a posteriori_ assistance to our judgment. We can see how God has actually constituted the human race, and the problem is consequently modified to this: “Are there any signs or tokens that _man_ is meant for something more than a mere mundane existence?” It is obvious that, if immortality were an attribute which in the nature of things he could never share, nothing in his mental or moral constitution would have been made with any reference to such an unattainable destiny. If, on the other hand, there be in his nature evidences of a purpose extending beyond the scope of this life, and stretching out into the limitless perspective of eternity, then we are authorized to draw the inference that the Author of his being planned for him a future existence, and, of course, knew that he might enjoy that divine heritage.