After Death 17

By now, I was about as sick of the division of hate as anyone could possibly be and determined to make an effort to get out. I knelt down on the stony ground and prayed. My God, how I prayed!

Soon an answer came and in an unexpected manner.

I saw coming towards me a light – yes – a real light! — not the horrible red glow which passes for fire down here and has all the unpleasant effects without the pleasant ones. This was a real light – silvery, clear and pure – come down from the realms above.

It drew nearer and nearer and I saw that the light came from a man — or was it an angel? I felt sure it must be an angel. I stretched forth my hands in longing prayer but, as he came nearer and nearer, I felt an intense pain. It was the light and it seemed to be eating into my soul. Eventually, I could bear it no nearer and cried out in agony –

Stop! Stop! For the love of God, stop! It burns! It burns.

An answer came like the notes of a silver trumpet –

You have called for help and I have come to give it but all progress entails a price and the price you must pay is the burning away of the filth which encumbers your soul. If you remain here, you will suffer and keep on suffering until you do come. If you go with me, you will suffer only for a little while and will be progressing and that means you will be going away from suffering – slowly, perhaps – but surely.

I will come, I will come – I sobbed – I am inured to pain by now; lead on and I will follow as well as I am able. O God, help my stumbling steps.

I will come no nearer – he answered – but follow me.

I followed the messenger at a distance.

We climbed up and up, over rugged mountain sides, until, on reaching the crest of a line of naked, barren hills, I found, stretching before us, a kind of vast marsh. Across the marsh ran a broken path, which every now and then seemed to vanish, only to reappear again.

All around was a thick fog but the fog seemed lightest over the path. The messenger of hope led the way along this quaking path and I followed at a certain distance because of the intensity of the light which came from him and which illuminated the path we were on.

Suddenly, out of the darkness loomed a great figure, terrible and horrible. I knew him at once by instinct as the personification of hate.

He barred our way and cried –

None who have entered these realms may ever depart. Return the way you came or I will throw you into the marsh.

My rescuer answered – Out of the way.  In this sign, I conquer – and, raising his hand, he held aloft a cross.

As he advanced, the great spirit of evil, who was no man but a being similar to the personification of drink, whom I had seen on the astral plane, shrank away and, being driven off the path, hovered over the marsh.

As soon as my rescuer had passed him, he dived forward towards me, dividing me from my new-found friend.

In an agony of fear, I turned and fled but my rescuer, seeing what had happened, turned and sprang after me.

At once, the evil spirit fled away from him into the marsh, while the messenger of light seized me by the arm.

The pain was intense, for he seemed to be a living fire, yet, in reality, he was but a man who had come down from the realm of belief to help and save those in Hell.

After a while, the pain grew less as the light burnt away more of the evil in my nature. We crossed the marsh unmolested and found ourselves in front of the gate of a city.

This is the City of Lust – he explained – it is part of the division of Hell devoted to the sins of the flesh. The greedy and covetous, thieves, gluttons and immoral people come there. In this city, Lust rules and you must pass through it and resist the temptations to which you will be exposed.

If you do not resist them, you will have to remain in that division for a time but, if you do resist them, you will be able to pass through. Even so, you will not climb into the next division unless you help someone else to escape also. Now I must leave you and return to my work of rescuing souls from the City of Hate.

I passed through the gate, which was guarded by an evil-looking man who was disporting himself with a woman who had been beautiful but now looked hideous from the lines vice had imprinted on her face.

Once inside, I gazed round at the place which, at first, I did not recognise and so stopped a man who was hurrying along and asked him – What is the name of this city?

He stared at me in amazement – Where have you come from, stranger? The wildest barbarians know of Corinth. Look at the famous Gulf.

As he spoke, he pointed at the marsh, adding –

Why, you have just come up from the gate leading to the harbour.

What?  Do you call that filthy marsh the beautiful Gulf of Corinth? I cried in amazement.

Yes, it does seem to be rather dirty, though why I cannot understand and it is very overcast here nowadays.

Why, it is because you are in Hell – I began – but he interrupted me.

Nonsense, the truth of the matter is that we have displeased the gods by discovering the secret of eternal life. We never die here. I do not know how long I have lived but it must be for thousands of years.

I must admit I sometimes wish I could die; I get weary of it, weary of always trying to do the same things and when one has done them, what does one get? They call it pleasure — pah!

Remembering the advice of my former deliverer, I said –

Why not try and escape? Come with me to a more congenial part.

He laughed – It is very plain you are a stranger or you would not suggest such a foolish idea. If I left here, I should die and I do not want to do that.

But you are dead and, being dead, how can you die again?

If I were dead, how could I be alive? You are a madman. Keep your mouth shut or the people will cast stones at you.

Next moment, he had gone and I began to walk along what approximated to a street.

Many of the buildings seemed to have collapsed and all were filthy but I could see that once they must have been fine and were in the ancient Greek style. It is strange. While on earth, I have seen many ruins but they were not disfigured by the sense of squalor and sin which disfigured those in Hell.

While I was cogitating over these matters, the street, which had been practically empty, became full of women and men who came running in a wild bacchanalian rout.

Two women flung their arms round my neck, while a man filled a cup from a goatskin with what looked like wine and pressed it to my lips.

It was ages since I had had any offer of kindness from anyone. In the City of Hate, all that each man thought of was how to inflict pain on his neighbours and avoid pain himself.

The two women spoke words of endearment to me and the man pressed me to drink — and I did so.

There were wild shouts of delight – He is one of us.

The wine seemed sour and unpleasant and, instead of slaking my thirst, only increased it. I drank more and more in a desperate effort to obtain satisfaction but with no result.

We went along in a wild disorderly throng and I leave you to guess the scenes which were enacted. Drink and lust reigned. Occasionally, cruel acts would be done here but sporadic acts of cruelty did not bring about exile; it was only when these became a regular part of a man’s life that the pleasure-seeking populace became annoyed and ostracised him.

I will not attempt to describe the abominations I witnessed there but the whole object of the community was the encouragement of immorality in every form.

Every woman was what on earth would have been called a prostitute and every place of amusement harped on the same theme. We seemed to be driven on by wild desire but utterly unable to gratify it.

I drifted with the tide, forgetful in part of my rescuer’s advice but more because my natural inclinations led me to long for my former amusements. Unsatisfactory as this existence was, it yet came as a great relief after the horrors I had seen and anguish I had suffered in the division below.

I found that there were many other cities devoted to lust besides this version of Corinth for there are other and nobler forms of Corinth in these realms of half- belief and even in other divisions of Hell. Of these other cities of lust, I visited a place that seemed like Paris and another like London.

After a while, I blundered into a part of the latter which seemed to be given over to thieves of various sorts. Here they stole from each other but no sooner had they succeeded in stealing something from their neighbours than the thing stolen turned to dust.

I grew weary of this empty world where nothing we did brought any real satisfaction.

This division was the first one in which I saw a church. It was run by a man who had started some weird sect on earth with the object of doing himself well at the expense of his dupes. He had made quite a good thing of it at first but his unworthy object, together with his secretly vicious life, had been recognised by most of his followers who forsook him but a few fools still continued to follow him.

After death, he had come here and gathered a congregation consisting largely of thieves, forgers, bogus company promoters and such like. I came across several former acquaintances who seemed quite pleased to see me. The service was the strangest mockery of a service. It was simply a blasphemous parody – both preacher and congregation strove to say a proper service but whatever they said seemed to pervert as it was uttered. The hymns and prayer became blasphemous mockeries or licentious songs.

I began to long for a means of escape.