HOW I AWOKE IN HELL.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 471, 14 May 1890, Page 6

HOW I AWOKE IN HELL.

Leaves From A Dead Man’s Diary. The anonymous dead man, who commenced his phenomenal reminiscences in the Februarynumber of “Lippincott’s,”gets to serious business this month. When he first returned to life the subject seemed too solemn to turn to account for copy, and each of the several years which have elapsed since he died have taken away some part of the recollections. He asserts, however, that his reminiscences, vague and fragmentary as they are, have been scrupulously kept within the accurate limits of his recollection. He has never filled in a missing outline, but has given the picture exactly as he sees it. Resuming his narrative, he tells us that although he remained in the spirit realm only two days, it seemed to him weeks and months and years since his real death, and the hour that he became conscious of that death. The Vision of My Past Life.

Whether my death was succeeded by a season of slumber, in which certain appointed and divinely-ordered dreams were caused to be dreamed by me, or whether God caused the hands on the dial of Time to be put back for a space in order that I might see the past as He sees it, I neither knew nor know, but I distinctly remember that the first thing of which I was conscious after my dissolution was that the events of my past life were rising before me. Yes, it was my past life which I saw in that awful moment, my past life standing out in its own naked and intolerable horror, an abomination in the sight of Cod and of my own conscience. The hands on the dial of Time went back half-a-score, a score, and finally a score and a-half of years, and once more I was a young man of twenty-one. The Chambers in which I was then living were situated in one of the well-known Inns off Holborn, and the housekeeper of the wing where I was quartered was a widow, who, with her daughter Dorothy, a girl of seventeen, resided on the premises. The tragedy of poor Dorothy can be imagined without being told. Both were young, impressionable, and opportunity was not lacking for an acquaintance which a thnnderstorm ripened in a moment into ungovernable passion. She occupied the room over his chamber, and after long struggling with temptation he fell. My passion had bub simulated defeat, as passion often does, in order that it might turn in an unguarded moment, and rend me with redoubled fury. The next moment 1 saw my last gasping effort to will what was right and true sink amid the tempestuous sea of sinful wishes, as a drowning man sinks after he has risen for the third time ; and deliberately thrusting away, in the doggedness of despair, the invisible hand which yet strove to stay me, I rose and sought the room which I had prayed I might never enter. My First Glimpse of Hell. You may wonder perhaps how it is that I am able to recall so vividly the circumstances of an event which happened many years ago. You would cease so to wonder had you seen, as I have seen, the ghost of your dead self rise up to cry for vengeance against you, and to condemn you before the judgment-seat of God and of your own conscience. For this was my first glimpse of Hell; this was my day of Judgment. The recording angel of my own indestructible and now Cod - awakened memory showed me my past life as God saw it, and as it appeared when robbed of the loathsome disguises with which I had so long contrived to hide my own moral nakedness.

What Keeps Hell Hell. The one thing of all others which added to the unutterable horror of that moment was the memory of the false and lying excuses with which I had striven to palliate my sin to myself. This is the way in which I had repeatedly striven to silence my conscience, and it is bub one instance of the way in which many others on this earth are now striving to silence theirs. ‘ For God’s sake,’ I would say to them, ‘ beware !’ Such hardening of the heart against the Holy Spirit, such God-murdering (for it is the wish to kill God, and to silence His voice for ever) is the one unpardonable sin which is a thousandfold more awful in its consequences than is the crime which it seeks to conceal. It was the foulest stain on the soul of him who hung by the dying Saviour, and it is I believe at this moment the one and only thing which still keeps Hell Hell, and Satan Satan. The Agony of the Damned.

I remember that when the realisation of what I was, and what I had done, was first borne in upon me, I fell to the ground and writhed in convulsive agony. The tortures of a material hell—of a thousand material hells—l would have endured with joyfulness could such tortures have drowned for one moment the thought-agony that tore me. Mere physical suffering in which, though it were powerless to expiate, I could at least participate by enduring, I would have welcomed with dilirious gladness, but of such relief or diversion of thought there was none To annihilation, had snch been then within my reach, I would have fought my way through a thousand devils. But in hell there is no escape. I remember that I rose up in my despair, and stretching vain hands to the impotent heavens, shrieked out as only one can shriek who is torn by hell torture and despair. I fell to the gronnd and writhed and foamed in convulsive and bloody agony. But not thus could I rid myself of the sights of hell, nor could mere physical pain wipe out from my brain the picture of the ruin 1 had wrought. And then—but no, I am sick, I am ill, I am fainting, I cannot, I cannot write more.