A DEAD MAN'S DIARY. A DEAD MAN'S DIARY Written after his Decease. WITH A PREFACE BY G.T. BETTANY, M.A. "I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After Life to spell: And by-and-by my Soul return'd to me, And answered, 'I myself am Heav'n and Hell.'" Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. (_Fitzgerald's Translation._) WARD, LOCK AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE. 1890. (_All rights reserved._) PREFACE. The literature purporting to describe the state of mankind after death, whether as Hades, Intermediate State, Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven, has mostly erred in the direction of too great detail. On the one hand, we have had those who with Swedenborg declare "that after death a man is so little changed that he even does not know but he is living in the present world; that the resemblances between the two worlds are so great, that in the spiritual world there are cities, with palaces and houses, and also writings and books, employments and merchandises." On the other hand, we have the picture drawn by the writer of "Letters from Hell," of imaginary houses and scenes, of seeming actions, of semblances of men compelled to appear to be doing after death the very things they did in life, despair all the while gnawing at their hearts. Archdeacon Farrar, in Chapter IV. of his "Mercy and Judgment," has given a varied and horrifying series of extracts from ancient and modern divines describing their detailed conceptions about the future of the wicked. As to the future of the beatified, no one needs reminding of the multitude of word-pictures, often mutually contradictory, in which their existence has been depicted.