As death comes out of the closet in contemporary society, this book presents the views on heaven and the afterlife of a number of well-known Victorians, and others not so well known, in the belief that they may help us today.

PERHAPS there is no more awful thought than this: that sin is all around us and within us, and we know not what it is. We are beset by it on every side: it hangs upon us, hovers about us, casts itself across our path, hides itself where our next foot step is to fall, searches us through and through, listens at our heart, floats through all our thoughts, draws our will under its sway, and ourselves under its dominion; and we do not know what it is. It is a pestilence that walketh in darkness; nothing stays its advance; it passes through all barriers, pierces all strongholds; the very air seems to waft it into our dwellings. Now it is very awful to know this, and yet not to know what is this malign and deadly power. We read, that in the beginning sin was not in the world; that “by one man sin entered;” that here it has ever since abode; that it brought death with it; that “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Aeterna Press