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The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Both Worlds by William Henry Holcombe This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license Title: In Both Worlds Author: William Henry Holcombe Release Date: June 6, 2011 [Ebook 36342] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN BOTH WORLDS*** IN BOTH WORLDS. BY WM. H. HOLCOMBE, M. D., AUTHOR OF “OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN;”“THE SEXES: HERE AND HEREAFTER,” ETC., ETC. iii PHILADELPHIA J.B.LIPPINCOTT&CO 1870. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. LIPPINCOTT’S PRESS, PHILADELPHIA. [5] CONTENTS. PAGE I. CAST OUT 17 II. CLOUDS GATHERING 29 III. NIGHT BY THE DEAD SEA 39 IV. IN THE WILDERNESS 50 V. THE BANQUET 60 VI. THE CHAMBER OF MAGIC 75 VII. SAVED 93 VIII. BREAD ON THE WATERS 105 IX. SACRIFICE 119 X. AT ATHENS 132 XI. HELENA 141 vi In Both Worlds XII. THE HALL OF APOLLO 149 XIII. MY FIRST DEATH 159 XIV. MY SPIRITUAL BODY 171 XV. THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 184 XVI. THE CHRIST ABOVE NATURE 193 XVII. JUDGMENT OF THE JEWS 203 XVIII. IMAGINARY HEAVENS 214 XIX. THE MAGICIANS IN HELL 225 XX. FRIENDS IN HEAVEN 236 XXI. THE SPIRITUALLY DEAD 250 XXII. BACK TO EARTH 261 XXIII. IMPRISONED 271 XXIV. BURIED ALIVE 280 XXV. WHAT HAD HAPPENED 292 XXVI. THE CITY OF COLONNADES 305 XXVII. HELENA AGAIN 320 XXVIII. vii TO THE LION 334 XXIX. CHRISTIAN CANDLES 344 XXX. THE GREAT COMBAT 355 XXXI. FREE 367 XXXII. WHAT REMAINS? 378 [9] A STRANGE DISCOVERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE. Many years ago I was enjoying in the harbor of New York the charming hospitalities of the officers belonging to one of the finest vessels in the British Navy. The company was gay, cultivated and brilliant. Student and recluse as I then was, I was perhaps more delighted than any one present with the conversation of those practical and polished men of the world. After supper I was attracted to a small group of earnest talkers, of whom the surgeon of the ship seemed to be the centre and oracle. He was speaking of exhumations a long time after death, of mummies and petrifactions and other curious transformations of the human body. He stated that he had examined some of the skeletons which had been dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum. A STRANGE DISCOVERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE. ix The bones were almost perfect after the lapse of eighteen hundred years. The complete exclusion of air and water seemed to be the only thing necessary to an indefinite preservation. The chaplain of the vessel endeavored to give the conversation an æsthetic and semi-religious turn by analyzing the feelings of mingled awe, melancholy and curiosity with which most men survey the remains of a human form—feelings always heightened [10] by the antiquity of the relic, and by the dignity of the person who lived and loved and labored in it. “The fundamental idea,” said he, “is a profound respect for the human body itself as the casket which has contained the spiritual jewel, the soul.” “Yes,” remarked the surgeon; “nothing but the lapse of a people into cannibalism can obliterate that sentiment. When the Egyptian embalmers were ready for their work, a certain person came forward and made the necessary incisions for taking out the entrails. He immediately fled away, pursued by volleys of stones and curses from all the others. Hence also the dissections of the dead by medical students are conducted with the utmost secrecy and caution.” “Schiller,” said I, “makes one of his heroes remark that the first time he plunged his sword into a living man, he felt a shudder creep over him as if he had desecrated the temple of God.” “Besides the feeling of reverence,” continued the clergyman, “we have the awe which death naturally inspires, the melancholy excited by the vain and transitory nature of earthly things; and lastly, a tender and curious interest for the brother-soul which has tasted the sweetness of life and the bitterness of death, and passed onward to those hidden but grander experiences which await us all.” “Those shocking Egyptian mummies,” said one of the officers, “are so disgusting that a strange horror is mingled with the gentler emotions you describe.” x In Both Worlds “I experienced that feeling,” said another, “on reading an account of the exhumation of the remains, or rather the opening of the coffin, of King Charles I., two hundred years after he had been beheaded. It was increased, doubtless, by the idea of the separated head and body, and the strange and lifelike stare of the king’s eyes, which collapsed like soap-bubbles when they were [11] exposed to the air.” “There was something of the picturesque in that finding of a dead body by some little children who were playing in a grotto in France. It was seated on a stone bench and perfectly petrified, retaining, however, a sweet and placid expression of countenance. The man was an old hermit, who frequently retired into the deepest chamber of the grotto for religious contemplation.” “Imagine yourself,” said I, “in the silence and shadows of Westminster Abbey, peering through some crevice in an old vault and getting a sight of the shrunken dust of Shakespeare.” “Passing from imagination to fact,” said solemnly the old surgeon, “I have seen the body of a man lying upon the ground where it had lain undisturbed for eighteen hundred years.” “Eighteen hundred years!” exclaimed several voices at once. “Yes, eighteen hundred years; and I was the first person who set eyes upon him from the day of his death until I got into the cavern where he perished.” “A romance! a romance!” cried the minister. “Come, doctor, be communicative and tell us all about it.” “It is not a romance,” said the doctor, “but the facts were certainly very curious. “When I was a young assistant surgeon, attached to the sloop- of-war Agamemnon, we were skirting leisurely the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and anchored one morning in sight of the ruins of the ancient city of Sidon and opposite the westernmost spurs of Lebanon, the Mont Blanc of Palestine. A STRANGE DISCOVERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE. xi “There is only one picture grander than a view of Mount Lebanon from the sea, and that is a view of the sea from Mount Lebanon. I enjoyed the former so keenly that I determined to obtain the latter also. We got up a party of genial and stout [12] fellows to ascend one of the highest peaks, armed with pick-axes, to obtain geological specimens on our way. “We had advanced but a short distance up one of the cliffs, when we started from the scanty undergrowth some little animal—a wolf or jackal or wild dog, all of which abound on Mount Lebanon. We all joined noisily in the chase, and soon ran the frightened creature into one of the deep crevices or fissures made in the earth by the tempestuous rains of that region. Our picks were immediately brought into play, and in a short time, to our very great astonishment, instead of digging the fugitive out of a little hole in the ground, we opened our way into what was evidently the rear or back part of a cave of considerable dimensions. “Our party crawled in one after another, myself leading the way. The contents of the place arrested our attention so strongly that we forgot the object of our chase, which had buried itself in some holes or burrows at the side of the cavern. The floor was of a yellowish-white limestone, and all eyes were immediately directed, in the rather dim light, to the figure of a man outstretched upon it. “Yes, it was a man whose entire body, clothing and all, had dissolved into one blended mass, and so long ago that it looked rather like a great bas-relief of the human form projecting from the lighter-colored floor. “The shape of the head and of the long hair and beard was complete. One outstretched arm lay along the floor, and the fingers could be traced by little ridges separate from each other. The protuberances of all the bony parts showed that the skeleton still resisted the disintegrating process of decay. “What an awful death he must have experienced! For there xii In Both Worlds was not a single other object in the small space which remained [13] of the cavern; not a stone which might have served for a seat or a table; not an earthen vessel which might have contained a draught of water. “The fate of this unhappy being was evident. Whether he had lived in the cavern or whether he had taken refuge in it from some great storm, he had clearly rushed to the back part of it to escape some enormous landslide and caving in at the front, which had opened toward the sea. He had been buried alive! Having exhausted the little air that remained to him, stricken down by terror, despair and suffocation, he had rendered up his soul to the great Giver in silence, darkness and solitude.

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