Note 43 — Chapter VI · THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS

Of all visions, those of the death-bed especially invite our attention, for they are looked upon by many pious persons as sure evidence in favour of the truth of their Faith. Will this argument bear analysis? We know that good men and women have had heavenly visions during their last moments. We know also that others of equally blameless lives have been terrified at the last by the sight of some supreme horror. How can any argument be based upon the phantasms of a disordered brain? Do not these visions, too, usually take their form from the teaching with which the mind has been imbued? The Mohammedan sees a heaven peopled with houris; do we on that account accept the Koran as our guide? A dying Hindoo may have a vision of a heathen deity of questionable character, and derive comfort from it. I have myself stood by the bedside of a dying Mahratta whose ravings during the delirium of fever indicated such a vision. There are, it is true, cases where the visions of the dying may seem utterly unlike those we should expect. But the brain retains impressions of things of which the conscious memory has long ago passed away, and, if the early history of the ecstatic could be fully known, we should, as Proctor points out,43 find nearly every circumstance of his vision explained, or at least an explanation suggested. It may be said again of death-bed visions, as of visions generally, that there has never yet been a case of a Mohammedan or a Hindoo or any other non-Christian who has had a revelation of Christian “truth.”