A DEAD MAN'S DIARY.
A DEAD MAN'S DIARY
Written after his Decease.
WITH A PREFACE BY
G.T. BETTANY, M.A.
"I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After Life to spell:
And by-and-by my Soul return'd to me,
And answered, 'I myself am Heav'n and Hell.'"
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
(_Fitzgerald's Translation._)
WARD, LOCK AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
1890.
(_All rights reserved._)
PREFACE.
The literature purporting to describe the state of mankind after death,
whether as Hades, Intermediate State, Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven, has
mostly erred in the direction of too great detail. On the one hand,
we have had those who with Swedenborg declare "that after death a man
is so little changed that he even does not know but he is living in
the present world; that the resemblances between the two worlds are so
great, that in the spiritual world there are cities, with palaces and
houses, and also writings and books, employments and merchandises."
On the other hand, we have the picture drawn by the writer of "Letters
from Hell," of imaginary houses and scenes, of seeming actions, of
semblances of men compelled to appear to be doing after death the
very things they did in life, despair all the while gnawing at their
hearts. Archdeacon Farrar, in Chapter IV. of his "Mercy and Judgment,"
has given a varied and horrifying series of extracts from ancient
and modern divines describing their detailed conceptions about the
future of the wicked. As to the future of the beatified, no one
needs reminding of the multitude of word-pictures, often mutually
contradictory, in which their existence has been depicted.
Thus we see that the human mind cannot choose but speculate in some
fashion on the future state, while no man has the right to claim
that he had said the last word on the subject. It may therefore be
confidently anticipated that the remarkable narrative here presented,
of which considerable portions have already appeared, serially, in the
English edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine," will find a very
large number of interested readers, who will be glad to peruse it in
the connected and completed form, in which it is best calculated to
express the author's full meaning and experiences. It will not by its
length or excess of detail overburden the reader, nor does it claim
to be more than a narrative of experience which may be left to convey
its own lessons. The writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, is one
whose essays and stories have been received with high appreciation on
both sides of the Atlantic. His narrative is put forth as his actual
experience during a lengthened absence from the body, during which
he was believed to be dead. Of course no other living person can
confirm or deny his experiences, though many may deem them incredible,
fictitious, or the imaginings or visions of a trancelike state. I do
not pretend to decide to what category they belong, nor do I feel
called upon to condemn or approve any of the assertions or opinions
thus put forward. If any one holds theological convictions which appear
to conflict with them, I would remark that the publishers, in letting
the "Dead Man" speak for himself, do not hold themselves responsible
for his opinions, merely having assured themselves of the serious
spirit in which they are narrated.
The record of these experiences being given in the form of a diary, the
writer has not felt bound to tell his story with the simple directness
which is expected in a work of fiction, but has noted down in his
narrative, as is the manner of diarists, the thoughts which the record
of his experiences have aroused. Though these occasional digressions
have no immediate bearing upon the facts recorded, they will, I think,
be found to contain some interesting reading, nor do they, in my
opinion, interfere seriously with the completeness of the narrative as
an artistic whole.
In conclusion, I would add that the writer only desires that his
experiences may be read in a candid spirit, and that as no man can
prove him to be wrong who has not actually entered the world of
spirits, those who reject his narrative will endeavour to maintain
an attitude of suspended judgment, until they are in a position to
judge for themselves. For myself, I can but say that the moral of the
author's teaching is worthy of the most serious attention, and if put
into practice there can be no question that it would conduce greatly to
the happiness of mankind.
G.T. Bettany.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE 5
CHAPTER I.
EXPLAINS MY TITLE 13
CHAPTER II.
DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT 19
CHAPTER III.
DEALS WITH LIFE AND THE LUST OF IT, BUT HAS
NO DIRECT BEARING ON MY STORY 26
CHAPTER IV.
I DIE 46
CHAPTER V.
IS OF AN EXPLANATORY NATURE ONLY 58
CHAPTER VI.
TELLS OF MY FIRST AWFUL AWAKENING IN HELL,
AND OF THE SHAMEFUL SIN WHICH BROUGHT
ME THITHER 67
CHAPTER VII.
SHOWS THE FITNESS OF MY PUNISHMENT 87
CHAPTER VIII.
I MAKE AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY IN HELL, AND
MEET WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 94
CHAPTER IX.
I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM
FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN THE NATURE
OF A SERMON 113
CHAPTER X.
A LOVE-STORY IN HELL 128
CHAPTER XI.
THE MYSTERY OF "THE DEAD WHO DIE" 148
CHAPTER XII.
I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST 167
CHAPTER XIII.
A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST 180
CHAPTER XIV.
HOPE 206
CHAPTER XV.
HEAVEN 213
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CHAPTER I.
_EXPLAINS MY TITLE._
It has always been a favourite fancy of mine that I should like to
die upon some sunny, songful morning, in spring or early summer. The
thought of dying in the night, and of finding this thin and aërial
something, which I have learned to call "my soul," being driven
remorselessly nightward, as Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise;
the seeing it in imagination, a spectral, unsubstantial shadow of
myself, flitting a-shivering out into the black-wombed darkness, and
fumbling with filmy hands that it might clasp the closer around it
the warm familiar robe of flesh, only to find that robe fallen away
for ever--this thought, I must confess, fills me at all times with an
abhorrent loathing and dread.
To look up by night at the cold glitter of the stars, and to fancy my
disembodied spirit winging its weary way thereto, through fathomless
leagues of void and voiceless ether, causes me ever to shiver, and to
turn shudderingly to earth again; but the thought of passing peacefully
away upon some sunny, summer morning seems less like dying than like
stepping out of doors to be among the birds and the butterflies. _Then_
the heaven of my hopes would not seem so very distant after all (and
oh! how much more heavenly and homelike would that heaven appear did
I but know it to be _this_ side of the stars!), and my first entry
into the dim and shadowy realm of the spirit-world would seem the
less strange and unfamiliar for my having to pass out on my way to it
through the fields, the flowers, and the sunshine that I love so well.
To me, however, in the utter solitude of midnight waking, and in the
scarcely less utter solitude of day-dreaming in the midst of men, the
thought which ever most oppresses me in the contemplation of death, is
not so much the Unknown which lies beyond, as the thought of its awful
loneliness,--the thought that human faces may shine on my face, human
hands lie clasped in mine, and human voices bear me company up to the
very boundary line of that still and silent land, but that when that
boundary line is once reached, all these must fail and forsake me, and
I must turn to face the unknown darkness naked, desolate, and alone.
But why do I allow my thoughts, you say, to brood thus morbidly upon
death and the death moment? I will tell you. Because I who now write
to you have--save only in the last and uttermost giving up of the
spirit--been for some narrow space of time dead; because on me there
once fell that thin and impalpable veil which cuts off, as by a wall
of vast and impenetrable night, the dead one from those whom he leaves
behind.
The facts of the matter are simply these. Some years ago I became
seriously ill, grew worse day by day, and was pronounced dying, and
finally dead. Dead I apparently was, and dead I remained to all intents
and purposes for the greater part of two days, after which, to the
intense and utter astonishment of my friends and of the physicians, I
exhibited symptoms of returning vitality, and in the course of a week
or two was convalescent. The medical and scientific aspects of the
case are, I am assured by those most competent to judge, of unusual
interest, but it is not to them that I now wish to direct attention. It
is rather to that dim borderland betwixt life and death, wherein the
spirit hovers on uncertain pinion, as if hesitating whether to return
to the body it has lately tenanted, or to wing its way to the shadowy
heights of the world Unseen.
Where, during those two-score hours, I would ask, was my soul, ghost,
or life-principle? Had it passed into some intermediate spirit-realm,
there to await till the Father of Spirits should command it either
finally to quit the mortal habitation in which it had so long found
a home, or to return thereto till such time as He should call it to
Himself? Or was it still hovering over the body, struggling and
striving to free itself from the fetters which bound it to that which,
without it, were but a senseless and inanimate clod?
To that question I am prepared with an answer, and so strange a
one, that I cannot hope my story will be regarded with anything but
incredulity, nor can I reasonably expect it to be otherwise, for
I am aware that what I am about to relate I myself should reject
unhesitatingly were it proffered me on the testimony of another.
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