Across the Line

By Albert Payson Terhune, Joseph R. Sizoo and Anice Terhune

Albert Payson Terhune was not only universally famous for his stories of the collies of Sunnybank: as readers of his The Son of God know, he was also of a deeply religious mind. Some time before his death in February 1942, he made some rough notes for an article on a subject which had never ceased to concern him and which has absorbed the thoughts of human beings from time immemorial. As Rev. Dr. Sizoo remarks in the Foreword to this volume, “The human heart has always rebelled against the silence of death. Why should those whom we have loved and lost suddenly cease to be concerned about us and refuse to counsel and enhearten?...Are there any signals which flash back and forth? Do they know us? Can we speak with them? Are they concerned for us?”

Anice Terhune, the author’s wife, offers an affirmative answer to these questions in the notes and comments that form the greater part of the present book. Mrs. Terhune was the author of The Bert Terhune I Knew (1943) as well as of many short stories, articles, and of three novels among which are The Eyes of the Village and The White Mouse. Pianist, organist, and composer, she has published many books of children’s songs. She was born in Hampden, Massachusetts, of an old New Jersey family, a direct descendant of Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Dec 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789126556

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Text originally published in 1945 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ACROSS THE LINE

BY

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

With Notes and Comments by

ANICE TERHUNE

And with a Foreword by

REV. DR. JOSEPH R. SIZOO

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD 4

ACROSS THE LINE—BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE 5

ADDITIONAL NOTES 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS BY ANICE TERHUNE 12

I 14

II 19

III 26

IV 30

V 33

VI 34

VII 35

VIII 40

IX 45

X 53

XI 59

XII 62

XIII 67

XIV 72

XV 78

XVI 80

AN ADDED LEAF 82

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 84

FOREWORD by Rev. Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo

THE HUMAN HEART has always rebelled against the silence of death. Why should those whom we have loved and lost suddenly cease to be concerned about us and refuse to counsel and enhearten? Standing on the rim of the world is a vast company which no man can number from every age and clime, wistfully looking up into the unknown. There is another company, perhaps even larger, from every age and clime standing on the rim of eternity looking down upon us. Are there any signals which flash back and forth? Do they know us? Can we speak with them? Are they concerned for us?

Many have said it is impossible. Death is the final chapter of the book. The night of silence has closed in on them. But faith never bolts the door against anything. The last word has never been spoken. A true scientist always penetrates the impenetrable. All things are possible to him who seeks. God has yet greater things to reveal to His children if only we are in tune with Him.

Here is the record of one who makes the great affirmation that it is not only possible, but that it has been experienced. This is not the first voice that has protested against the silence of death and cried out exultantly, I have heard and I have seen. God has given to the spiritually sensitive to lift the curtain for us and let in the light.

Read it, good friend, thoughtfully, hopefully and prayerfully. When you do new meaning will come to the ageless confession of the Christian faith, I believe in the communion of saints. Albert Payson Terhune wrote in his last notes, God always finishes His sentences.

JOSEPH R. SIZOO

Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas

ACROSS THE LINE by Albert Payson Terhune

ROUGH NOTES FOR AN ARTICLE BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

MADE SOME TIME BEFORE HIS DEATH

FEBRUARY 18, 1842

JOHN SMITH was strolling along a country road, one day, with a bunch of friends around him. He was moving a little in advance of the others. Across the middle of the road, a narrow and almost invisible line was drawn in the dust.

John Smith, still in advance, stepped over that line. Immediately he vanished—vanished just as he was glancing back to answer laughingly something his wife had been saying.

Widespread search, advertisements, pages of newspaper conjecture and editorial comment. Never again was John Smith seen or heard of. It was one of the master-mysteries of the ages. Books were written about it. The news flashed from one end of the world to the other.

One moment, Smith had been alive and well and surrounded by friends. The next instant he had stepped across a line, and—was NOT. A worldful of query and guessing. HIS CLOTHES AND A QUEER SHELL REMAINED. THAT WAS ALL.

What had become of him?

John Jones was strolling along the same road, with a party of friends. As he crossed a faint line in the dust, a car whizzed past, killing him immediately. His clothes and a queer shell remained. Amid lamentations (and after several papers had noted briefly the incident and one paper had run a seven-line editorial on careless motorists), the clothes and the shell were thrust into the ground; and the case was forgotten.

What had become of him?

In the case of Smith, 100,0000,000 people asked this question and argued and wondered over it, for years. In the case of Jones, nobody wondered at all. Yet why should they have wondered about Smith and not about Jones? Both were gone. Both were gone—WHERE? Why was one case less worthy of endless conjecture than the other?

What had become of Jones?

His Shell had been buried. After certain slow chemical changes, it had become part of the earth he once had trod. But that shell had been impelled by a vigor and by a motive force and by a guiding power and by a brain and by a something which certain folk called a Soul.

What had become of those things? They, not the Shell, were the real John Jones. They had not rotted in the earth or burned to a crisp in the crematory; for they were not of a material that can rot or burn.

Nobody could have denied their existence; because it was not the mortal body of Jones which had made him clever and kindly and shrewd and hot tempered. He had had many friends and many enemies and many admirers and many detractors. Those people had not admired or disliked his body; but the Thing which actuated his body.

That Thing had not been found lying in the road. It had not gone on actuating his lifeless Shell after the Shell had been picked up. What had become of it?

What had lain on the far side of the line Jones stepped across?

Of old, when Jones was walking alone in the forests on a magically windy October night and looked up at the moon and yearned instinctively to launch himself through space toward it, the Shell held him back. When, of old, his heart yearned for some far-absent friend and something had impelled him to spin through space to that friend, the dully clogging Shell had held him back.

Of old, Jones had shrunk away from leaping into space, and from trying to annihilate Distance, and from springing gladly up among the stars; because his brain and soul had told him he could not hope to drag the heavy Shell with him.

Well, now, he was rid of the impeding Shell. What was he doing? Whither had he sped?

Had his laughter, his ideals, his aspirations, his imagination, all been a mere part of that Shell? If so, why had he girded against its pitifully weak and impeding confines? He knew, in life, that his body was merely something to be dragged around by the mysterious Force that made it move. It was a confining prison house, not himself. Now he was free.

Does an escaped prisoner remain crouched in his cell, until he and it shall fall into decay? Or does he spring forth, to do all the things he yearned to do and which his bars kept him from doing?

The real Self—not the physical Shell—is unrottable. In one’s nightly dreams, the body lies inert, lifeless. The real Self goes forth into a space; which we call Dreamland, for lack of a better word. It may go elsewhere, too, for all we know. But there is nobody who has not had active and vivid dreams, in which his mental or spiritual Self did all manner of things and underwent all manner of experiences; while his Shell lay snoring or moveless, in the grip of Sleep, the ape of Death.

If that can happen, during slumber, in so-called Lifetime, what is to prevent the same Element from going on; after permanent Slumber has stilled the Shell that holds it? Is the question fantastic? I think not. To me it seems not only sane but normal. What is the Answer? Nobody knows. Yet I believe there is an Answer.

The boldest of us is oppressed by a queer shyness when it comes to comparing notes or gleaning opinions on so vital a matter. It would be easier for me to ask: Do you cheat your employer or your wife? than to ask: What do you suppose is going to happen to you after Death?

That self-consciousness of ours bars all of us from asking a question which concerns everyone far more than does his earthly future. (For we are in the Shell for less than a century; and then are out of it for an Eternity. *** Where?)

Perhaps it is that same shyness—I don’t like to think it is stupidity—which evokes such replies as "I shall stop living when my body stops living. If I live on at all, it will