Chapter XXII: Back to Earth

I was borne to my bed-chamber by my friends; for I was not able to walk. The curious crowd followed us to the gate, but very few persons were admitted into the house. They judiciously forebore attempting to converse with me, and I fell immediately into a refreshing sleep.

When I awoke my sisters were ready with stimulants and nourishment. Looking up into their sweet, eager, happy faces, I found stimulus and nourishment of a higher kind.

“Back in the world again!” I exclaimed, as soon as I could breathe for the kisses they were showering upon me.

“Yes—raised from the dead!” said Martha; “Praise be to the Son of God!”

“Raised from the dead!” echoed Mary with deep solemnity, her voice faltering with emotion.

Trying to recall what had happened, I was struck with a curious impression which had been left on my mind. It was the impression that a very long time—months, years, many years, had elapsed since I died. I had passed through so many wonderful states, had seen so many astounding things, and been initiated into so many spiritual mysteries, that when I came to think of them from my earthly stand-point, it seemed impossible that so much experience could have been crowded into a few days.

“If this be really Lazarus,” said I aloud, “he ought to be a gray-headed old man, and his sisters wrinkled old women; for surely many years have passed since he fell sick in Bethany.”

The words disquieted my sisters, who were afraid of returning delirium. They enjoined upon me absolute silence on the plea of my great weakness. So I lay upon my couch, looking alternately out of the two windows of my room. One of them opened upon the inner courtyard with its little fountain of water, as beautiful to my eyes as if it had been a great column of crystal. From the other I saw the summit of the Mount of Olives, beyond which lay the Holy City, concealed as heaven is concealed from us by the intervening heights of our earthly passions.

Mary sat near me engaged on some fine needlework; Martha at a little table close by, poring over a beautiful golden-clasped parchment of the Psalms of David. They occasionally lifted their eyes with watchful interest to my face. It was a soothing pleasure to contemplate these lovely women. There was a soft, pure, heavenly atmosphere about them, which reminded me of the heaven I had left; and I understood the words of the Psalmist, that man was created only a little lower than the angels.

“Where is Jesus, our benefactor?” I inquired, breaking through their injunction to keep silence.

“Gone into Jerusalem,” was the reply.

“If our good father was here,” said I, “he would tell us what great change in the world of spirits was coming next; for every movement of Jesus on earth is significative of wonderful things going on in the sphere above us. But alas! from this earthly point of view, all is darkness!”

The startled expression of my sisters’ faces showed that they thought my mind was wandering. They only replied by putting their fingers warningly upon their lips.

So I shut my eyes and addressed myself to sleep again; but pictures from that museum of Art which memory builds for us all, came floating before me. Mary standing silent and downcast at the mouth of the deserted cave; the Son of the Desert, the zebra of my vision, wearing in his wild life the ring which Martha had given him; Ethopus parting with his treasure to rescue his brother; the haughty stare of the guests of Hortensius in the Hall of Apollo; Helena, the beautiful, leaning against the emerald tree and clapping her hands at the drunken Bacchus; Mary Magdalen toiling up the hill under the terrible load, and comforted by invisible spirits; the great snow-fields and ice-mountains of the spiritually dead, whom I felt but did not see; all these things and many more passed and repassed before my mind’s eye, until, lulled as if by the ceaseless patter of rain, I fell a second time into a deep slumber.

I was thoroughly restored when I awoke the next morning. I immediately repeated the Lord’s Prayer after my father’s example; and entered, upon the first page of the book of my new life, a firm resolution to prepare my soul by faith and obedience for an eternal home in the heaven I had visited, but for which I was yet unfit.

As my strength increased I gave audience to my friends—to very few at first; but recovering day by day, I soon had the house thrown open to all who wished to examine for themselves the facts in evidence of the great miracle.

The story had gone far and wide. The death, the burial, the four days in the grave, and the resurrection, were all susceptible of positive proof. There were scores of intelligent and truthful witnesses on every point. Crowds of people came to see the house, to inspect the grave, and to converse with me. I was examined and cross-examined by Scribes and Pharisees, by Jews and Greeks, by Romans and Egyptians, by infidels and disciples.

I soon discovered that, although everybody was intensely interested in the story of my sensations when dying and when coming to life again, very few appeared to be long entertained by my wonderful experiences in the world of spirits. They seemed instinctively to refer all my statements on that point to the class of dreams and visions.

At first I was astonished and even annoyed at this indifference and unbelief. But I soon learned that man at present is so immersed in the life of the senses, that faith in a spiritual world is more nominal than real; a faith so vague, shadowy and fanciful, that he will not accept as true any positive statements about the spiritual world.

Men yearn for the great veil to be lifted; to communicate with departed friends; to see the patriarchs and prophets; to learn the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom. Oh that some one, say they, could return from the unseen world and tell us all about these things! With what solemnity would we listen to his words! with what joy! with what faith!

They are the victims of delusion. If their dearest friends were raised from the dead after a year’s burial, they would find themselves disappointed. They would regard them at first with wonder and awe. They would believe until they began speaking. But when they described the resurrection which happens to all as it did to me; when they taught the doctrine of a spiritual body; the reality and substantiality of the spiritual world; the civil, social and religious life of heaven; doubt after doubt would crowd upon their minds, until they would reject the whole story as a dream or a fabrication.

Christ himself declared that the appearance of one from the dead would convince no man. It is a strange declaration, but my own case is evidence of its truth.

The grounds upon which the incredulity of my visitors was based, were of the most contradictory and sometimes of the most irrational nature. One disbelieved because I had not seen Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and because I declared that no earthly names exist in heaven, and that respect is there entertained, not for persons, but for character or quality. Another doubted my report because I said that David was not king of all the Jews in the spiritual world.

One man, a great patriot, was indignant because I affirmed that all the Romans did not go to hell. Another, equally zealous for Judea, was personally abusive because I declared that more people were saved from the pagan or gentile nations than from the Jewish Church. Another was shocked because I said the angels were not always engaged in singing and praising God. Another, an ideologist, scouted the idea that there was any form, shape or substance to the soul, or even in the spiritual world.

The most ignorant and conceited of the Scribes and Pharisees denounced me bitterly as teaching doctrines utterly at variance with Scripture and subversive of the interests of vital religion. On the other extreme, our worthy old Greek gardener laughed at my narrative as a tissue of hallucinations, because I had not been rowed over the river Styx by Charon the ferryman, but honestly declared that I had seen neither Charon nor the Stygian river.

The majority insisted that I had not been dead at all; that my condition was only a trance, which had often occurred before, and had been prolonged to even a greater period. To this the Pharisees added, that it was no doubt a trick of magic in which I was guilty of collusion, and which was designed to extend the fame and influence of Jesus of Nazareth.

Some believed in the fact of my resurrection; and the more enthusiastic went so far as to affirm that my body had been decomposed in the grave. These were actually angry with me when I declared that, although I was so far dead as to be living consciously in another world, yet my separation from nature was not organic and final, my natural body being preserved in a peculiar manner for a reunion with its spiritual form.

I soon became wearied and disgusted with unprofitable discussions, and with credulities and incredulities equally absurd. Failing to convince my hearers, or to elevate their minds into the heavenly light which I myself enjoyed, I became more and more reserved; and at last I would not speak on the subject to any one but Mary and Martha.

These dear women listened with unfailing delight to all I had to say. The divine intuitions of woman recognize always a new truth before the calculating reason of man endorses it. Martha indeed doubted occasionally and criticised sharply, but was always satisfied after consulting the Scriptures and comparing what I related with their sacred teachings. Mary, full of love and trust, believed unquestioningly every word I said.

When the crowd was greatest and the excitement highest, our old enemy Magistus, assuming the garb of friendship, came to see me. He had heard of my death with great pleasure, for he expected to regain possession of the property and of my sisters. He was at heart greatly incensed at my return to life, and vowed to wreak his vengeance on the Divine Man who raised me from the dead.

He entered with affected friendliness of manner, and congratulated me on my happy escape from the world of shadows. He hoped, with sanctimonious earnestness, that after this solemn warning, I would discard all my pagan ideas and proclivities, and consecrate my whole soul to the service of the only true and living God.

I told him that I was rather to be pitied than congratulated on returning to a world so vastly inferior in beauty, peace, and joy to the one I had visited. I told him also that I had been instructed in the true doctrine of God in the world of spirits, and that I had seen the terrible dangers which were impending over the Jewish people and church on account of the blindness and wickedness of their hearts.

“You will be delighted to hear,” I continued, “that my guide and instructor was my beloved father, who passed from the wilderness into heaven, exchanging a poor leprous body for the radiant form of an angel.”

Whether my looks and tones displeased him, or my statements aroused his anger; or whether the sphere of truth, like the revealing light of heaven, compelled him to show himself in his true colors; Magistus dropped the mask, scowled upon me with a face full of hateful passion, and retired, turning at the door to exclaim:

“Beware, young man! lest this pretended resurrection prove the cause of your real death.”

I had hardly felt myself in full and healthful possession of my natural body again, when I made inquiries after that beautiful and fascinating woman, the love of whom, unrequited and consuming, had been the principal cause of my death. One might suppose that after my strange experience with Helena or her attendant demon—an experience seemingly designed to apprise me of her true character—she would have been the last person on earth I desired to see.

Alas! it was not so. The enchantments of the senses strike deep into the soul. The dream of love first engendered in the fervid brain of youth is not easily forgotten. Her beautiful face and bewitching figure were constantly before me. And it was with the deepest anguish that I heard she had fled from her father and friends, and had gone down into Egypt with Simon Magus.

I found it impossible to turn my thoughts from this Greek siren whose own evil passions had thus borne her out of my reach, and to concentrate them upon that other woman whom Providence had decreed to be my eternal partner, and who was silently, painfully, unconsciously, co-operating with me in building that palace in the architectural heaven of my tribe.

Mary Magdalen followed Jesus as usual, and came occasionally with the crowd into the front courtyard of our house. The love of Helena so preoccupied my thoughts and desires, that I could not make up my mind to speak to her forlorn rival, or to invite her into the guest-chamber with the other disciples. So the future wife of my soul stood without among the unwelcomed crowd, outcast, solitary, unfriended, patiently bearing the burden of life for both herself and me.

Jesus spent his evenings at our house, until the violent spirit of the chief Priests and Scribes, on account of my resurrection, became so apparent, that he withdrew for a season to Ephraim, where he had several devoted followers. He passed the time in pleasant conversation with his disciples, or in reading and expounding to us the Scriptures.

With what eyes and thoughts, different from the others, did I now regard this Divine Being, seated as a man among men—among the creatures of his own breath! My spiritual experiences with regard to Him had cast a spell of silence and awe upon my soul. I could not speak to Jesus as before. In his presence I could scarcely speak at all. Sometimes I found it impossible to lift my eyes to his face. While the others ate and chatted respectfully but familiarly with this Divine Man, knowing Him only as a man, I sat silent and reverential, my heart humbled in the dust before Him, thinking of the great golden light which preceded Him in the world of spirits, and of his divine face shining like a sun upon the angels of the celestial heaven.