512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing became illuminated with a strange lurid light, and the air, space, 

 atmosphere, whatever it might be called, separated and formed a wide 

 black-sided opening, like the deadly pit which shows itself in the cen- 

 ter of a maelstrom. Then, as I sank slowly into this chasm, from an 

 immeasurable distance above me, yet forcibly distinct, the words I 

 longed for were uttered in a voice of heavenly sweetness : " He that 

 believeth on me hath everlasting life, and shall not come unto condem- 

 nation." My intense over-natural consciousness took possession of 

 these words, which were, I knew, my seal of safety, my passport to 

 heaven. For one wild instant a flash of ineffable joy, the joy of a 

 ransomed soul, was mine. I triumphed over sin and hell and the un- 

 utterable horrors of the second death. Then I plunged again into the 

 outer darkness of the damned. For the talisman which had been so 

 suddenly revealed was, as if in mockery, as suddenly snatched from 

 me, and, as before, obliterated from my recollection. 



Then all the chaos beyond the gap into which I was falling became 

 convulsed, as if shaken by wind and storm. Hideous sounds of souls 

 in torment, and still more hideous peals of mocking, fiendish laughter, 

 took the place of the hitherto oppressive silence. I was consumed by 

 a fearful, stinging remorse for the sins done in the body. Unlike the 

 experience of the drowning, my sins did not present themselves to my 

 remembrance in an array of mathematical accuracy. On the contrary, 

 not one was specifically recalled, but, if my daily walk and conversa- 

 tion had through life been entirely reprobate, and the worst of crimes 

 my constant pastimes, my consequent agony of self-reproach could 

 not have been greater. My conscience, in its condition of exaggerated 

 self -accusation, was not only the worm that never dieth, but a viper, 

 that would sting eternally, a ravening beast that, still insatiate, would 

 rend and gnaw everlastingly. 



I began then, without having reached any goal, and for no apparent 

 reason, to ascend with neither more nor less swiftness than I had gone 

 down, and in the same recumbent position in which my forsaken body 

 lay upon the bed a fathomless distance above, and which I had been 

 all the time powerless to change. Even the dress, a thin, figured Swiss 

 muslin, was the same, although a hundred times more diaphanous. 

 Even in my agonies of remorse I noticed how undisturbed by my fall- 

 ing were its filmy folds. There was not even a flutter in the delicate 

 lace with which it was ornamented. As I rose, a great and terrible 

 voice, from a vast distance, pronounced my doom in these words of 

 startling import : " In life you declared the negation of the supernatu- 

 ral. For truth you took a false philosophy. You denied the power 

 of Christ in time — you shall feel it in eternity. In life, you turned 

 from him — in death, he turns from you. Fall, fall, fall, to rise again 

 in hopeless misery, and sink again in lonely agony forever ! " All space 

 took up the last four words of my terrible sentence, and myriads of 

 voices, some sweet and sad, some with wicked, vindictive glee, echoed 



