Chapter VIII: The Peak in Darien: the Riddle of Death, 245 (7)

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.

Here, then, the argument lies in manageable shape before us. It is true we only see a small portion of humanity, as it has yet been drawn out; but just as mathematicians can determine, from any three given points, the nature of the curve to which they belong, so we have enough indications to guide us to a conclusion respecting the character of our race. In every department of our nature, save our perishable bodies, we find something which seems to point beyond our threescore years and ten,--something inconsistent with the hypothesis that those years complete our intended existence. Our busy intellects, persistently wrestling with the mysteries of eternity; our human affections craving for undying love; our sense of justice, born of no past experience of a reign of Astrea, but resolutely prophesying, _in spite_ of experience, a perfect judgment hereafter; the measureless meaning which moral distinctions carry to our consciences; the unutterable longing of our spirits for union (not wholly unattained even here) with the living God, the Father of spirits,--all these things seem to show that we are built, so to speak, on a larger scale than that of our earthly life. The foundations are too deep and wide, the corner-stones are by far too massive, if nothing but the Tabernacle of a day be the design of the Architect. In brief, then, we may admit freely that, for aught we know, “God could not give to a triangle the properties of a circle,” and yet, nevertheless, hold our faith undisturbed, since we find that the line which His hand has actually drawn _is a_ CURVE _already_,--a few degrees of the circumference of a stupendous circle.

[37] There is an insect, the Lunar Sphinx Moth, which exhibits, in its first stage, not only the usual prevision for its security while in the helpless chrysalis state, but a singular foresight of its own requirements when it shall have become a winged moth. Having made, by eating its way _upward_ through the pith of a willow, an appropriate hiding-place, it finds itself with its head in a position in which, were it to become a moth, it could never push itself down, and escape at the aperture below. The little creature accordingly, before it goes to sleep, laboriously turns round, and places its head near the entrance, where, as a moth, it will make its happy exit into the fields of air. There seems something curiously akin in the unaccountable foresight of this insect, of a state of existence it has never experienced, and the vague and dim sentiment of immortality, common to mankind since the days of the cave-dwellers of the Stone Age.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Page 91: “consummation of nonenity” changed to “consummation of nonentity”

Page 127: In the footnote, “performed her tasl” changed to “performed her task”