In Both Worlds Part 45

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

x.x.xI.

_FREE._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]

One day I was summoned from my labors into a kind of reception-room to meet a visitor. A visitor! I had been imprisoned thirty years and no one had ever called to see me. I had forgotten the outer world and supposed it had forgotten me. It was with surprise and some trepidation that I advanced to present myself to the stranger.

He was of small size, ugly, stoop-shouldered and bald. His face was sallow, his nose aquiline, his brows heavy and joined between his eyes.

His air was embarra.s.sed and timid and his speech slow. With this unprepossessing appearance, his manner was cordial and engaging, his tones agreeable, and when warmed up in conversation, his features were radiant with thought and genius.

This remarkable man was Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

After satisfying himself that I had been thirty years in prison and that I was really Lazarus whom Christ raised from the dead, he became very animated and communicative.

"You will be interested," said he, "to know how I found you out. I was called, a few days before I left Rome on this tour to the Eastern churches, to see a dying man. He was one of the most miserable wrecks I have ever witnessed, bearing the mark of the beast and the seal of sin. He was a Greek and his name was Demetrius. He wished to be baptized into the Christian faith, and to confess his sins before he died. He told me that you had been sentenced for life under a false name to hard labor on the public works of Antioch. He begged, as a favor to a dying sinner, that I would visit you if possible, and beg your pardon for the crimes he had committed against you."

It seemed that all my friends supposed I had been burned as one of the Christian candles, on the eventful night of the death of Magistus. My sisters and the disciples had mourned for me as one of the first martyrs of the new faith. Mary and Martha had arrived safely in Gaul, and had founded a beautiful church with a convent and Christian schools at Ma.r.s.eilles. Their wealth had contributed immensely to the spread of Christianity. They were devoted and holy women, and Paul was eloquent in praise of their zeal and piety.

"And Mary Magdalen?" said I, with a slight tremor at p.r.o.nouncing the name of a woman who had of late taken ardent possession of my thoughts.

"The humblest, sweetest, gentlest creature in the world! She always wears her black veil and devotes herself to the most menial offices. She is the grandest type I have yet seen of the purifying and sanctifying influence of the religion of Christ."

I felt a sweet glow of satisfaction at this announcement; and old man as I was, something like a blush mounted to my cheeks.

I learned from the great apostle the history of the Church from its infancy to the present time. He was modest and even depreciating in narrating his own share in the stupendous labors of the early disciples. I was not slow in detecting, from what he said, the immense changes in thought and spirit which had taken place in the Christian commonwealth since I had been withdrawn from its sphere.

Jesus Christ had left them a religion; Paul had made it a theology.

Paul drew from me a narration of my experiences in the spiritual world. I was very explicit and enthusiastic, for I deemed my revelations of the utmost importance to the Church and the world. He listened with interest, but with evident incredulity. We exchanged ideas at some length on all the leading questions of theology. I became more and more anxious to impress him with the truth of what I was saying.

"Remember," said I, "that the germs which you now plant in the Church, will expand in the form and direction you give them for hundreds and may be thousands of years. The slightest deviations now from the genuine truth, will grow into gigantic errors.

"If you teach the destructibility of this physical globe and the resurrection of our dead bodies from the dust, the Church will not have a true conception of the spiritual world, nor of the relation of that world to this.

"If you teach the separate and distinct personality of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the proper or supreme divinity of Jesus Christ will not be understood, and the germ of polytheism will take root in your creed.

"If you ignore the great judgment executed by Christ in the world of spirits, you will fail to comprehend the true object of his incarnation; and you will commit the sad mistake of supposing that the next and last judgment predicted, will take place in the world of nature.

"If you speak, as you did just now, of the blood of Christ cleansing from sin, your hearers may fall into the error of supposing that the material blood shed upon the cross is what cleanses and saves from sin; whereas the truth is, that the blood shed for the remission of sins, is the wine of the New Testament-the spiritual truth and spiritual life which flow forth from the Divine Man for the healing of the nations."

So I went on, reiterating all the grand points of doctrine which distinguished the teachings of the angels I had conversed with, from the teachings of Paul. He became more and more restive under my impetuous torrent of argument, and at last rose to depart. He excused himself on the plea of urgent business and short time. He said he would call again if possible, and would interest the Church in Antioch to labor for my release.

He left me with a pleasant smile. He pa.s.sed into a gallery where he met the governor of the prison. They were conversing as they walked slowly along beneath a window at which I had stopped. I heard Paul say,

"He is evidently insane."

"I wish the world was full of such madmen," was the bluff answer of the governor.

And that was the result of my interview with the great thinker, the leading spirit of the Christian world!

Insane!

This visit of Paul was of immense service to me. It helped me to subdue one of the strongest points of my selfhood. I still cherished the dream that my spiritual knowledge had been entrusted to me for the special benefit of the Christian Church. My only reason for wishing to get out of prison, was that I might communicate the Doctrine of Christ, as it appears to the angels, to my fellow-men.

After mature reflection upon my conversation with Paul and its results, I came to the conclusion that I had labored under a great mistake and had cherished an impossible hope. There are certain successive steps in the grand evolution of the general human mind, which make one revelation of truth necessary and proper at one time and another at another. The world and the Church were not ready for the knowledges which had been given to me. The transition from Jewish darkness to angelic light was too great, too sudden. A long period of twilight must intervene-a period of literal interpretations, of janglings and wranglings and schisms. In the fullness of time, perhaps, and after another judgment in the world of spirits, another church may be inst.i.tuted capable of receiving without adulteration the sublime verities of the spiritual world.

So I abandoned my mission. G.o.d knew better than I did, and I was satisfied.

It is strange what a new, sweet, beautiful life sprung up in my soul after I discovered that I had no mission in this world to fulfill, but to spread cement between stones, to plant flowers, to read the Psalms and to nurse my sick fellow-prisoners. I was a new creature.

I then entered upon what I have designated as the third state or era of my spiritual life. And this state was so marvelous, so exceptional to all the experiences of my fellow-men, that I shall not dwell long upon it. It may be a thousand or two thousand years before Providence repeats the phenomenon and produces another case like mine; and although in the far-off perfection of the world they will be common enough, the story of it will for centuries fall upon the ears of men as an idle dream.

The first intimation I had of a further change of state, was received while I was reading the Scriptures. The good Christians of Antioch, it seems, failed in procuring my release; but they contrived to send me a copy of the ancient Scriptures and the Gospel of Matthew. These were priceless jewels to an old man and a prisoner dead to all things except the life of religion.

One day when reading in the Psalms and applying the thoughts to my own individual experience, I became suddenly aware, by a kind of interior illumination, that the secret soul-life of the Lord Jesus Christ in his combats with the powers of h.e.l.l, was embodied and concealed in the sacred pages. They contain more wonderful things than all the heights and depths of this external nature which we so much admire. They contain the mysteries of life and death.

Every day brought new revelations to my mind of the interior meaning of the sacred writings. I found that the spiritual history of the incarnation of Christ was concealed in the narrative of the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The first chapters of Genesis, under the figure of the creation of the world, revealed the successive steps by which the human soul is built up from its original chaos into the image of G.o.d. The wanderings of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, was the spiritual history of every man's regeneration. And the prophets-oh, the prophets! with their dark sayings and grand imagery, concealed with a mystic veil the most beautiful and holy truths of the spiritual universe.

These things were not invented by my imagination. They were not discovered by my ingenuity. They pre-existed in the Scriptures, but are invisible to the mind which rests in the mere sense of the letter. Their existence was revealed to me by an interior light, the operation of which I did not comprehend. I learned also that this wonderful spiritual sense of the Divine Word was clearly understood in heaven, and was the mental food of angels.

The Gospel of Matthew contains similar spiritual mysteries enfolded in the literal story of our Lord. The Epistles of Paul, however,-glowing, eloquent, devout, impressive as they are-contain no interior or spiritual signification. I saw at once that they had no organic connection with the heavens; in other words, that they were not divinely inspired. They were simply the earnest, saintly utterances of a great and good man to his brethren.

"And yet," said I to myself, "so potent has this zealous and eloquent apostle been in organizing the Church, and so dense is the darkness of the natural mind, that it would not surprise me, if in the far future the words of Paul are reckoned of equal value with the history of Jesus, or with the Law and the Prophets."

The peace and joy inspired by the spiritual perception of the Word, were ineffable. My mind was in a state of continual felicity. I began also to have the most exquisite and beautiful dreams. I was frequently awakened by strains of the most heavenly music, and the darkness of my little cell was illumined by flashes of light, auroral and rainbow colors darting and twinkling here and there in the most surprising manner. I felt that some organic change in my spiritual const.i.tution was impending.

One Sabbath morning when I was reading in the Prophets, I became suddenly aware of a presence in my room; and lifting my eyes I beheld my father standing before me. He was as youthful and beautiful as ever. He was clad in shining garment, and said with a beaming smile:

"Do you understand what you read?"

"Better than I ever did before. But, O father! how is it that you have descended into the natural world?"

"Have you so soon forgotten your instructions in the world of spirits? I have not descended into the world of nature. I see nothing material which surrounds you. I am invisible to all eyes but yours. The change is in yourself. Your spiritual sight has been partially opened into the world of spirits where I am-enough to see my form, but not my surroundings. You seem to come to me, while I seem to come to you. You see me with your spiritual eyes and your material surroundings with your natural eyes."

It is needless to explain the philosophy, as it is impossible to describe the joy, of this happy reunion. Suffice it to say that my father came frequently to see me, or I went to see him, however the case may be interpreted. He a.s.sisted me in my studies of the Word, and we had many long discourses on the mysteries of regeneration. Many of these things are incommunicable in human language, for when my spiritual sight was open, I spoke unconsciously the language of spirits and not the language of men; and I find it impossible to embody in material expressions what was perfectly intelligible in my spiritual state.

"Your case," said my father, "so strange and exceptional at present, is a proof of the possibilities of the human spirit. As long as the powers of h.e.l.l reign on earth, it will be fearfully dangerous for man to have communication with spirits; and the Lord in his mercy will, as far as may be possible, keep each world a secret from the other. When He comes again with an open Word and his angelic hosts in the far-off ages of terrestrial time, such cases as yours may occur not unfrequently, and will announce the approaching conjunction of heaven and earth."

This double life, this wheel within a wheel, is no part of my earthly autobiography. I must draw the veil over its mysteries. I am permitted, however, to tell my readers that my uncle Beltrezzor was revealed to my eyes. He appeared as a young man of unspeakable beauty, clad in a purple robe of dazzling splendor. He had become a member of a heavenly society situated nearest to the Sun of the spiritual world. The atmosphere in which they live is a tissue of golden light, and the emblem of their spiritual love is a flame of sacred fire.