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THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE j 
 
The World Beautiful. First Series 
 The World Beautiful. Second Series 
 The World Beautiful, Third Series 
 After her Death. The Story of a Summer 
 From Dreamland Sent, and Other Poems 
 A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
 The Spiritual Significance 
 Kate Field : A Record 
 
THE 
 
 Spiritual Significance 
 
 OR 
 
 3ieat{} as an lE&mt in Hife 
 
 LILIAN WHITING 
 u 
 
 Author of " The World Beautiful," in three volumes, First, Second, 
 and Third Series ; " After Her Death," " From Dreamland 
 Sent," "Kate Field, a Record," " Study of 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning," etc. 
 
 Death is not the end of life, but only an event in life 
 
 Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1900 
 
795S2 
 
 Library of Congreae 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 NOV 23 1900 
 
 Copyright entry 
 
 SECOND COPY 
 
 Oelivered to 
 
 ORDER DIVISION 
 
 DEC 26 1900 
 
 No 
 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 By Little, Brown, and Company, 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 
 
<.:> 
 
 f 
 
 TO 
 
 My Beloved Rector and Friend^ 
 
 REV. E. WINCHESTER DONALD, D.D. 
 
 STrtnita Ct)urcf); JSoston, 
 
 WITH THE GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS 
 
 SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP, AND THE 
 
 FAITHFUL DEVOTION OF 
 
 LILIAN WHITING. 
 
 " Be ye steadfast, immovable, always 
 aboujiding in the work oj the Lord." 
 
SOULS IN PROGEESS 
 
 NEW radiance is imparted to 
 daily life by seeing it in its true 
 relation to that endless persist- 
 ence of endeavor and achievement which 
 constitutes Immortality. Nothing is fatal, 
 not even sin, because nothing is final. 
 The individual environment is created, 
 controlled, and changed by the person to 
 whom it pertains. Its quality, its resources, 
 and its extension vary in exact correspond- 
 ence with his spiritual life. This hypoth- 
 esis is vividly illustrated by many per- 
 sonal examples that might be selected for 
 consideration. The world of Plato differs 
 from that of Nero as the qualities of the 
 one differ from those of the other. The 
 mental attitude creates the outer circum- 
 
iv The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 stances and events, and the time of this 
 re-creation of life is by no means relegated 
 to the period which begins with the change 
 we call death. Again^ between that state 
 and the present there is no fixed and 
 definite line. There are new conditions 
 which man may enter upon without wait- 
 ing for death; and there may be a very 
 definite and comforting reliance on con- 
 ditions to be entered upon by means of 
 that change. In this world we confi- 
 dently plan for certain things, — experi- 
 ences, achievements, what one will, — that 
 shall be ours next year, or in another dec- 
 ade. With the same confident certainty of 
 anticipation may we look forward to new 
 achievements, new groupings, fresh com- 
 binations, in the world to come. Life is 
 an endless stream of flowing conditions 
 whose shape is subject to the controlling 
 power of thought and purpose. The new 
 environment is constantly created out 
 of the old, but it is by the fulfilment 
 and not by the repudiation of all just 
 
Souls in Progress. 
 
 obligations and duties. The fact that it 
 can be so created, however, illumines our 
 sky with the Star of promise. That the 
 life which holds its ideals with unfalter- 
 ing devotion will ultimately realize those 
 ideals in actual and outer circumstances 
 as well as in its inner experiences, is as 
 unquestionable in its absolute certainty as 
 are the results of a mathematical equation. 
 
 " 'T is not too late to seek a newer world." 
 
 It is never too late, because nothing is 
 fatal, nothing is final. If one has been 
 in the wrong path, forsake it and seek the 
 right one. Then go forward. All the 
 power of the moral universe shall com- 
 panion and sustain him. Is one in trouble 
 because sometime and somewhere he has 
 made an error of judgment, a wrong 
 choice ? Let him fulfil its due obligations ; 
 but let him also have the moral courage to 
 refuse its undue exactions. To be stead- 
 fast to a mistake, to an unwise choice, is 
 to subject life to a perpetual corrosive 
 
vi The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 action which frets away all its fine gold of 
 nobler possibilities. Suicide is justly held 
 to be a crime ; but there may be a suicide 
 of hopes, of enthusiasms, of capacities, of 
 potential achievements ; and to cut one's 
 self off from these when once revealed by 
 some sudden Voice or Vision ; to continue 
 to accept conditions that deny rather than 
 to struggle through to those that offer 
 new energy and progress, — is perhaps a 
 species of mental and moral suicide whose 
 results may be more fatal than those 
 which pertain only to the physical life. 
 To discern clearly an error implies the 
 immediate responsibility to forsake it, and 
 turn the power of one's thought to the 
 prevision of new and happier conditions. 
 They shall rise upon his vision and endue 
 his life with new and untold blessedness, 
 and give to him a fuller comprehension of 
 the deep spiritual significance of human 
 life. He shall realize that 
 
 '^This world is not conclusion: 
 A sequel lies beyond." 
 
Souls in Progress. vii 
 
 Nothing is hopeless to him who aspires, 
 who loves, who prays, for the entire 
 spiritual universe is designed for the hope 
 and the help of souls in progress. 
 
 L. W. 
 The Brunswick, 
 
 Boston, October, 1900. 
 
 ]^/.^'. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 The Spiritual Significance .... 13 
 
 Vision and Achievement 123 
 
 Between the Seen and the Unseen . 205 
 
 Psychic Communication ... . . . 263 
 
 The Gates of New Life 335 
 
THE SPIKITUAL SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
Whither goes the soul when it at death departs from the body ? 
 
 What kind of body shall the glorified body be ? The soul and 
 spirit of Christ, what are they ? And are they the same as ours ? 
 
 What and where is Paradise ? ... Do not let any sophistry 
 teach that thy God is far aloft from thee as the stars are. God 
 is in thee. Power, might, majesty, heaveyi, paradise, elements, 
 stars, the whole earth — is thine. . . . When thou prayest the 
 Holy Ghost shall meet thee and help thee, and thy soul shall be 
 the whole of heaven within thee. . . . In the name and in the 
 strength of God love all men. Love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self and do to thy neighbor as thou doest to thyself And do 
 it now, for now is the accepted time, and now is the day of 
 salvation. — Jacob Behmen. / 
 
 The death of the body may indeed be the end of the sensa* 
 tional use of our mind, but only the beginning of the intellectual 
 use. The body would thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but 
 merely a condition restrictive thereof and although esse^itial to a 
 sensuous and animal consciousness, it may be regarded as an 
 impeder of our pure spiritual life. — Kant. 
 
 \y 
 
A., 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 If a man could feel 
 Not one day in the artist's ecstasy 
 But every day, feast, fast, or working-day, 
 The spiritual significance burn through 
 The hieroglyphic of material shows, 
 Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 I will bring the blind by a way they knew not ; I will 
 lead them in paths they have not known ; I will make 
 darkness light before them, and crooked things straight, 
 
 Isaiah xlii. 16. 
 
 UMANITY is entering on a remark- 
 able epoch of religious enlightenment 
 that dawns in no iconoclastic or rev- 
 olutionary manner, but rather as an inevitable 
 sequence of the increasing knowledge and of the 
 larger grasp of the divine laws of the universe. 
 These laws pertain to both the scientific and 
 
14 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 the spiritual realm, each of which is equally 
 under the divine appointment, for science itself 
 is but the penetration into the forces of the 
 universe. These reveal themselves to man in 
 proportion as his faculties expand to an increas- 
 ing recognition of their laws. As man is a two- 
 fold being with a physical nature corresponding 
 to his present environment, and a spiritual 
 nature capable of infinite development and 
 expansion correspondiug to the spiritual environ- 
 ment, he is thus by the very law of his being an 
 inhabitant of both the physical and the ethereal 
 realms, each of which are but different degrees 
 of manifestation of the spiritual universe. 
 Science has ceased to designate matter and 
 spirit as two separate and contrasting forces, 
 and sees, instead, in matter a manifestation of 
 spirit. Thus, the spiritual significance of life is 
 its supreme meaning, and to recognize this signi- 
 ficance as it may 
 
 " burn through 
 The hieroglyphic of material shows," 
 
 is the responsibility as well as the privilege 
 of our sojourn on earth. The spiritual signifi- 
 cance of life writes itself in hieroglyphic that the 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 15 
 
 progress of the ages interprets. Man is encom- 
 passed round about with an atmosphere of the 
 most sensitive receptivity to mental action, — an 
 atmosphere in which thought writes its message 
 and flashes its images ; in which, as on a sensitized 
 plate, every impression is recorded, and in which 
 thought — being a vital force — germinates and 
 springs up to clothe itself in deeds. The only 
 difference between those who lead great lives 
 and those whose lives are insignificant is simply 
 in the power to interpret the spiritual signifi- 
 cance. Let one study an individual list of the 
 names of those whose experiences and achieve- 
 ments have left the world the better, — from 
 Saint Augustine to Alcott ; from Luther, Wesley, 
 Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Gladstone, Browning, 
 Tennyson, Lincoln, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, 
 Garrison, Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, 
 Julia Ward Howe, Phillips Brooks, Kate Field ; 
 those who have left 
 
 " The world the better for their being 
 And gladder for their human speech," — • 
 
 and it will be recognized that every life that 
 has contributed to the world's advancement has 
 been one that discerned the spiritual significance 
 
16 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 from the hieroglyphic of event and circumstance. 
 In the great work of President Eliot of Harvard 
 and of Dr. William T. Harris in the illumina- 
 tion of educational ideals; or that of Kossuth 
 and of Mazzini in their visions of liberty for 
 Austria and for Italy ; in the work of Glad- 
 stone when he espoused the despised cause of 
 Home Rule regardless of self-interest ; in Lincoln's 
 proclamation that emancipated the slave ; in that 
 sublime heroism with which Lucy Stone, unaided 
 and alone, set forth to achieve a larger life for 
 womanhood ; when Rosa Bonheur interpreted 
 the meaning of the luminous air pulsing with 
 life ; when Millet discerned and portrayed the 
 pathos and the power of labor; when Phillips 
 Brooks preached the gospel of the absolute prac- 
 ticality of divine ideals as the standard in every 
 phase of daily experience ; when Tennyson and 
 the Brownings, and every true poet, indeed, from 
 the days of Homer to those of the Twentieth 
 Century, have left their testimony to the one 
 supreme truth that predetermines human life, 
 the interpenetration of the Seen and the Unseen, 
 — in all those illustrations we see the spiritual 
 significance — 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 17 
 
 "burn through 
 the hieroglyphic of material shows." 
 
 Circumstances are the hieroglyphic to be inter- 
 preted. Events occur that bring gladness or 
 sadness^ gain or loss. Sympathy, encourage- 
 ment, and love are ours, or their reverse. 
 The friend on vrhom we had relied proves in- 
 different ; the anticipated sweetness of sympa- 
 thetic intercourse is denied. Or, again, a joy 
 unlooked for and undreamed of comes into 
 life. After all, the value of each and any is in 
 the interpretation. One is surprised and pained 
 by meeting coldness or indifference where he 
 had looked for response. Shall he not read the 
 spiritual significance and look to the divine 
 sources alone for unfailing comprehension ? Or 
 generous love, undreamed of, comes, and shall 
 he not accept it as a sign and seal of the 
 life where the clearer vision will prevail and 
 thereby the closer sympathy? He is deprived 
 of his worldly goods. Shall he not read the 
 significance as that which shall teach that his 
 true life is independent of the things which he 
 possesseth ? Or new gates open leading him 
 to more lavish bestowal, and shall he not accept 
 
18 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 with this largess that of new and diviner 
 responsibilities ? Through all these outer signs 
 gleams the spiritual significance. 
 
 The apostle has charged us to add to our 
 faith virtue, and to our virtue knowledge. Man 
 has now reached that degree of development 
 where it is possible for him to enter on an in- 
 creasingly larger grasp of the laws that govern 
 his relation to the universe in which he finds 
 himself, and to God ; he is, indeed, beginning to 
 realize that certain phases of experience which 
 have always heretofore been relegated to some 
 vague and unknown hereafter are possible, here 
 and now, in his present environment ; he recog- 
 nizes that the soul has divine power and infinite 
 potentiality ; that this power may manifest itself 
 on any plane as soon as the higher nature has 
 acquired the ascendency over the lower in a 
 degree to enable it to live its own life and to 
 dominate the physical organism which is the 
 instrument, so to speak, of the spirit. One need 
 not identify himself ^vith any organization of 
 Oriental ethics to yet perceive that '^ the ancient 
 wisdom," as set forth by theosophy, offers 
 illumination upon the origin, nature, and destiny 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 19 
 
 of the soul which is at once explanatory and 
 evidential in its relation to the Christian religion. 
 Annie Besant, whose admirable intellectual grasp 
 of the great problems of life entitles her con- 
 clusions to respect if not always to acceptance, 
 has very clearly outlined the nature of man in 
 the following paragraph which falls into entire 
 harmony with the teachings of Saint Paul. The 
 apostle characterizes man as a being composed 
 of body, soul, and spirit. No careful student 
 of the New Testament can fail to perceive 
 that both Saint Paul and Jesus himself taught 
 what they regarded as the more rudimentary 
 phases of knowledge suited to the rudimentary 
 comprehension of the age, and not encumbered 
 with an elaboration of intricate principles which 
 require a larger intellectual power to understand, 
 as well as a higher faith to accept. " I have 
 many things to say, but ye cannot bear them 
 now," is one of the many passages which seem 
 to support this hypothesis. Of the true nature 
 of man in its completeness Annie Besant says : 
 
 " Man's nature has seven aspects : it is composed 
 of seven principles. The clearest and best way of all 
 in which to think of man is to regard him as one, the 
 
20 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 Spirit or true Self ; this belongs to the highest re- 
 gion of the universe, and is universal, the same for 
 all. For this purpose of achieving individuality the 
 spirit, or true self, is clothed in garment after gar- 
 ment, each garment belonging to a definite region 
 of the universe, and enabling the Self to come into 
 contact with that region, gain knowledge of it, and 
 work in it. It thus gains experience, and all its 
 latent potentialities are gradually drawn out into 
 active powers. Whatever words may be used, the 
 fact remains the same, — that man is essentially 
 seven-fold, an evolving being, part of whose nature 
 has already been manifested, part remaining latent at 
 present, so far as the vast majority of humankind are 
 concerned. Man's consciousness is able to function 
 through as many of these aspects as have been 
 already evolved in him into activity. 
 
 " This evolution, during the present cycle of human 
 development, takes place on five out of the seven 
 planes of nature. The two higher planes — the 
 sixth and seventli — will not be reached, save in 
 the most exceptional cases, by the men of this hu- 
 manity in the present cycle, and they may therefore 
 be left out of sight for our present purpose. 'A 
 plane' is merely a condition, a stage, a state. To 
 take an easily verified illustration : a man may be 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 21 
 
 conscious on the physical plane, — that is, in his 
 physical body, — feeling hunger and thirst, the pain 
 of a blow or cut. But let the man be a soldier in 
 the heat of battle, and his consciousness will be cen- 
 tred in his passions and emotions, and he may suffer 
 a wound without knowing it, his consciousness being 
 away from the physical plane and acting on the plane 
 of passions and emotions : when the excitement is 
 over, consciousness will pass back to the physical, 
 and he will feel the pain of his wound. Let the man 
 be a philosopher, and as he ponders over some knotty 
 problem he will lose all consciousness of bodily wants, 
 of emotions, of love and hatred; his consciousness 
 will have passed to the plane of intellect. Thus 
 may a man live on these several planes, in these 
 several conditions, one part or another of his nature 
 being thrown into activity at any given time." 
 
 The fundamental basis of the entire spiritual 
 significance of life is that man is a spiritual 
 being, immortal in nature, progressive by means 
 of a perpetually increasing development of his 
 latent povrers. These powers may unfold slowly 
 or swiftly ; and just in proportion to any given de- 
 gree of unfold ment will be his place, his surround- 
 ings, his possibilities of achievement, — in short, 
 all that we sum up under the name of success 
 
22 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and happiness. " Every spirit builds its house," 
 said Emerson. A man's world at any given mo- 
 ment — all that constitutes his environment — 
 is simply the manifestation of himself. As he 
 changes, his outer world also changes, keeping 
 the balance of an exact correspondence. The 
 change we call death is, as Bishop Brooks so 
 truly said, ^' not the end of life, but an event iu 
 life." Now and here man is a spiritual being 
 over whom this change of form and condition 
 has no power, and who may so learn to under- 
 stand his physical or denser body as an instru- 
 ment in his own hands, that he will use it wisely, 
 and dominate, rather than to be dominated, by 
 it. This denser body is far less the prison-house 
 of the true man than it is his instrument, to be 
 used as a means of communication with the 
 physical world, as a musician may use his in- 
 strument to reach and sway the multitude. The 
 spiritual energy that controls the hand to write 
 is not the mere visible hand that holds the pen. 
 The physical body is an exquisitely wrought or- 
 ganism whose use is the temporary transmission 
 of energy to act on the physical world. Con- 
 versely, too, it is the means by which experi- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 23 
 
 mental knowledge of the physical universe is ob- 
 tained by the spiritual being who is thus — for 
 the time — clothed in it. Holding this truth in 
 mind, it is not difficult to comprehend the possi- 
 bility of telepathic communication between mind 
 and mind, whether between those who are both 
 in the physical world, or who have passed by 
 the change we call death into the ethereal world, 
 or between two of whom one is in the ethereal 
 and one still in the physical world. Contem- 
 plating life from the point of view of its spiritual 
 significance, this varied play of communication 
 becomes perfectly clear and easy of comprehen- 
 sion. The leading thought of the day indorses 
 this theory both from the point of spiritual dis- 
 cernment and of scientific explanation. Bishop 
 Samuel Fallows, of St. Paul's, Chicago, has re- 
 cently said : — 
 
 " Telepathy has been proved beyond the possibility 
 of a doubt. It is no longer a theory ; it is a fact. 
 
 " Before thought telegraphy lie limitless possibili- 
 ties in sending messages to God and our fellow-men 
 in all parts of the earth. I hail him as a benefactor 
 of his race who will teach people how to use this 
 tremendous psychic force." 
 
24 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 Sir William Crookes, in his president's address 
 "before the British Association of Scientists in 
 1898, discussed the subject of telepathy at some 
 length and gave this lucid explanation : — 
 
 "If telepathy take place, we have two physical 
 facts, — the physical change in the brain of A, the 
 suggestor, and the analogous physical change in the 
 brain of B, the recipient of the suggestion. Between 
 these two physical events there must exist a train of 
 physical causes. 
 
 " Such a sequence can only occur through an inter- 
 vening medium. All the phenomena of the universe 
 are presumably in some way continuous, and it is 
 unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies 
 when with every fresh advance in knowledge it is 
 shown that ether vibrations have powers and attri- 
 butes abundantly equal to any demand, even to the 
 transmission of thought. Rontgen has familiarized 
 us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness, 
 compared with the smallest waves with which we 
 have hitherto been acquainted and of dimensions 
 comparable with the distances between the centres of 
 the atoms of which the material universe is built up, 
 and there is no reason to suppose that we have here 
 reached the limit of frequency. It is known that 
 the action of thought is accompanied by certain 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 25 
 
 molecular movements of the brain, and here we 
 have physical vibrations capable from their extreme 
 minuteness of acting direct as individual molecules 
 while their rapidity approaches that of the internal 
 and external movements of the atoms themselves. 
 
 . . . The most varied proof, perhaps, is drawn from 
 analysis of the sub-conscious workings of the mind, 
 when those, whether by accident or design, are brought 
 into conscious survey. Evidence of a region below 
 the threshold of consciousness has been presented 
 since its last inception in the ' Proceedings of the 
 Society for Psychical Eesearch,' and its various 
 aspects are being interpreted and welded into a com- 
 prehensive whole by the pertinacious genius of 
 F. W. H. Myers. Concurrently a knowledge of the 
 facts in this obscure region has received valuable 
 additions at the hands of laborers in other countries. 
 To mention a few names out of many, Richet, Pierre 
 Janet and Binet (in France), of Brener in Austria, 
 William James of America, have strikingly illustrated 
 the extent to which patient experimentation can 
 prove subliminal processes, and can thus learn the 
 lessons of alternating personalities and abnormal 
 states. . . . 
 
 " A formidable range of phenomena must be scien- 
 tifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so 
 
26 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable as 
 the action of mind on mind. This delicate task 
 needs a vigorous employment of the method of 
 exchisism — a constant setting aside of irrelevant 
 phenomena that could be explained by human 
 caiises — including those far too familiar causes, 
 conscious and unconscious fraud. The science of our 
 century has forged weapons of observation and 
 analysis by which the veriest tyro may profit. 
 Like the Souls in Plato's myth that follow the 
 chariot of Zeus, it has ascended to a point of vision 
 far above the earth. It is henceforth open to science 
 to transcend all we now think we know of matter, 
 and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of 
 cosmic law." 
 
 These larger views of the profounder scheme 
 of cosmic law form the w^onderful panorama 
 opening before the world to-day. We are learn- 
 ing to see that death is in no sense a gulf, but, 
 instead, a gateway; and that when living the 
 life of spiritual significance the being in or out 
 of the physical body is a subordinate matter, 
 which does not affect the flashing of messages 
 between two who are on a similar spiritual 
 plane. The mere fact of death does not neces- 
 sarily exalt a man to the spiritual plane, nor 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 27 
 
 does the fact that he is still clothed with the 
 physical body necessarily limit his life to the 
 plane of the physical senses. Man may, if he 
 will, live here and now the life that he would 
 live hereafter. In fact, the ultimate end and aim 
 of all research regarding the nature and destiny 
 of man and his relations to the Unseen is to 
 refine and exalt and ennoble the quality of his 
 daily life in the present. In this result lies the 
 unerring test of the genuineness of his aspira- 
 tion or his earnestness. The quality of his daily 
 life, the degree of his thought, the habitual 
 trend of his interest, the course of his life in its 
 unconscious as well as in its conscious realm, 
 — all these are the touchstones that register 
 the plane of his spiritual consciousness. "If a 
 man love not his brother whom he hath seen, 
 how shall he love God whom he hath not 
 seen ? " The question is a typical one, and 
 relates itself, searchingly, to the daily experi- 
 ences which are in themselves our Heaven or 
 our Hades, our Time or our Eternity. When 
 one can come into the profound realization 
 that this year, this day, this hour, is Eternity ; 
 that the Present is the " accepted time " and 
 
28 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 not some vague future, — then will lie have 
 entered on the heavenly life, whether it be here 
 or hereafter. 
 
 Yet in this conduct of life there are perplexi- 
 ties that beset us all. The work that one is 
 endeavoring to do for the many is interrupted 
 by demand from the one. The minister in his 
 study, for instance, in one of the rare hours of 
 inspiration and fervor, feeling the message of 
 life given to him with exceptional power that 
 he may transmit it to his people, is suddenly 
 called to see the stranger who has just come 
 to the city and wants " something to do." 
 But what ? Of that there is no definite con- 
 ception. The man believes he could be use- 
 ful if employed in store or office, though for 
 neither has he any special training ; the woman 
 sees a possible future if she could be a private 
 secretary, or a stenographer, or a copyist, — 
 though for none of these has she apparently fit- 
 ness nor experience. She is without friends or 
 money. And the minister is not superhuman, 
 that he can create for her conditions and 
 ability to meet those conditions. "I heard 
 your sermon last Sunday," she says, "and I 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 29 
 
 wanted to thank you for it, and I felt that you 
 could help me." Yet what can he do, — unless 
 he could reconstruct her entire nature and pow- 
 ers? Is it worth this interruption to the flow of 
 his thoughts in the real work he was doing, — is 
 it worth while that he should see and talk with 
 her, and return baffled and perplexed, unable to 
 pursue his own creative work with the ardor and 
 exaltation that was his ? Yet this is a part of 
 daily life. We are in this world of mixed and 
 rudimentary conditions; of inharmonious forces 
 and incongruous demands. This is the " world " 
 in its very nature and essence, — the most trivial 
 detail flinging itself into the sublimest duty ; the 
 most exalted thought confronted by the most 
 exacting and inconsequential demand ; and one 
 must say to himself, " Here or nowhere is my 
 kingdom." It is idle to dream of escaping. 
 These interruptions, petty, if you will ; these de- 
 mands, unjust, inconsequential, unreasonable, if 
 you please ; these exactions of higher gifts for 
 ordinary or baser uses, all this is life, — in this 
 mortal part of its pilgrimage. What then ? 
 Ah,— 
 
 " Say not the struggle nought availeth." 
 
30 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 Say not that because of trivialities and incon- 
 gruities life is not worth the living. For it is 
 vv^orth the living, and all these inconsequential 
 entanglements are the conditions out of which 
 clearness and strength and nobler conceptions 
 and exalted purposes are evolved. In some 
 form or other each and all must either meet them 
 or evade them. Now, to evade is not to escape 
 but rather to postpone, for all the discipline 
 appointed for each human soul must sometime 
 and somewhere be met and transmuted into ex- 
 perience. One must emerge from it either 
 " crowned or slain," and if slain he must again 
 face his ordeals, until he is the victor and 
 not the vanquished. Life is a spiritual laby- 
 rinth, and its successive experiences are as the 
 mazes that succeed each other. But in the 
 figurative sense as in the literal the clue is always 
 to be found, and when found and followed it is 
 unerring in its leading. The clue in the laby- 
 rinth of life is the intelligent and unfaltering 
 following of the Christ ideal. This clue, this 
 illumination on his pathway, God gives to man. 
 Now to follow Christ is not an abstract and in- 
 comprehensible ideal of mysticism, but the most 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 31 
 
 actual and practical fact in daily living. It is 
 following Christ when the untimely and perhaps 
 totally unreasonable interruption is met in the 
 spirit of Jesus ; with His love, gentleness, and 
 serenity. It is following Christ when one holds 
 his high thought, keeps all his fervor and enthu- 
 siasm and devotion despite misunderstanding, 
 injustice, or undue exactions. It is living the 
 life of eternity, the life of Paradise, the life of 
 the spirit, when one can steer his course serenely 
 and patiently, with an exaltation of spirit that is 
 neither deflected nor corroded by the troubled 
 conditions that surround it ; that can say of 
 them, — these are the inevitable forms which the 
 discipline of the moment takes ; these are the 
 "gifts," in a kindergarten sense, by means of 
 which the spiritual powers of gentleness, gen- 
 erosity, serenity, faith, and love develop them- 
 selves. One may well realize that all the condi- 
 tions of this terrestrial pilgrimage are carefully 
 graded; that they must, by an unerring spir- 
 itual law, exactly correspond to the spiritual 
 needs and adjust themselves to the stages of 
 development. 
 
 With this sure conviction the soul puts on its 
 
32 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 armor. It accepts hardships, injustice, difficul- 
 ties, annoyances, as an invalid accepts the reme- 
 dial agents for his restoration to health ; not 
 agreeable in themselves, but valuable as means 
 to an end. To realize man's relation to the 
 Unseen is to acquire courage and clearness of 
 vision. All these conditions are the means by 
 which one works out his real life. This more 
 real and significant life begins after leaving the 
 physical world. We are here learning how to 
 live, and he to whom discipline is most severe 
 may be gaining the most, provided that he accept 
 and not evade this discipline. The conditions of 
 a man's life accompany and attend him wherever 
 he may go. If he evade them in one form they 
 arise in another. He cannot cross the ocean and 
 leave them behind. They take their passage 
 when he takes his, and they lie down with him 
 at night and arise with him in the morning. 
 Once overcome, they depart. Their work is done. 
 As Plato says, — '* If the head and the body are 
 to be well, you must begin by curing the soul." 
 
 Fair thoughts and happy hours attend him 
 who meets the vicissitudes of life with serenity 
 and sweetness and generous faith. 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 33 
 
 Emerson expresses a great truth in saying 
 that "the inviolate soul is in perpetual tele- 
 graphic communication with the source of events, 
 has earlier information, a private despatch which 
 relieves him of the terror that presses on the 
 rest of community." The nature of this com- 
 munication is now being made clear in the 
 deeper and more universal knowledge of spirit- 
 ual laws. The way in which the inviolate soul 
 is in this perpetual communication is revealed 
 when it is realized that man is an inhabitant 
 of two worlds, and that he has constantly two 
 phases of social companionship, — the one in the 
 Seen, the other in the Unseen. He is compan- 
 ioned by his friends whom he sees and hears, who 
 are visible, audible, and tangible ; but not less, 
 too, by the friends he does not see, — those 
 whose words are not audible to the ear, but fall 
 on an inner sense ; those not visible to the eye, 
 but whose presence is perceived by the spiritual 
 faculties. The time is not distant when these 
 two classes of companionship will be universally 
 recognized and the fact of their existence accepted 
 as naturally and as simply as that of any other 
 fact in daily life. Dr. Lyman Abbott points out 
 3 
 
34 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 the successive and the progressive phases of the 
 conceptions of God. The Jews first believed 
 that God cared for them only ; then the con- 
 ception became enlarged to include the Gen- 
 tiles ; the Roman Catholics taught that God 
 cared for the baptized alone ; Calvin, that He 
 cared for some and did not care for others, ac- 
 cording to His own choice, but that this choice 
 was not conditioned by a man*s being Jew or 
 Gentile, baptized or unbaptized ; then came John 
 Wesley, who taught that God cared for the re- 
 generated, the converted man : Channing, Bush- 
 nell, and Phillips Brooks followed, teaching that 
 God cares for all, for the baptized and the un- 
 baptized, the converted and the unconverted, the 
 good and the bad, and that His love is forever 
 working, and that no man can separate himself 
 from that love. " Our God is a communicating 
 God," says Dr. Abbott. These fuller communi- 
 cations are constantly being given to mankind. 
 As man progresses by the larger unfoldment of 
 his spiritual nature, he is thus able to receive 
 more largely of the knowledge of divine laws. 
 
 Dr. Abbott points out that intuition and vis- 
 ion precede scientific discovery ; that the law 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 35 
 
 of evolution was taught by the poets before it 
 was formulated by Darwin. Equally true it is 
 that the fact of communication between those in 
 the Seen and the Unseen was thus perceived by 
 the seer and the poet before it was absolutely 
 demonstrated by scientific research. 
 
 The great value of this communication lies in the 
 knowledge thus gained of the nature of life ; not 
 merely the experiences or the conditions after 
 death, but rather of the nature of life in its com- 
 pleteness and in the relation of the present to the 
 future. The highest achievement is this culture 
 and development of spirituality. The term im- 
 plies the entire intellectual nature, the complete 
 man in all that relates to purpose, energy, and 
 achievement. Life is a matter of evolution. 
 "The point is not so much shall a man live," 
 says a well-known writer, " as can the man live 
 any longer in the higher levels of existence into 
 which humanity must at last evolve? Has he 
 qualified himself by the cultivation of the endur- 
 ing part of his nature ? If not, he has got to 
 the end of his tether. The destiny which must 
 befall him is annihilation, — not necessarily suf- 
 fering in a conscious existence, but that dissolu- 
 
36 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 tion which must befall the soul which has wholly 
 assimilated itself to matter." 
 
 Now, if the inviolate soul is in perpetual tele- 
 graphic communion with the source of events ; 
 if the spiritual man, so to speak, lives in the 
 spiritual world, even while still in the physical 
 body, and is in communion with those that 
 dwell in that world, — if all this is true, it throws 
 an illumination on all one's daily experiences, 
 now and here. It is the greatest stimulus, the 
 greatest incentive, to live the life of the spirit, 
 which is love and joy and peace. The realiza- 
 tion of this evolutionary progress makes at once 
 the conditions in which one may achieve it more 
 entirely, and may intelligently control his destiny. 
 
 The records of history are full of these in- 
 stances of personal communication with those in 
 the Unseen. The legends of Katherine of Siena 
 are among the most striking of these ; and how- 
 ever mythical they may have seemed they be- 
 come informed with life and vitality on visiting 
 that unique Italian city that is the scene of her 
 nativity and earlier religious experiences. In 
 southern Tnscany between the Apennines and 
 the sea some fifty miles west of Florence, lies 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 37 
 
 Siena built on three hills, with streets so narrow 
 and steep that on many of them no horse can 
 proceed, as they are more like stone stairways. 
 Siena is purely mediaeval. It is a walled city 
 whose buildings are limited absolutely to the 
 space within the walls, outside of which the 
 country stretches away with no hint of suburban 
 dwellings. In the fourteenth century Siena was 
 the successful rival of Florence, but while the 
 latter city progressed Siena remained unchanged, 
 and journeying to it from Florence, one leaves 
 the twentieth century behind him and exchanges 
 it for the middle of the fourteenth. Siena is a 
 most important town for art study. It is here 
 alone that the frescoes of Sodoma can be seen 
 with any degree of completeness, and the Sienese 
 school of painting can be studied chronologically 
 in the galleries. The paintings and carvings in 
 the Palazzo Pubblico and the Cathedral, and the 
 pictures and sculptures in the belle arti are 
 rich in charm, but the special point of pilgrimage 
 to Siena will always be the home and haunts 
 of Saint Katherine ; the house where she lived 
 in the Contrada d'Oca, and the Church of St. 
 Domenico where she prayed and saw visions, 
 
38 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 are invested with a passionate interest to all 
 who are drawn to study the development of the 
 spirituality of life. The history of Katherine of 
 Siena is made vivid and tangible by a visit to 
 her native city. Every tale that might have 
 seemed legendary and mythical is illustrated by 
 its own objects and scenery, and — in the in- 
 creasingly large revelation of the divine laws 
 now given to humanity — it is not difficult to 
 trace the identity of operation between that age 
 and this. For instance, when Katherine relates 
 to her confessor that the divine counsel "was 
 not given in those very words," but that the 
 Lord made her understand certain things, — 
 we find the exact counterpart of that which in 
 the present day we know as telepathy. The 
 narration shows this same relation of spirit to 
 spirit which permits the current of thought to 
 flash from one mind to another. John Adding- 
 ton Symonds rationalizes the history of Katherine 
 and says : — 
 
 " The supernatural element in the life of Saint 
 Katherine may he explained partly by the mytho- 
 logizing adoration of the people ready to find a 
 miracle in every act of her they worshipped and 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 39 
 
 partly by her temperament and mode of life. ... It 
 is related that she took but little sleep, scarcely more 
 than two hours at night, and that, too, on the bare 
 floor ; she ate only vegetables and the sacred wafer 
 of the host. This diet depressed her physical forces, 
 and her nervous system was thrown into a state of 
 the highest exaltation. Thoughts became things 
 and ideas were projected from her vivid fancy upon 
 the empty air about her." 
 
 Mr. Symonds wrote this paragraph in 1882. 
 In the light of psychic science to-day a very 
 different interpretation will be made. The phys- 
 ical body is the barrier between the spiritual 
 man and the inhabitants of the unseen realm that 
 surrounds us as an atmosphere. It is possible 
 to so render it subservient to the psychic body as 
 to admit of the open communion between those 
 in the Seen and in the Unseen while in perfect 
 and abounding health. This, indeed, is the 
 higher condition, and is that in which the phys- 
 ical body is seen in its true aspect, as an instru- 
 ment which is the better for being in perfect re- 
 pair and capable of performing anything required 
 of it. This abounding energy — which is the 
 perfection of energy — is far more a mental and a 
 
40 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 moral than it is a physical condition. A man is 
 not made strong by meat or wine, or by this 
 thing or that ; but by the way in which he per- 
 mits the psychic self to take command and 
 manifest its infinite and irresistible energy through 
 the physical organism. This condition in its 
 perfection is perfect health. It is the art of so 
 regulating physical hygiene in diet, sleep, exer- 
 cise, and baths as to keep the physical body 
 plastic, responsive, and subservient to the spiritual 
 forces. When this result is obtained by the 
 abnormal means of undue fasting, vigils, and 
 hardships, as employed by Katherine, it effaces 
 the physical barrier largely ; and, instead of using 
 it as an instrument (which is the appointed and 
 normal way while in this life), it allows the 
 spirit to transcend it to a greater or less degree, 
 and thus place itself in the open communion 
 with the Unseen world in an abnormal rather 
 than in a normal manner. The matter of food, 
 for instance, has two sides. Those who take it 
 in the sense of mere physical appetites and 
 enjoyment inevitably sink to tlie material plane, 
 and if this were the only alternative, fasting and 
 vigils were needed. But when food is taken to 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 41 
 
 supply the normal needs of the physical life, as a 
 piano is tuned that the player may be able to 
 produce the greater harmony, it is then a source 
 of power contributing to the normal, easy, and 
 joyous manifestation of spiritual energy, which 
 is seen in perfect health and equipoise, in intel- 
 lectual activity and power, and in spiritual 
 exaltation. 
 
 In the age of Katharine of Siena the cruci- 
 fixion of the physical powers was the spiritual 
 ideal : in the present age the fine balance of the 
 physical to be used as an instrumental power is 
 seen to be the nobler standard. 
 
 Mrs. Butler, in her biography of this marvel- 
 lous woman, says : — 
 
 " The divine guide of Katherine of Siena charged 
 her to mix with her brothers and sisters in this 
 earthly exile. ^Remain with them, and I will be 
 with thee,' was the message. Katherine so inclined 
 to solitude that to her mind such a step appeared 
 grave, as exchanging a life of perpetual prayer for 
 one of dangerous and worldly interests and occupa- 
 tions. 'Wherein have I offended Thee, my God,' 
 she cried, ^ that thou dost send me from Thee 1 It 
 is not by bread alone that man lives. Are not the 
 
42 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 words that proceed from Thee far better to impart 
 energy to the soul ? Thou knovvest that I fled from 
 the society of men that I might find Thee, my Lord 
 and my God. And must I now mingle anew in 
 worldly affairs to fall again into my former worldli- 
 ness and stupidity, — and perhaps offend against 
 Thee]^ Then the Lord answered her. The answer, 
 as she told her confessor, *was not given in these 
 very words, but these,' she said, 'are the things 
 which He made me understand as the expression of 
 His will concerning me.' The counsel as expressed 
 in words was as follows : — 
 
 " ' Be calm, my child ; thou must accomplish all 
 justice that My grace may become fruitful in thee 
 and in others. I desire not that thou shouldst be 
 separated from Me ; on the contrary, I desire that 
 thou shouldst become more closely united to Me 
 by charity towards thy fellow-creatures. Thou 
 knowest that love has two commandments, to love 
 Me and to love thy neighbor. I desire that thou 
 shouldst walk not on one, but on two feet, and 
 fly to heaven on two wings.' " 
 
 That Katherine of Siena in her brief life of 
 thirty-three years — between 1347 and 1380 — 
 had this open communion with the unseen world 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 43 
 
 in telepathic intercourse, in clairvoyance, and 
 clairaudience, there can be no more doubt than 
 of any other historic and authentic chain of 
 facts. "Thoughts became things," — not because, 
 as Mr. Symonds says, they were "fancies pro- 
 jected on the empty air," but because, as in 
 this age we have learned to know, thouglits are 
 things ; because thought is the most substantial 
 reality in the universe, and is the substance, in- 
 deed, of which the universe is made. 
 
 On a hill in the western part of Siena stands 
 the strange, old church of St. Domenico, the 
 scene of the devotions of Katherine. In a little 
 valley near known as the Contrada d'Oca, is her 
 father's house, over the door of which is inscribed 
 in golden letters the words, "Sposse Christi 
 Katherinse domus." The rooms are now made 
 into a series of chapels, but there are preserved 
 various relics, among which is the lantern that 
 she carried when visiting the poor in her minis- 
 trations. That this woman, born in the hum- 
 blest walks of life, should at the age of thirteen 
 have been admitted to the Dominican order; 
 that she should address and calm infuriated 
 mobs, execute diplomatic negotiations, reform the 
 
44 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 republic of Florence, correspond and give the 
 wisest counsel to queens and kings and popes; 
 that by her eloquence, her ardor, and her mar- 
 vellous personal power she should have induced 
 Gregory XL to leave Avignon and return to 
 Rome and reconstruct the church; that, strong 
 in divine authority, she should rebuke cardinals, 
 princes, and monarchs ; that she wisely solved the 
 intricate political problems of Italy ; that the 
 people crowded about her in thousands whenever 
 she appeared, and that multitudes became ani- 
 mated with holy zeal from the force of her ap- 
 peals ; that her own life was that of a passionate 
 exaltation and purity and holy love, — what ex- 
 planation can there be of such a life as this that 
 has left its determining impress on all the ages to 
 come, but that it was a life in closest and per- 
 petual communion with the divine ? Kath- 
 erine's prayer, still used in Siena, is as follows : 
 
 " Spirito Santo, Delta eterna Cristo Amore ! 
 vieni nel mio cuore ; per la tua potenza trallo a te, 
 mio Dio, e concedemi carita con timore. Liberami, 
 Amore inefFabile, da ogni roal pensiero ; riscaldami 
 ed infiammami del tuo dolcissimo amore, sicclie ogni 
 pena mi sembri leggiera. Santa mio Padre e doles 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 45 
 
 mio Signore, ora aiutami in ogni mio ministero 
 Cristo Amore ! Cristo Amore ! " 
 
 In any study of the spiritual significance of 
 life the immediate problem, however, is that of 
 achievement. 
 
 " The French have a proverb," observes Emerson, 
 " to the effect that not the day only, but all things 
 have their morning, — ' II n^y a que le matin en toutes 
 choses.^ And it is a primal rule to defend your morn- 
 ing, to keep all its dews on, and with fine foresight 
 to relieve it from any jangle of affairs, even from the 
 question, Which task? I remember a capital pru- 
 dence of old President Quincy, m4io told me that he 
 never went to bed at night until he had laid out the 
 studies for the next morning. I believe that in our 
 good days a well-ordered mind has a new thought 
 awaiting it every morning. And hence, eminently 
 thoughtful men, from the time of Pythagoras down, 
 have insisted on an hour of solitude every day to 
 meet their own mind and learn what oracle it has to 
 impart." 
 
 The problem of achievement is not in length- 
 ening time, but in keeping one's self up to the 
 mark in using the time there is. " Life is un- 
 necessarily long," said Emerson; and one who 
 
46 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 reflects upon the relations between time and 
 accomplishment must realize that achievement 
 is concerned with quality rather than quantity. 
 An hour may often do the work of a week or a 
 year. A flash of insight is worth a year's efibrts. 
 But just how to live, physically, mentally, and 
 spiritually, so as to be in swift and perpetual re- 
 sponse to the inspiration in the air is a question 
 that under one form or another is constantly 
 before the world. Various factions give various 
 answers. It is approached from the side of 
 hygiene ; and formulas for diet, exercise, and 
 physical observances in general are numerous and 
 not unfrequently valuable. It is approached 
 from other points of view with both sense and 
 nonsense. Yet of one thing may we not always 
 be sure, and regarding it may we not all agree, 
 — that primarily and fundamentally man lives 
 from spiritual force, and that to just the degree 
 that he thus lives from spiritual energy, to that 
 degree w^ll he stamp each hour with the force of 
 achievement ? 
 
 There is nothing so absolutely practical as the 
 life of the spirit which is a condition of serenity 
 and of aspiration. It is not a matter of religious 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 47 
 
 ceremony, although it may be constantly re- 
 newed and refreshed by rite and ceremony. It 
 is not a life detached from the world, isolated 
 from the great currents of human endeavor, but, 
 instead, one that concerns itself in every endeavor 
 for the benefit of man. The spirit is not some- 
 thing apart from the individual, but is his essen- 
 tial self and his body is the instrument. Just 
 here do we not begin to gain light on this vexed 
 problem ? The hygienic counsel to keep this in- 
 strument in order is most essential. While no 
 absolute general rules can be laid down as appli- 
 cable to every one, yet each person may soon 
 discover for himself the particular regimen of 
 food, exercise, and other physical observances 
 that serves as the best means to the end. All 
 this is important, and still it is only the care of 
 the instrument, — not of the man himself. It is 
 important, as the writer's care of his pen, his 
 choice of ink and- paper, are important to the 
 result ; as a painter's choice and care of his can- 
 vas and brushes is an indispensable detail in the 
 accomplishment of his work ; as the tuning of 
 the piano is important, even to a Paderewski ; 
 but always may one clearly distinguish between 
 
48 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 his instrument and himself. Still, as the perfec- 
 tion of the piano does not insure the perfection 
 of the player ; as the best of canvas and colors 
 do not themselves produce a picture ; as pens 
 and ink alone by no means create literature, 
 so, too, with the individual. To keep his phys- 
 ical body in perfect condition to accomplish cer- 
 tain results is only one detail in the complete 
 achievement. 
 
 As man is, primarily, a spiritual being, and 
 only secondarily a physical being ; as he is pri- 
 marily and permanently an inhabitant of the 
 spiritual world, and only incidentally and tran- 
 siently of the physical world, it seems clear that 
 his strength for achievement must be drawn from 
 the spiritual side, and that it is to this realm he 
 must turn for all renewal and re-enforcement. 
 Only so far as he relates himself to the Divine 
 and receives of the divine energy is he calculated 
 to achieve his purposes. This relation is eflPected 
 through every uplifting of the heart to God, — 
 in prayer, in aspiration, in thought, in love. By 
 every means, that joins the spiritual being, dwell- 
 ing here in a physical world, with the forces 
 and inspirations of the spiritual world, does he 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 49 
 
 receive strength and power. All life is spiritual 
 life; it is merely a question of degree. Even 
 matter is spirit in the cruder and lower stages. 
 The scientists have satisfied themselves that 
 there is but one substance ; and that all things 
 are simply various forms, different manifestations 
 of higher or lower degrees. The affirmation that 
 " man is a spirit " is true ; but the assertion that 
 " man is as much a spirit as he will ever be " is 
 not true, as his nature is formed for development 
 and progress, and the finer and nobler grows his 
 life, the more he has achieved of the spiritual. 
 It is all a matter of discrete degrees. 
 
 Of all others the morning hours seem to be 
 most fitted for the spiritual uplifting. A little 
 time consecrated to aspiration and prayer exalts 
 and transforms the entire day and all its train 
 of events. Gaining this energy, one thereby 
 receives of the infinite power, that transcends 
 all conditions in its instant power to annul or 
 to re-create them. 
 
 There seems to be a curiously erroneous con- 
 ception as to what constitutes spirituality, and it 
 is not infrequently supposed to be passivity and 
 negation rather than purpose and positive energy. 
 4 
 
50 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 An amiable person who drifts harmlessly in life ; 
 who lives in the constant attitude of accepting 
 God's will ; who is resigned, so to speak, and 
 regards resignation as a moral virtue, — of such 
 an one his friends often remark that, although 
 he contributes little to the progress of others or 
 himself, he is yet a person " of great spirituality." 
 Now while these virtues may, and certainly 
 do, enter into the spiritualization of life, they 
 cannot alone represent that achievement, nor 
 constitute it. 
 
 Spirituality is force. It is the most potent, 
 the most resistless, the most all-conquering force 
 in the universe. It is executive and creative. 
 It does something. It achieves and accom- 
 plishes. Its achievement may be seen in many 
 various directions. It may take the form of 
 such work for humanity as that of religious 
 ministry, of educational reform, of endeavor to 
 embody new ideas in the social order ; or build- 
 ing a railroad across the continent, inventing the 
 ocean cable, or working out the problem of 
 wireless telegraphy. In any event, spirituality 
 includes spiritual energy, which is force, and 
 which manifests itself as power. 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 51 
 
 It is not enough to pray that the kingdom of 
 heaven may come. There is something to do to 
 contribute to this result. The kingdom of 
 heaven is to be built up out of hope and belief 
 and endeavor and love. It is not to be bought, 
 but to be made. It may begin in one's own 
 room, — even in one's own mind. It must begin 
 there if it is to work outwardly. It manifests 
 itself in a home, in a community. It manifests 
 itself in a man's own life. 
 
 Nor is this manifestation seen in " a calm and 
 indolent ease." It is seen both in achievement 
 and in creating conditions for achievement. It 
 is seldom that the work one desires to do can 
 be found ; it must be made. Vacant places do 
 not wait for some one to discover them ; they 
 are created out of new combinations of circum- 
 stances and conditions by the power of spiritual 
 euergy. 
 
 This creation, however, is by no means that of 
 outward inquiry or visible seeking. Its work 
 lies far deeper, and consists in an understanding 
 of the law. All life is twofold: it has its 
 ethereal and its physical side. Before any pur- 
 pose or plan is precipitated into the outer and 
 
52 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 objective world, it must be controlled, shaped, 
 determined, in the ethereal world. All this 
 subtle atmosphere is plastic, and the spiritual 
 energy can create the very conditions favorable 
 / for the fulfilment of the purpose. One may sit 
 down alone in the peace and exhilaration of his 
 nobler purposes and aspirations and proceed to 
 formulate his thought. He may see, in this 
 inner atmosphere, the specific work that he 
 wishes to do ; the journey he desires to make ; 
 the house that he will build, or the friend with 
 whom he would have companionship ; any ideal 
 in the line of achievement or of surroundings 
 that he longs to realize in outward living ; and 
 if he know the law he may so stamp this purpose 
 on the plastic atmosphere that it takes form 
 and substance in the outer world as an inevit- 
 able result. One can thus create for himself 
 a place in which to work ; he can draw to him- 
 self the thought and power to insure successful 
 realization in any line he desires if he know 
 how to draw on this spiritual energy. 
 
 For the most part this intense and all-conquer- 
 ing force lies latent in a majority of people ; 
 they carry it about as a man might carry an 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 63 
 
 unopened box of food while he was starving. 
 Spiritual energy is an infinite force ; the more it 
 is drawn upon, the larger is the supply, and it is 
 given to man to use and to use now and here. 
 It is his birthright. Spirituality of life lies in 
 recognizing and using this exhaustless force to 
 create the conditions in which one may be the 
 most useful to others, and in which he shall find 
 the greatest happiness and harmony for himself. 
 
 Charbonnel's expression for this great truth is 
 that man must arouse his conscience. But there 
 must be a recognition also of the absolute 
 practical law by means of which man can enter 
 on that work and place which is his ; by means 
 of which he may magnetize the conditions that 
 are for him alone. It makes little difference as 
 to what is the outward sign. Let one take any 
 opening and develop it. Living truly, in aspira- 
 tion and in prayer, he will find an increasing 
 ability to draw on this infinite fund of power, 
 and to transmute all the nebulous desires of 
 his life into brilliant and clear achievement. 
 
 No one who is watching with intelligent 
 interest the wonderful panorama of contempo- 
 rary life can fail to discern that the time has 
 
54 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 arrived when a larger philosophy, a higher illumi- 
 nation, a truer comprehension, is to do for Chris- 
 tianity what Jesus did for Judaism. This larger 
 philosophy of life does not come to destroy, but 
 to fulfil. M. Sabatier has stated recently that 
 no one thing is more needed than a restatement 
 of Christianity. He feels that the Christian idea 
 in its fulness and intense hold is diminishing. 
 How meet this difficulty, questions another 
 writer, but by the restatement in modern terms, 
 with reference to modern needs, of the gospel of 
 Christ ? That able book by Principal Caird 
 entitled "The Fundamental Idea of Christ," 
 concerns itself with this problem, and offers to 
 it a contribution valuable in its range of sug- 
 gestive insight and its intellectual sincerity. 
 
 There can be no question but that the great 
 demand of the day is a larger grasp of the truth 
 regarding the relations between God and man. 
 The Incarnation was but to teach the way, the 
 truth, and the life, yet so overlaid has it been 
 with theological controversy that the sublime 
 lesson itself has been obscured and not infre- 
 quently totally eclipsed to the vision of man. 
 The ablest thought of the day is engaged with 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 55 
 
 this problem, and its solution is to lie — does 
 lie — in an increasing mass of testimony and of 
 evidence impossible to doubt, that of the modern 
 revelation of spiritual truth which reveals the 
 nature of the relation between man and God 
 and between the physical and the spiritual 
 worlds. This revelation is coming to us in the 
 guise of actual and demonstrable facts ; in evi- 
 dence that would bear its due weight to all 
 intelligent minds in any other connection, and 
 should not the less in this trend of inquiry. 
 Well has it been said : — 
 
 " We would take the old forms and spiritualize 
 their meaning, and infuse into them new life. Ees- 
 urrection rather than abolition is what we desire. 
 We say again that we do not abolish one jot or one 
 tittle of the teaching which the Christ gave to the 
 world. We do but wipe away man's material glosses 
 and show you the hidden spiritual meaning which he 
 has missed. We strive to raise you in your daily life 
 more and more from the dominion of the body, and 
 to show you more and more of the mystic symbolism 
 with which spirit life is permeated. They take but 
 a shallow view of our teachings who pin themselves 
 to the letter. We would raise you from the life of 
 
56 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 the body to that which shall be to you the fit ap- 
 proach to the state disembodied. There is but a 
 glimpse possible as yet; but the time will come 
 when you will be able to see, as we cannot explain to 
 you in your present state, the true dignity of man's 
 higher life even on the earth sphere, and the hidden 
 mysteries with which that life is teeming." 
 
 The entire Christian faith has rested on the 
 single fact that Jesus rose from the dead. If 
 this were not true, argued Saint Paul, then are 
 we of all men most miserable. There is un- 
 questionable testimony that after the physical 
 death on the cross Jesus walked and talked with 
 His disciples ; that on more than one occasion, 
 " the doors being shut, He stood in the midst of 
 them." Yet He was a man like unto men of 
 to-day. If He was recognized on earth again 
 after He had passed through the change called 
 death, so can they be. The analogy is sup- 
 ported by an unbroken chain of evidence. Sci- 
 ence, in the late discoveries of the nature of the 
 ether and the power of the Rontgen ray, has es- 
 tablished the actuality of conditions that permit 
 the appearance and approach of those in the 
 ethereal world to those in the physical world. 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 57 
 
 On this truth, then, is the basis for the entire 
 reorganization of the Christian faith. The rec- 
 ognition of the interpenetration of the two 
 worlds of the Seen and the Unseen changes all 
 the conditions of living. It gives to all mankind 
 a clearer faith and an abiding joy. It redeems 
 despair to courage ; it transforms inertia to en- 
 ergy, for hope is the spring of action always, and 
 without a living hope and an intelligent faith, 
 life is meaningless. 
 
 The establishment of immortality as a practi- 
 cal and evidential fact in the sense of absolute 
 personal identity, the establishment of the actual 
 and literal truth that death is merely a change 
 of form and not of individuality, is an arresting 
 epoch in human progress. But the significance 
 of this is not merely in the comfort it brings to 
 sorrow, but its larger significance is in that it so 
 relates itself to conduct as to introduce the most 
 potent forces to make for morality that mankind 
 has ever known. It is to unveil " the true dig- 
 nity of man's life, even on the earth sphere, and 
 the hidden mysteries with which that life is 
 teeming." 
 
 The test of immortality is the present and im- 
 
58 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 mediate sense of oneness with God. ^' The re- 
 formers who have really done the work have 
 been those who have dared to call their work a 
 work of God," said Bishop Brooks. Not only the 
 reformers but every individual who lives his life 
 nobly, is one who looks with reverence and trust 
 and the consecration of faith to the divine guid- 
 ance and the divine ideal. When Jesus said, 
 " I am the vine, ye are the branches," he illus- 
 trated a simple fact as demonstrable as a problem 
 in mathematics or an experiment in physics. 
 What would become of the branches of a tree that 
 should assert : " We are the tree ; see our luxu- 
 riant foliage, our beauty, our helpful shade from 
 the heat. We will release ourselves entirely 
 from the trunk and roots, which are of no con- 
 sequence." And so the separation is effected, 
 and in a day the once life-giving and luxuriant 
 branches lie withered and dead. That man is 
 akin to God ; that he is a part of the divine life ; 
 that he is an immortal and potentially a divine 
 being, is so true that no one can fully live, in 
 the best expression of existence, until he realizes 
 this profound truth and lives from this noble 
 conception of himself. His true power for 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 59 
 
 achievement and for the infinite development of 
 spirit is gained just in proportion as he relates 
 himself more and more closely to God ; as he 
 realizes more completely the divine goodness 
 and power, and draws on this through prayer 
 and uplifting of spirit for his own work and life. 
 
 It is sometimes said by persons who have not 
 yet grasped the spiritual philosophy in its whole- 
 ness, that if they believed in the presence and 
 the incidental aid of friends in the Unseen, they 
 would not, therefore, believe in the Divine 
 Power. Might it not as truly be suggested that 
 if a child in a large family believed in the help 
 and counsel of his brothers and sisters, that he 
 must, therefore, deny the existence of his father 
 and mother ? The one case has about the same 
 sequence of relation, or, rather, the lack of any 
 conceivable sequence, as the other. Or it is as 
 if the members of a church should assert that 
 because they believed in the mutual helpful in- 
 tercourse and companionship and sympathy of 
 one another, they must therefore deny that their 
 pastor could help them, or, indeed, that he ex- 
 isted. The reductio ad absurdum is at once seen. 
 
 "Ah, you little know what power you neglect 
 
60 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 when you omit to foster, by perpetual prayer, 
 communion with the spirits, holy, pure, and 
 good, who are ready to stand by and assist you," 
 says one of divine authority. '^ Praise which 
 attunes the soul to God and prayer which moves 
 the spirit agencies, — these are engines ever 
 ready to man's service." The consecrated life is 
 the only possible life of unfailing energy. It is 
 physical health as well as sustained mental 
 power. The religion of spiritual philosophy is 
 the complete renewal and uplifting of body and 
 soul. It is pure, it is progressive : it is religion 
 in its practical application. As the world of 
 grown up men and women are the natural 
 leaders and teachers and helpers of the world 
 of children, so are the friends in the Un- 
 seen the natural aid of those in the Seen. 
 The saving truth in this is to realize that the 
 event of death works no miracle to transform 
 the individual: that the unworthy man here 
 to-day is not an angel to-morrow simply because 
 he dies ; that conditions are as varied and mixed 
 on the plane just beyond as they are here ; that 
 the discrimination between the good and the 
 bad must always exist, and that the only power 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 61 
 
 by which this discrimination may be exercised is 
 the constant renewal of the spirit from God by 
 means of prayer. People suggest being afraid 
 of corrupt influences from the Unseen. Is not 
 one also afraid of corrupt influences here ? And 
 is it not one's own fault if his companionships 
 and the influences he calls about him, here or 
 beyond, are unworthy and debasing ? 
 
 As a matter of actual truth, there is un- 
 dreamed-of aid for all of us close at hand, 
 awaiting our recognition, for only through in- 
 telligent recognition can it be fully given. In 
 one city even Jesus did no mighty work be- 
 cause of its unbelief. The lack of belief, of 
 perception, of recognition makes impossible con- 
 ditions for those of our friends in the Unseen, 
 just as it does for associations and friendships in 
 this world. This infinite host of reinforcement, 
 — the unseen friends ready to assist with new 
 energy, new enlightenment, new inspiration, — 
 this host is at hand. It is always ready. Man 
 is individual and works out his own destiny. 
 But as we receive helpful suggestions and coun- 
 sel and impulse in this world from one another 
 without in any sense losing our individuality and 
 
62 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 power of will, so may we from our friends in the 
 life beyond. If it did not make one '^ a mere ma- 
 chine " to receive counsel and sympathetic sug- 
 gestion from Phillips Brooks, for instance, when 
 he was in this world, why should it now that 
 he is in a world just beyond? Let every 
 man call his work " a work of God." Let him 
 lay hold on every appointed means of aid and 
 counsel and enlightenment and leading from the 
 Divine Power, who uses His messengers and 
 helpers in varied ways to teach and to uplift 
 humanity. 
 
 The initial step to making the entire life a 
 work of God is the faithful fulfilment of each 
 present duty, the hourly sacrifice of the lower to 
 the higher. No more practical counsel was ever 
 given than that which George Eliot describes 
 Savonarola as giving to Romola when she sets 
 forth to desert Florence : — 
 
 " The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when 
 we renounce our own will to bow before a divine 
 law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of 
 wisdom and freedom and blessedness. And the 
 symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the 
 religion of the cross. 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 63 
 
 ..." Every bond of your life is a debt : the 
 right lies in the payment of that debt. It can lie 
 nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the 
 earth : you will be wandering forever away from 
 the right. 
 
 " You are seeking your own will, my daughter. 
 You are seeking some good other than the law you 
 are bound to obey. But how will you find good ? 
 It is not a thing of choice ; it is a river that flows 
 from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by 
 the path of obedience. I say again, man cannot 
 choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your 
 duties, and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. 
 But you will go forth ; and what will you find, my 
 daughter 1 Sorrow without duty, — bitter herbs, and 
 no bread with them." 
 
 There can be no more immediately important 
 decision in the conduct of life, nor one more ab- 
 solutely essential to progress, than the resolution 
 to meet and to fulfil, never to evade, obligations. 
 Emerson somewhere tersely says, "Pay every 
 debt as you go," and again in a couplet he 
 offers the same counsel : — 
 
 " Wouldst thou seal up the avenues of ill ? 
 Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill." 
 
64 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 Of course all this high couusel, both in the 
 admonition of Savonarola to Romola as con- 
 ceived by George Eliot in her wonderful ro- 
 mance of Florence, and the counsel of Emerson 
 which in a few words condenses the wisdom of 
 volumes ; the wisdom of the ages, indeed, — of 
 course this all refers to something quite larger 
 and more significant than debts of a financial 
 nature. Transcending these, it, of course, in- 
 cludes obligations of finance, and to meet every 
 claim of this nature is simply a factor in the 
 very basis of character, the very foundation of 
 all things. To pay one's bills promptly and 
 fully, never to allow one's finances to sink into 
 entanglement, is certainly a part of the integ- 
 rity of character, and without integrity and re- 
 liability as a basis of character, there can be no 
 spiritual progress. But while including these 
 obligations of daily living which so determine 
 one's relations with others, there is an infinite 
 world beyond of obligations not less but more 
 potent, because they pertain to the realm of 
 spiritual order, and are discerned by mental illu- 
 mination rather than enforced by visible record. 
 
 One finds himself in a framework of circum- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 65 
 
 stances. They may be irksome. They may be 
 full of irritation and trial. They may be circum- 
 stances that seem almost like an imprisonment 
 from which he cannot emerge. A young man 
 finds himself, it may be, with invalid or aged 
 parents dependent upon his exertions. He 
 looks out into the world and sees the arena he 
 longs to enter ; the university for study; the busi- 
 ness world in which he would take an active 
 part; a thousand vistas and voices beckon to 
 him, and he longs to be free to follow and to an- 
 swer them. Or, again, one finds himself in a cer- 
 tain line of work which presents itself as drudg- 
 ery rather than duty even ; he looks out into an 
 indefinite future and sees no end, no probable 
 change, and the burden is upon him. Or 
 some social or domestic relations, unfortunate 
 entanglements in one way or another, have 
 caught him in their strands, and have become 
 a hindrance or a burden. All these, and a thou- 
 sand other typical instances which will readily 
 occur to the reader, abound in human life. 
 What then ? 
 
 " Wouldst thou seal up the avenues of ill ? 
 Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill." 
 5 
 
66 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 These circumstances are the debt that one has 
 somewhere and some way incurred. The soul, 
 in its pilgrimage through successive lives, has, 
 by its failures, its mistakes, its errors, produced 
 more or less of circumstances that are variously 
 trying. If somewhere and sometime we have 
 wronged another; if sometime in our past we 
 have failed in generosity, in tenderness, in jus- 
 tice or in love, the reaction in producing circum- 
 stances of trial or limitation for ourselves is 
 sure. It is the moral law, ^' Whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap." It is not retri- 
 bution in the sense of gratuitous punishment ; 
 it is the logical and inevitable result of given 
 causes. If one puts his hand in the fire, he 
 is burned. The flame does not burn the hand 
 as an arbitrary punishment, but as an inevitable 
 result, of which the cause lies in one's own 
 action. 
 
 The Oriental philosophy has taught that a suc- 
 cession of lifetimes was accomplished by means 
 of successive reincarnations in this world. This 
 theory is merely that up to a certain degree of 
 spiritual development, the soul uses successive 
 physical bodies on earth, but this applies only to 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 67 
 
 the more rudimentary phases. The Oriental phi- 
 losophy holds vast storehouses of spiritual treas- 
 ure ; but it is rather as ore to be cast in the 
 new and finer forms of thought, according to the 
 higher illumination given by Jesus, than it is to 
 be accepted in its mass, and with the cruder 
 ideas of antiquity. For the world moves on- 
 ward, and thought " widens with the progress 
 of the suns." 
 
 The truth of successive lives, each with a 
 definite beginning and ending, is one apparent 
 to every student of spiritual progress. But that 
 the period of infancy and childhood, in precisely 
 the sense in which we see these periods in our 
 present life, are to be repeated, seems inconsist- 
 ent with the great law of evolution. As for 
 " reincarnation," all persons who live deeply and 
 swiftly are ^"^ reincarnated," in a certain sense, 
 many times in this present life. All persons 
 who realize successive states of life, each entirely 
 different while also a logical evolutionary result 
 of the preceding state, are, in a sense, reincar- 
 nated again. We see the same man under 
 totally different circumstances ; and, indeed, as 
 the physiologists assure us that every component 
 
68 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 atom of the human body is renewed every seven 
 years, each new environment has, to a greater 
 or less extent, a new body for the spiritual being 
 who tenants it. 
 
 Death comes as an event by means of which 
 the physical envelope is cast off, and a succes- 
 sion of finer and higher lives under successive 
 higher and more significant conditions begin. In 
 all this ascending series the divine law prevails, 
 and to it the spirit is held amenable. The prog- 
 ress must be toward justice, truth, generosity, 
 and love* If one fails in these, he thereby con- 
 structs circumstances that recur in which he 
 must learn his lesson over again. '^ The higher 
 life begins for us when we renounce our own 
 will to bow before a divine law." Duties must 
 be fulfilled, not forsaken. The limitations, the 
 hardships of the present, must be — not re- 
 nounced, but realized in experience ; every claim 
 met, every obligation repaid, every claim fulfilled. 
 Then this specific experience is ended. The in- 
 dividual has transmuted its lessons into qualities 
 of character, and has gained the strength of all 
 that he has overcome. 
 
 There is nothing more trivial, — one had al- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 69 
 
 most said more despicable, measured by the 
 standard of intellect or spirit, than to talk of 
 luck, " good luck," " ill luck ; " of people who 
 are " fortunate " -or " unfortunate," as if there 
 were certain fixed states and grades in life, and 
 people were parcelled out and apportioned to one 
 or the other, without any volition of their own. 
 Industry and energy and the enthusiasm of pur- 
 pose pursue their way and accomplish something, 
 or inanity and indolence halt and hesitate and 
 realize nothing; and the man who sees only 
 effects and has no eye to discern causes looks on 
 and pronounces the one to be "fortunate," the 
 other to be " unfortunate." As well might the 
 terms be applied to the man who sows seed in 
 fertile ground and faithfully keeps it free from 
 weeds and water and attends to it, and the 
 other who carelessly flings the seed on a rock 
 and makes no effort to plant and to cultivate. 
 Events, circumstances, and surroundings are 
 created; they are not found by chance. Not 
 that one is morally to blame if he has not the 
 power to create them, but this power is itself 
 a thing that can be acquired by unfaltering fidel- 
 ity to the right purpose; by making a deter- 
 
70 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 mined stand against indolence, irritation, and all 
 that attends a low level of life; by vigilantly 
 keeping the current of thought pure; keeping 
 it full of affection, sweetness, generosity, love, 
 and by doing in outward life '^ the next thing," 
 the " duty that lies next " constantly, then this 
 sweetness of spirit and energy of action com- 
 bined will develop in its possessor the power to 
 create and develop a higher line of work. 
 
 There is a signal mistake made by some per- 
 sons regarding spiritual power, in the belief that 
 it is some mysterious and uncontrollable force 
 that comes and goes ; that is wholly incalculable, 
 wholly without the pale of law, and that, if ex- 
 ercised at all, must be exercised in some passive 
 and unconscious moments. The truth is just 
 the opposite of this. Spiritual power is the 
 most positive and highly conscious illumination. 
 It is the absolutely irresistible force, that shapes, 
 directs, controls, and creates. The interior, or 
 acting being, as Balzac phrases it, is the con- 
 joined force of thought and will. 
 
 The laws that apply to physics also largely 
 apply to life. In a course of astronomical lec- 
 tures before the Lowell Institute Professor See 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 71 
 
 described the vast nebulous masses that float in 
 space ; whose temperature is the " absolute zero/' 
 five hundred degrees below the zero of the ther- 
 mometer ; which are on their way to become 
 worlds : these masses of intensely cold nebulae, 
 which at last begin to be heated, to grow hotter 
 for ages, to come under the laws of gravitation 
 and attraction, and then to grow cooler, lose 
 their incandescent state, and become dark and 
 invisible bodies in space. Thus a great many 
 people seem to be in a nebulous state, — form- 
 less, purposeless, cold ; drifting in space without 
 the power to come under and profit by the spirit- 
 ual laws ; lacking the fire of energy that would 
 lead them to come into the developing currents 
 of life, to be moulded by its discipline, directed 
 by its subtle potencies, and amenable to its 
 higher inspirations. 
 
 Life is simply a matter of conditions that are 
 evanescent, plastic to thought, easily malleable 
 by our mental power brought to bear upon them. 
 There is a great deal of nonsense talked about 
 waiting for things, the " divine patience " being 
 apparently held to be in direct ratio to the pas- 
 sivity and mental vacuity possible to the dura- 
 
72 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 tioQ of the " enforced pause." Yet is this not a 
 mistaken estimate ? Is not the true patience of 
 waiting that which is a period of intense spirit- 
 ual activity rather than of passivity, but an ac- 
 tivity held in perfect harmony to the divine will ; 
 the period of more closely uniting one's will with 
 the divine purpose, and when this is achieved, 
 boundless energy will flow in the direction and 
 its power will appear ; and even as the formless 
 stellar nebula begins to come under the con- 
 trol of law in its process of evolution toward a 
 world, so the individual will find himself coming 
 into the possession of definite work, of the grow- 
 ing power to control circumstances, and the 
 possession of an individual orbit in the social 
 firmament. The ^^ energizing spirit " is the one 
 essential of life. Having found that, all else is 
 easy. Circumstances are fluidic ; they are ready 
 to flow in any direction, to take on any form, 
 to pour themselves into any mould. The 
 energy of spirit is the controller and the cre- 
 ator of destiny. 
 
 Now this energy is developed by doing the 
 duty that lies next ; by doing, indeed, what- 
 ever one can, that lies next. All the vari- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 73 
 
 ous kinds of work in this world, whether of the 
 intellectual or industrial orders (as if the indus- 
 trial did not require the intellectual to direct 
 it aright, and the intellectual that persistence of 
 activity that we call industry), these two orders, 
 if they can be thus separated, comprise a great 
 variety of employments, whose chief use is the 
 development of spiritual forces. Whether these 
 forces are gained from the platform of a motor 
 car or from the chancel of a church ; from the 
 further side of the sales counter of a shop or a 
 library table ; from the sewing-room or the 
 studio, — is far less consequence than the matter 
 of gaining them. The end is one ; the means are 
 various. This entire physical world is but a 
 spiritual kindergarten, where the spiritual man 
 takes on a physical body for a time, in order, by 
 the discipline of material things, to develop and 
 cultivate his spiritual qualities. He learns appli- 
 cation to a given work, devotion to duty, 
 patience, serenity, generosity, love. All these 
 qualities he develops by the discipline gained in 
 the physical world by means of social action and 
 reaction. 
 
 It is not in the line of spiritual progress to re- 
 
74 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 i— — — ^ — _ — __, 
 
 fuse undertaking a work because it is not of a 
 congenial nature. The distasteful, honestly per- 
 formed, leads to the desirable. To decline the 
 duty that lies next is to sink into spiritual pau- 
 perism ; and who would not see in the faithful 
 housemaid or hod-carrier a character higher than 
 that revealed in this inane mental attitude ? 
 Fortune and misfortune are not arbitrary defini- 
 tions. They are the product of qualities and 
 have almost the inevitability of sequence that 
 characterizes a problem in mathematics. The 
 Cunard steamer line has never lost a single life ; 
 but to what is this unparalleled record due save 
 to the most unfailing care on the part of the 
 company and their captains in command ? It is 
 good management, not ^^ good luck," that presents 
 such a record. 
 
 Fortune is simply the visible result of the 
 series of choices which constitute a man's life. 
 The moment man learns to think aright, the 
 effects will be fortunate. Health, harmony, and 
 happiness are an indissoluble trio that attend 
 right purpose and noble thought. 
 
 Life is precisely that which we first create in 
 the realm of ideas. A poet has expressed this 
 truth in the subtle lines : — 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 75 
 
 " With Sodom apples fill thy harvest bin ; 
 
 Barter heart wealth for gold in Fashion's mart ; 
 Traverse rough seas some distant port to win, 
 Without a chart. 
 
 " Fray the fine cord of Love until it break ; 
 Launch thy pirogue before the storm abate ; 
 Tease the prone, sleeping Peril till it wake ; 
 Then rail at Fate." 
 
 The assertion that life is what we make it has 
 become so trite as hardly to arrest attention ; 
 but it is a crystallization of the profouudest phi- 
 losophy and the deepest spiritual truth. Indeed, 
 if one's life were what some one else made it ; if 
 it were even made by God, — the spring of active 
 well-doing would be stilled. In the latter case 
 man would be an automaton, and in the former 
 every inequality would be an injustice. In 
 reality life is determined by two factors, — our 
 conduct and our thought ; and conduct is almost 
 entirely conditioned on thought. " Man dwells 
 in various vehicles, physical, astral, and mental. 
 The physical brain is the instrument of con- 
 sciousness in making life on the physical plane ; 
 and man only reveals as much of himself, in 
 the present life, as his physical organism per- 
 
76 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 mits, for consciousness can manifest on the 
 physical plane only so much as the physical 
 vehicle can carry. During earth life the physi- 
 cal and the ethereal bodies are not normally sepa- 
 rated ; they normally function together, as the 
 lower and higher chords of a musical instrument 
 blend ; but these bodies also carry on separate 
 though co-ordinated activities." Death is simply 
 the withdrawal of the ethereal from the physi- 
 cal. Now, just beyond the plane of the physical 
 there is a region more highly vitalized and finer, 
 where all impressions are more subtle and plas- 
 tic; where life is more active. This ethereal 
 world is all about us ; it is interpenetrated with 
 the physical ; we live and move in it, but it is 
 intangible, invisible, inaudible, imperceptible, 
 because the prison of the physical body shuts us 
 away from it, the physical particles being too 
 gross to be set in vibration by ethereal matter. 
 Man's physical form is not a fixed and un- 
 changing thing. On the contrary, it is in a state 
 of perpetual change, throwing off particles and 
 attracting to itself new ones ; and the finer the 
 thought, the finer the atoms attracted to build it 
 
 up. 
 
 " For soul is form and doth the body make,'* 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 77 
 
 said Spenser. The words embody a literal 
 truth. 
 
 Thus the immortal man develops his spiritual 
 faculties through all the discipline of a lifetime 
 on earth. All the resources and energies of this 
 life are a series of great object lessons by means 
 of which the immortal faculties are educated, 
 developed, cultivated. The thing achieved is 
 temporary, but the development of power to 
 achieve is permanent. The conception of noble 
 architecture, the marvellous enterprises of the 
 great works of civil engineering, the discoveries, 
 the inventions, all these owe their greatest im- 
 portance to their reflex influence in the develop- 
 ment of the spiritual powers (using the term as 
 inclusive of the intellectual powers) of those who 
 invent or discover or achieve. 
 
 The assertion that " the soul is not content to 
 lie sub-conscious, — that by the ideal, which is 
 the real, it tempts the conscious man onward," — 
 is one that holds in solution a great truth, not to 
 say even a philosophy. In the general average 
 life, and all the life below the average, through- 
 out all the past ages, the spiritual self in man 
 (or the soul) has been in a sub-conscious state. 
 
78 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 That is to say, when man lives the mere physical 
 life, laboring to compass the ends of food, cloth- 
 ing, shelter, with whatever added comfort or 
 luxury may be gained, the soul, the real man, is 
 lying sub-conscious. Whenever an individual 
 rises above this plane and his life flowers into 
 greatness; when he lives the life of sacrifice, of 
 heroism, and rises above the mere personal into 
 the universal, — then does the soul assert itself, 
 and he begins to live his true life as a spiritual 
 being, related to the spiritual world. Each person 
 who contributes to the general progress of society 
 in any direction : liucy Stone, when with ideal 
 vision she saw a larger future for w^omen, and 
 set out, unaided and alone, — save that " one with 
 God is a majority," — on her upward and toil- 
 some path that was destined to give such rich 
 results ; Garrison in his work for freedom ; 
 Phillips Brooks in his unceasing zeal in the call 
 to the truer life ; Dr. Nansen in his great re- 
 searches in polar regions ; Edison and Tesla and 
 Marconi in their constant efforts to advance into 
 the knowledge and conquering of the more subtle 
 forces ; all the world's heroes and prophets, its 
 seers and its poets, have been those whose 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 79 
 
 soul was not content to lie sub-conscious, but 
 struggled to realize its ideal visions. To what, 
 indeed, was due the discovery of America but 
 the fact that the soul of Columbus was not con- 
 tent to lie sub- conscious ? To what was due 
 Cyrus Field's sublime achievement in the cable 
 communication under the ocean but to this asser- 
 tion of its powers by the soul ? Every advance 
 in the conquest of new regions of the march of 
 progress in all directions is the result of the 
 active assertion of the life of the spirit. 
 
 Immortality is this evolutionary advance into 
 the life more abundant of whose nature intuition 
 gives a degree of prevision. Browning questions : 
 
 " Will the future life be work 
 
 When the strong and the weak, the world's congeries, 
 Repeat in large what they practised in small. 
 
 Through life after life in unlimited series, 
 Only the scales be changed, that 's all ? " 
 
 Life is a continuity unbroken by the change of 
 form involved in death. In the poet and the 
 artist the spiritual nature is active, and the mind 
 perceives those verities in the Unseen which are 
 commonly attributed to imagination in the sense 
 of mere fancy. Extreme sensitiveness to the 
 
80 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 realities in the Unseen becomes clairvoyance. 
 Fragmentary experiences of clairvoyant vision are 
 by no means rare, but their reality is so seldom 
 recognized that the power, instead of being devel- 
 oped, is stifled. The day is at hand when the 
 recognized realm of reality is to be extended into 
 the Unseen, when the horizon line will advance, 
 when the present environment of physical life 
 will be so extended and the conceptions of the 
 next stage of being become so much more intel- 
 ligent, that there will be practically a new heaven 
 and a new earth. 
 
 Sir William Crookes has already from the 
 purely scientific side postulated unknown regions 
 whose life yet affects our own to a degree 
 incalculable. 
 
 These boundless possibilities are now unfold- 
 ing themselves to the world. Science and ethics 
 and psychical research are all factors in this new 
 and larger revelation of the divine universe, and 
 humanity stands on the threshold of the most 
 important era it has ever known. Dr. Drum- 
 mond, catching an inspired glimpse of this truth, 
 characterized the approaching change as " the 
 religious use of the temporal world. Heaven 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 81 
 
 lies behind earth," he continued, " and we learn 
 that this earth is not merely a place to live in, 
 but to see in. We are to pass through it as 
 clairvoyants, holding the whole temporal world 
 as a vast transparency, through which the eternal 
 shines. . . . To the spiritual man there lies be- 
 hind this temporal a something which explains 
 all. Work is an incarnation of the Unseen. In 
 this loom man's soul is made. There is a subtle 
 machinery behind it all, working while he is 
 working, making or unmaking the Unseen in 
 him. Integrity, thoroughness, honesty, accuracy, 
 conscientiousness, faithfulness, patience, — these 
 unseen things which complete a soul are woven 
 into its inner work. Apart from work these 
 things are not." 
 
 It is true that all the work, the courtesies, and 
 the philanthropies of life serve a twofold pur- 
 pose, — that of immediate convenience, comfort, 
 or aid on the plane of the Seen ; that of develop- 
 ment and spiritual enlargement on the plane of 
 the Unseen. A railroad is built across a con- 
 tinent, a cable is conducted under an ocean, a 
 family in need are clothed and fed, a house is 
 built and furnished and made ready for the beau- 
 6 
 
82 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 tiful drama of living, and immediate uses are 
 served, general progress and enlightenment are 
 extended, the ways and means of terrestrial life 
 are made finer and easier; but all this is the 
 temporal side ; the permanent side is that the 
 spiritual man has exercised his faculties and 
 achieved greater development in his progress 
 toward the spiritual world. Generous and beau- 
 tiful as are many of the charities and courtesies 
 and kindnesses of daily life, — is it yet fully 
 realized that an opportunity to do a kindness 
 to another is a luxury rather than an obligation ? 
 There is some one we know who is in need of 
 aid, and we recognize the need and suggest to 
 ourselves that A, who has vast possessions, 
 ought to assume this care and meet this need 
 rather than we, who have no possessions at all ; 
 and this is wholly wrong and defective reason- 
 ing; for instead of its being a sacrifice or a 
 burden to do all that is in our power for the 
 one in need, it is a divine opportunity, a 
 spiritual luxury. The only way to multiply those 
 things needful in this part of life is to divide 
 them. Possession is not a mere arbitrary affair ; 
 a thing of exact measurement, which, being les- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 83 
 
 sened or depleted, necessarily remains so. Pos- 
 sessions of all kinds — money, houses, lands, 
 what we will — are but a precipitation in a given 
 form from the Unseen realm. There is an abun- 
 dance. The universe teems with riches. Things 
 have no value merely in and of themselves, but 
 only in that which they represent. If they rep- 
 resent a certain energy which holds itself con- 
 stantly related to the divine energy, which is 
 fed from that infinite fountain, they will be re- 
 newed in plenty and frequency, like the loaves 
 and the fishes. This result is the working of a 
 spiritual law, and it will only be experienced by 
 those who have learned to live by that law. 
 The laws governing the spiritual world are as 
 absolute as those that govern the temporal. But 
 as man is primarily a spiritual being, destined to 
 live in a spiritual world, he can achieve his 
 spirituality of life and relate himself to the 
 divine powers. Nothing is impossible to him 
 whose will has merged itself in the will of God. 
 This is the only secret of the marvellous work 
 of Jesus ; and He distinctly affirmed that what 
 He did, all may do, and " even greater things." 
 The spirituality of life includes morality, and 
 
84 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 morality includes the cardinal every-day virtues 
 of justice, honesty, integrity. To talk of " liv- 
 ing the higher life," and to ignore the financial 
 integrity of keeping one's bills promptly and 
 accurately paid, is to speak a meaningless jargon. 
 There is no more disastrous attitude than for an 
 individual to entertain the conviction that he is 
 sent into the world on a special commission 
 which relieves him from the obligation of prac- 
 tising the ordinary virtues of industry and hon- 
 esty. A woman begins to " live the higher life " 
 when she pays her tradespeople, and is consider- 
 ate to her maid, and is courteous to the chance 
 comer. To talk about living the spiritual life 
 and ignore the common duties of the day, is to 
 sadly misinterpret the phrase, and to make of 
 it a mere travesty. The teaching that influences 
 people to give themselves up to ecstatic contem- 
 plations ; to procure money — whether begged 
 or borrowed — in whatever way it can be ex- 
 tracted, and to fling to the winds any respon- 
 sibility for ever paying it; to frankly take the 
 ground, indeed, that because the borrower is 
 " living the higher life," and is, as he announces, 
 "spiritual," he is thereby released from the 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 85 
 
 common honor and integrity of honest men and 
 women, — such teaching is not only without 
 value, but so far as it has any weight at all, it is 
 dangerous. The very basis of spirituality of life 
 is that of the moral qualities. To tell the truth ; 
 to pay one's just bills ; to avoid contracting them 
 when there is no adequate provision for their 
 payment, and no idea as to how they are to be 
 met ; to be as careful not to take advantage of 
 another as one would be that another does not 
 take advantage of himself; to be just, honest, 
 faithful, and reliable, — these qualities are the 
 only possible foundation for any true spirituality 
 of life. What kind of an interpretation of the 
 (alleged) higher life would that be of an indi- 
 vidual who should recklessly procure money from 
 any and all possible sources, without giving a 
 thought as to how it was to be refunded, or 
 whether it would ever be paid ? and who should 
 teach to others that the true interpretation of 
 the injunction of Jesus to ^'take no thought for 
 the morrow" was in being totally unmindful 
 of all the just obligations of life ? The man or 
 woman who is honestly earning a living, who 
 is faithful to his daily duties, however common- 
 
86 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 place or even trivial they may seem ; vi^ho is 
 truthful and kind and generous in thought, even 
 if he have not the means to be lavish in material 
 gifts, — such an individual is the one who has 
 already entered genuinely and nobly on "the 
 higher life," — the life of spirituality. Well, 
 indeed, does Mrs. Browning say : — 
 
 " Natural things 
 And spiritual, — who separates those two 
 In art, in morals, or the social drift 
 Tears up the bond of nature and brings death, 
 Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, 
 Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, 
 Is wrong, in short, at all points." 
 
 There is indeed no more dangerous ground for 
 an individual than to set forth in life with the con- 
 viction that he is a superior being and that, as he 
 is made of finer clay than his fellows, the world 
 owes him a living. Spirituality of life is not 
 developed out of ignoring, but instead out of 
 fulfilling obligations. The spiritual and the 
 natural life are simply conditions of evolution. 
 As Emerson illustrates, there comes a time to 
 every man when he is careful that his neighbor 
 does not cheat him ; there comes another time 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 87 
 
 when he is careful that he does not cheat his 
 neighbor. Obedience to the moral law is the 
 true motive of life. " If you would be strong," 
 well said Bishop Brooks, " you must learn to 
 obey." Generosity in material gifts is a luxury, 
 but it is a luxury that he alone should enjoy who 
 has first observed the due necessity of justice and 
 honesty. So with all the higher attributes of 
 life. They are the first to be earned by obedi- 
 ence to the necessities. Into the life that is thus 
 obedient will come undreamed of beauty and 
 power. The miracle will be wrought. It is 
 wrought daily and hourly for all who have learned 
 faith and obedience. 
 
 The story of Martin Luther's ascent of the 
 Sancta Scalain Rome — the Holy Staircase which 
 is said to have formed a part of Pilate's house — 
 is one that impresses the lesson of faithfulness in 
 common duty. 
 
 The story runs that as Luther was toiling up, 
 a voice as if from heaven spoke to him and said, 
 " The just shall live by faith." At that moment 
 he realized that not by any exotic observances, 
 but by the faith that makes faithful, is the nobler 
 life achieved. 
 
88 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 The universe is made for man, not man for 
 the universe. Every wish and aspiration whose 
 trend is toward progress can be fully met, 
 abundantly gratified. There is no more limit 
 to the gratification of a right desire than there 
 is to the air that one may breathe. Satisfac- 
 tion and happiness are as infinite as the atmos- 
 phere. The only limitation is the degree of 
 receptivity in man. The need is to enlarge 
 one's view of the universe; to deepen one's 
 realization of the multitude of forces ceaselessly 
 at work. 
 
 It is not uncommon to hear the assertion 
 that desires should be stifled and suppressed; 
 that the individual should accept whatever be- 
 falls, making no effort to alter the course of 
 things; that if he insist on his own desires he 
 is selfish, and may be depriving some one else of 
 blessings by craving them for himself. This 
 trend of speculation may proceed from a view 
 not less inadequate because it is conscientious. 
 Yet the whole teachings of Jesus are of the 
 untold riches of the heavenly kingdom out of 
 which man draws, not merely his religious and 
 devotional life specifically, but all that makes 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 89 
 
 for his happiness, his comfort, his advancement. 
 What does Saint Paul say to the Ephesians ? 
 
 " Now unto Him that is able to do exceed- 
 ing abundantly above all that we ask or think, 
 according to the power that worketh in us." 
 These are strong words : the " exceeding abund- 
 ance," even "above all that tve ask or think." 
 And then the restrictive clause, "According 
 to the power that worketh in us" offers matter 
 for reflection. The words of Jesus Himself are 
 full and very clear on the point of asking for 
 what one desires. 
 
 " Ask and receive, that your joy may be full." 
 " If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it." 
 "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my 
 name, He will give it you." 
 
 Yet constantly and ever reiterated is the 
 one restriction, — the condition that man him- 
 self shall have achieved the only spiritual atti- 
 tude in which it is possible that all these things 
 shall be wrought. "If you abide in Me, and 
 My words abide in you," — here is an expres- 
 sion of the requisite condition. "For toithout 
 Me ye can do nothing'' The forms of ex- 
 pression are numerous and varied, but the sig- 
 
90 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 nificance is always the same. The condition 
 of desire and its fulfilment is constantly con- 
 joined with the invitation to man to ask what 
 he will, — to ask for anything that he needs. 
 ^^ It is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
 the kingdom." There is a constant i;rgency, 
 even, brought to bear upon man to ask freely 
 and fully for all that he desires. And with 
 this repeated urgency is the attendant explana- 
 tion of the condition under which alone the 
 requisite may be fulfilled and the desires granted. 
 
 *^But/' objects one, ^4t certainly cannot be 
 right for us to ask for material things. We 
 should pray only for spiritual qualities." 
 
 But what are material things ? Are they not 
 simply the manifestations of spiritual supply? 
 A book is a material thing, but it is the mani- 
 festation of the learning, the wisdom, the in- 
 sight that it may contain. What was the 
 manna in the Wilderness but a material thing ; 
 or the loaves and fishes that Jesus invoked to 
 feed the multitude ? The entire material world 
 is the manifestation of the spiritual causes that 
 produce it. Food, shelter, and clothing; the 
 opportunities for study, the culture of society. 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 91 
 
 of literature, art, travel, — these are not mate- 
 rial things in the sense that they are only of 
 the transient and the physical. They are the 
 forms in which spiritual energy variously mani- 
 fests itself; they are means of development, 
 means of gaining power to aid in uplift and 
 enlightenment ; to accomplish and achieve those 
 things for which life here is designed. And 
 why should not one ask for any or all of these ? 
 " It is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
 the kingdom." 
 
 Man is placed in this world to utilize nature ; 
 to discern the hidden forces and harness them 
 to use. "Enlist every breeze, every waterfall, 
 every magnetic current, in your service," said 
 Victor Hugo, — a bit of counsel that is being 
 constantly fulfilled by inventors and discoverers. 
 The electric force that is in the air will yet be 
 the universal motor. Wireless telegraphy, — 
 what is that but thought sent by air currents? 
 The power of the torrent of Niagara is utilized 
 in New York City. Utopia is rapidly being 
 conquered and invested with the yoke of reality. 
 
 The prevailing defect is to ask too little 
 rather than too much of life. Man is made 
 
92 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 for the region above the natural. The "super- 
 natural" of one century is the commonplace 
 reality of the succeeding one. In exact corre- 
 spondence with the development of the forces of 
 man does he rise into a new world of nature. 
 " The life that is and that which is to come " is 
 one life, one unbroken chain of evolution. The 
 experiences that we shall enter upon after the 
 event we call death are only the " next " life, or 
 the "other" life, as are the experiences of to- 
 morrow or next year "another" life. To live 
 in the constant and vivid realization of this one- 
 ness of life, to live in that perfect faith which is 
 the " substance " — the substantial part — of the 
 " things not seen ; " to live in the outgoing love 
 to God and to men, — these are the conditions 
 in which man may receive abundantly, above all 
 that he can ask or think, of every gift and grace 
 that makes for progress and happiness. 
 
 Man is endowed with a spiritual nature which 
 is capable of providing him with power that 
 may be increased and expanded indefinitely, un- 
 less he paralyze it by wilfully materializing his 
 life. This may be done whenever a man leads 
 the self-indulgent life rather than that in which 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 93 
 
 his fidelity to the intellectual and the spiritual 
 is unbroken. To most of us the expression, the 
 "lower life/' suggests the absolutely degrading 
 levels usually associated with that term. But 
 many a life of the well-bred and the intelligent 
 class is, after all, of a lower order and on a lower 
 plane than it has any right to be. The terms 
 high and low are relative. Anything less than 
 one's best is low — to that individual. With 
 reference to one man a low life implies criminal- 
 ity and intoxication ; with reference to another 
 his life may be — relatively to himself — low 
 when he is idle, self-indulgent, and living in 
 mere self-gratification, although in no sense trans- 
 gressing any moral law. Man is, potentially, a 
 divine being, and it is his business to live the 
 divine life ; to repress the desires of the phys- 
 ical senses and develop desire on the higher plane 
 of intellectual and spiritual aspirations. To 
 pass one's days lying in a hammock and reading 
 novels — of the trashy, ephemeral kind — may 
 not deserve to be classed as an immorality, but 
 it certainly is not a mode of developing the 
 higher powers of one 's nature ; while, on the 
 contrary, a summer devoted to George Eliot 
 
94 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and to Balzac might be the most profitable of 
 seasons. 
 
 There is no more immediately practical aid in 
 life than those marvellous words of Saint Paul, 
 "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your 
 spirit." This divine germ implanted in man, 
 whose growth is compared to a grain of mustard 
 seed, is that innate power by means of which 
 this transformation can be effected. That is, if 
 as Canon Wilberforce says, " he does not wil- 
 fully paralyze it by sensualizing and materializ- 
 ing his life." This power in man is not merely 
 a motor that may dominate motion and direc- 
 tion; but a motor that gradually increases its 
 power and transforms that object of which it 
 is the moving spring. It is not true that any 
 individual life is necessarily dominated by cir- 
 cumstances. It is man's business to control cir- 
 cumstances, to create them ; and he who is 
 living as their victim, as a prisoner, so to speak, 
 in his environment, is in a precarious condition 
 which he should confront at once with a view to 
 its rectification. He has more or less by some 
 error in living, paralyzed his inner faculties of 
 spiritual insight and power. The fault is in 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 95 
 
 himself; the remedy must lie with himself. He 
 requires redemption. The evangelical belief re- 
 garding man's need of redemption rests on the 
 most absolute foundation of truth. The divine 
 germ in man must relate itself to God, the Divine 
 Power. As the wire must receive the electric 
 current in order to transmit the message, so man, 
 made in the image of the Divine, with the germ 
 of infinite power in himself, must place himself 
 aright in the universe through the potency of 
 prayer, and he can then work in harmony and in 
 co-operation with the Divine Energy in shaping 
 his own life ; in controlling and even in creating 
 new combinations of circumstances. Once in 
 the current of divine aspiration and inspiration, 
 everything becomes possible. The resources of 
 all the universe open and entreat one to enter. 
 This germ of divine energy, implanted in man, 
 has the power to elevate him into the invisible 
 world ; to make him an inhabitant in the realm 
 of causes, which, on this plane, are seen only 
 as effects. As a dweller in the sphere of causes, 
 he may also be an actor there. He may discern 
 a new and higher plane to which he may transfer 
 all the scenery and circumstances of his life. 
 
96 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 There are transitions even during the life here 
 which are as complete in their transformation of 
 environment as may, perhaps, be caused in some 
 cases only by death. The will is the motor by 
 which one may control his circumstances ; not a 
 mere wilfulness, — which is a very different 
 affair, — but the will in the high sense of seeing 
 a perpetually unfolding path of increasing noble- 
 ness and perfection, and placing one's self in 
 harmonious accord with the currents that flow 
 toward it; the will that, through prayer and 
 unceasing aspiration, unites itself with the divine 
 will, after which all the powers of earth and air 
 cannot prevail against its high accomplishment. 
 
 The life that now is and that which is to come 
 are as intimately related as the life of childhood 
 and youth, and of youth and manhood. Man 
 does not '^ go to " heaven, but he creates his own 
 heaven and enjoys the happiness and harmony 
 associated with the term in exact proportion to 
 the degree in which he has created them during 
 his life on earth. Many a man still dwelling 
 here experiences daily more of the joys of heaven, 
 so called, than many others Avho have passed 
 through the change we call death. Nor is 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 97 
 
 heaven a state to be awaited patiently as some- 
 thing identified with a far future. If one is not 
 living in heaven to-day, in the spiritual condi- 
 tions of peace and love that produce its joy, 
 then he may be assured that something is wrong, 
 and he should seek to set it aright just as he 
 should seek, were he ill, to regain health again. 
 Heaven is, of course, a term implying infinite de- 
 grees ; a term that includes innumerable stages 
 of progression. 
 
 An increasingly intelligent conception of the 
 life to come is of the greatest importance to the 
 life that now is. Man can only receive such 
 knowledge of God and the nature of the spiritual 
 life as he is fitted to grasp ; but in this knowl- 
 edge, like all other acquirement, each advance 
 made fits one to receive another and a larger 
 comprehension of truth. 
 
 All modern research and investigation, and the 
 reasoning from what is known to what is not 
 known, confirms the intuitive belief that the con- 
 ditions of life after leaving the body are the posi- 
 tive and significant, and are to be assumed as 
 the true standard in making all comparisons. 
 Many writers assume that the state after death 
 7 
 
98 The Spiritual Significance. \ 
 
 is one inferior to the state before death ; and 
 
 the prevailing popular idea is that to be " cut ' 
 
 off," as is said, from the hope and promise of life ' 
 here, is a great misfortune. This cannot be true 
 
 unless the nature of life in the future is inferior \ 
 
 to the nature of life in the present ; and as spirit • 
 is the only potency, it must Ibllow that the life of 
 
 the spiritual spheres must be far more significant j 
 
 than that in the physical spheres. In its very | 
 
 nature it is an advance so far as the conditions i 
 
 go. But whether the individual is prepared to ) 
 
 enter into the best uses of those higher and more \ 
 
 significant conditions, to comprehend and enjoy j 
 
 the privileges, is another question, and it is the \ 
 
 supreme concern of the present life. It is the j 
 
 question of knowledge instead of ignorance ; of ; 
 
 morality instead of immorality ; of generosity ^ 
 
 and love instead of selfishness and indifference ; ! 
 
 of lofty purposes instead of ignoble mental ■ 
 attitudes ; of spirituality rather than materiality. 
 
 It is the question, too, of encouragement toward ' 
 
 all excellence ; the question of happiness and i 
 conviction rather than of undefined hope or of 
 doubt. To realize with that absolute conviction 
 born of intelligent comprehension that the life to 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 99 
 
 come is closely interpenetrated with the life that 
 now is ; that personal sympathy, aid, and com- 
 panionship surround us constantly ; that we have 
 only to ask for the uplifting influence, the perfect 
 response, and it is ours ; that God works through 
 means and not through miracles, and that His 
 means include ministering spirits, — all this reali- 
 zation enlarges and exalts the quality of daily 
 life. 
 
 Nor does it encroach in any wise on the 
 Christian faith. If it is not " dangerous " to 
 have loves and friendships with those in this 
 world, it is not to have friendships and loves 
 with those in the Unseen. Man does not love 
 God less because he loves his friend. What, 
 indeed, does Saint Paul say? That we may 
 know whether or not we love God by the 
 spirit He hath given us, by the love we bear 
 to those with whom we are associated. While 
 even this life offers privileges to man for co- 
 operating with God in all noble and helpful 
 work, the life to come offers such privileges in 
 larger degree. To help others is the very essence 
 of the heavenly life which has its teaching, its 
 art, its literary work, its drama, its lectures, its 
 
 LofC. 
 
100 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 preaching. All the manifold intellectual and 
 spiritual activities here are but rudimentary 
 hints of those activities there. Into that more 
 significant life we may enter to some extent by 
 an intelligent recognition of it, and to do this is 
 to come closer to the divine world of harmonious 
 energy. 
 
 In this world of larger life and harmony does 
 there enter the element of fate ? Is there a 
 mutual exclusiveness of fate and of free will, 
 or can any man, if he choose, enter into a 
 present life of joy, of serenity, of high achieve- 
 ment ? Can he, by a mental decision, pass from 
 the discordant and the perplexing to the condi- 
 tions of harmony and clear vision? With us 
 all the inequalities of fortune always haunt 
 the thought. " One shall be taken and another 
 left." And why? ^^A thousand shall fall at 
 thy left hand and ten thousand at thy right 
 hand, and the pestilence shall not come nigh 
 thee." And again we ask, why ? The children 
 of one family, born and bred under the same 
 influences and environment, go forth to meet — 
 or to make — ■ lives as totally different from one 
 another as if they were of different races. Two 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 101 
 
 men sit side by side in a railway car when an 
 accident occurs^ and one is killed and the other 
 uninjured. Instances need not be multiplied. 
 We see the inexplicable every day. Still, life is 
 not made up of blind chance nor of automatic 
 movements. Every outer event has its inner 
 cause. " The riddle of the age has for each its 
 private solution." Each man brings his fate 
 with him. Each one is predetermining his 
 fate for the future. Fate is limitation. To the 
 degree that one lives in the material things of 
 sense and time, to that degree is he entangled 
 and held by them. In the degree in which he 
 lives in qualities and principles and thought, 
 to that degree is he free. " The revelation of 
 Thought takes man out of servitude into free- 
 dom." 
 
 Of late years we hear much about karma. 
 Fate and karma are interchangeable terms. 
 Karma is another name for the conditions that 
 we have ourselves created. These causes have 
 their effects, and these effects are the more com- 
 plicated because no one liveth to himself alone. 
 There is not only a karma of the individual, but 
 of his social affiliations, his attractions and mag- 
 
102 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 netisms, and there is, too, the karma of the 
 race, which no one can fully or entirely escape. 
 We share to some degree the fortunes of our 
 times. "There is no such thing," says Annie 
 Besant, " as ' chance ' or as ' accident ; ' all 
 thoughts, deeds, circumstances, are causally re- 
 lated to the past and will causally influence the 
 future ; as our ignorance shrouds from our vision 
 alike the past and the future, events often appear 
 to us to come suddenly from the void, to be acci- 
 dental, but this appearance is illusory. Man is 
 continually sending out forces on all the planes 
 on which he functions ; these forces them- 
 selves — the effects of his past activities — 
 are causes which he sets going in each world 
 he inhabits; they bring about certain definite 
 effects on himself and on others, and as these 
 causes radiate from himself, he is responsible for 
 the results they bring." 
 
 We learn by philosophic and psychological 
 study that man inhabits three distinct planes 
 during this present life : the mental plane, on 
 which his energy is thought ; the astral plane, 
 on which his energy is desire ; and the physical, 
 on which his energy takes the form of acts. 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 103 
 
 Now, these threefold results of our life, acts, 
 desires, and thoughts, produce one's karma, or 
 his fate. 
 
 Again, as man advances to the higher life, he 
 decreases his fate ; that is to say, he transcends 
 his limitations. He becomes more the master 
 and less the slave. As he advances in knowl- 
 edge, he can control laws and not be controlled 
 by them. 
 
 ** Look ! the clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds 
 
 the clay ; 
 Destiny to-day is master ; man was master yesterday." 
 
 Yet if destiny to-day is master, man may 
 be master to-morrow. If he is this year the 
 slave of the events he has created, he may 
 begin now to dominate and control the events 
 of next year. Here is where the problem of 
 free will comes. Let one begin to live more in 
 thought and less in desire, and he is already 
 advancing toward freedom. 
 
 There can be no question but that each indi- 
 vidual's life, with all its varied experiences, repre- 
 sents the sum up to that time of all that he has 
 done, desired, and thought. He has set up such 
 
104 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 a range of vibration that the results could be 
 nothing else than what they are. But events, 
 circumstances, conditions, are plastic to the will. 
 The development of will power is the motor of 
 life. The power of the will is the creative, the 
 divine element in man. 
 
 Cause and effect determine these mutual re- 
 sults with almost mathematical accuracy ; but 
 there is a power to which both are plastic and 
 amenable. The Divine overruling is around 
 all life, and it is just here that the philosophy of 
 the Hindoo and of the Christian diverge. The 
 Eastern wisdom teaches that as a man sows, so 
 shall he reap. But the higher truth of the 
 Christian faith is that the soul may so relate 
 itself to the Divine that the miracle may be 
 wrought; that all life — its entire conditions 
 and scenery and trains of events — may be trans- 
 formed by the renewing of the mind. The law 
 of gravitation is a truth, and holds all who are 
 under it subject to its force ; but once transcend 
 the law of gravitation and come under that of 
 attraction, and all is changed. Man may con- 
 tinue to live under the law of Fate ; to *^ work 
 out his karma," as the Hindoo would say, and 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 105 
 
 to gradually produce better results and to begin 
 to extricate himself from karmic conditions. But 
 he may also consecrate his life to the divine 
 power ; he may lift himself up to God and His 
 Son and become a sharer in the divine life ; and 
 an intense and supreme hour may do for him 
 what a century of mere effort by his own will 
 could not achieve. 
 
 " Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy 
 thoughts shall be established." One may be- 
 come one of those spirits 
 
 " with whom the stars connive 
 To work their will." 
 
 He may come to conquer and prevail. The 
 habit of giving the first half-hour of the morning 
 each day to the renewal of consecration to the 
 Divine Life will signally aid in freeing man from 
 the entanglement and limitation of desire and 
 conditions. 
 
 "He only is rich who owns the day/' said 
 Emerson ; and no one owns the day who allows 
 it to be invaded vrith worry and fret and 
 anxiety. There are vices — the term is none 
 too strong — that to many people masquerade as 
 shining virtues. One will hear a member of a 
 
106 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 family say to another with the air of one who 
 utters the final word of affection or love, "I 
 have been worrying about you all day." Not 
 unfrequently a wife will assure her husband ou 
 the eve of his departure on a journey that she 
 shall worry about him all the time he is gone. 
 A mother will narrate the liberal margin of time 
 she devotes to " worrying " over her children, 
 and in one way or another this most unprofitable 
 and absurd mental state is more or less held up 
 to canonization. Should it not be set down as 
 a moral axiom that worry is not only unneces- 
 sary, but that it is positively and distinctly 
 harmful, both to the one who worries and the 
 one who is worried over? It should not re- 
 ceive the tolerance of even a negative virtue, but 
 be relegated wliere it belongs, among the posi- 
 tive vices. If people would take to worrying 
 over their enemies, — that is another matter. 
 Not that one would desire to recommend re- 
 venge and ill will as desiderata of life, but, at all 
 events, as human nature goes, there might be 
 some logic and reason in that course. The 
 divine law that bids us love our enemies is a 
 far nobler one than a Mosaic dispensation that 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 107 
 
 should bid us worry over them ; but at all 
 events, where there is afFection and good-will, 
 where there is faith and tenderness and love, it 
 is strangely absurd to introduce this element. 
 
 For fret and anxiety produce discord. The 
 philosophy of spiritual vibrations is one that 
 may be as definitely formulated as any exact 
 science. To worry is to send to the object of 
 this mental disturbance inharmonious vibration. 
 It is to make him the focus of discordant thought, 
 of images of misery, or suffering, or failure, that 
 imprint themselves upon his subjective mind, 
 and tend to produce the outward results in mate- 
 rializing themselves, and taking form and force. 
 
 Worrying is somewhat largely a feminine 
 failing. It is to be hoped that among the tran- 
 scendent virtues of the " new " woman will 
 appear that of the cheerfulness and the courage 
 that rises above fret and anxiety. A man who 
 was addicted to this state of mind would cer- 
 tainly be regarded as an unsafe and unreliable 
 person. 
 
 Fret and worry are the results of a lack of 
 confidence in one's self and in the divine powers. 
 The Christian professes faith in the divine power 
 
108 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and ruling. If he really feel this faith, he cannot 
 distrust, and thus distort all the lines of commu- 
 nication. It produces an atmosphere through 
 which the heavenly magnetism cannot pass. 
 Anxiety paralyzes the will power and makes 
 any true achievement doubtful or impossible. 
 It is like betaking one's self to crutches from 
 the fear that some time and some way an 
 accident will deprive liim of the use of his 
 feet. 
 
 Courage and faith are creative forces and 
 own the day. They are a mine of inexhaustible 
 treasure. They are, indeed, "of the least pre- 
 tension and the greatest capacity of anything 
 that exists." Deeply true it is, as Emerson says, 
 that " if we do not use the gifts they bring, they 
 carry them as silently away." The present hour 
 is always the critical, the decisive hour. Fill it 
 with anxiety, distort all the combinations of the 
 divine forces with fear and fret, and what kind 
 of a future does one thus prepare for himself or 
 for those dear to him ? 
 
 Courage and cheerfulness create successful 
 conditions. They are magnetic to the fortunate 
 elements. Man is a spirit living in a spiritual 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 109 
 
 world. He cannot afford not to avail himself of 
 spiritual forces. Let one own the day. Let 
 him own his future, in that he recognizes its 
 potent forces for the creation of the divine king- 
 dom on earth. 
 
 "We all live in the sublime," well says 
 Maeterlinck. " Where else can we live ? That 
 is the only place of life. And if aught be lacking, 
 it is not the chance of living in heaven, rather is 
 it watchfulness and meditation ; also, perhaps, a 
 little ecstasy of the soul. Though you have but 
 a little room, do you fancy that God is not there 
 too, and that it is impossible to live there in a 
 life that shall be somewhat lofty ? If you com- 
 plain of being alone, of the absence of events, of 
 loving no one and being unloved, do you think 
 that the words are true ? Do you imagine that 
 one can possibly be alone, that love can be a 
 thing one knows, a thing one sees ; that events 
 can be weighed like the gold and silver of ran- 
 som ? . . . All that happens to us is divinely 
 great, and we are always in the centre of a great 
 world." 
 
 There can be no truer affirmation of life than 
 this assertion. The greatest failure in life is that 
 
110 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 of underestimating its significance. The moment 
 the entire drama of daily living is seen in the 
 light of a part of the immortal life, that moment 
 our daily duties become invested with an interest 
 and a zest undreamed of before. Now, if this 
 assertion were only true of a certain range of life ; 
 if it could only be predicted of the minister, the 
 president of a bank, the college professor, or the 
 judge of the Supreme Court, — its application 
 would be too restricted to merit allusion. But 
 it is equally true of the work of the busy wife 
 and mother and homekeeper ; of the work of the 
 saleswoman who goes every morning to her post 
 of duty ; of the work of the professional man in 
 his office, or of the work of any man or woman 
 in the industrial callings. 
 
 The true life, that of thought, aims, aspirations, 
 and purposes, is not necessarily identified with 
 the outward work of the hands. A woman may 
 sew a seam, or sweep a floor, or serve a cus- 
 tomer over the counter, and at the same moment 
 live an inner life of the highest quality. This 
 exaltation of the real (because the spiritual) life 
 will reflect itself outwardly in gentleness, patience, 
 sweetness, — in an atmosphere that will com- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 111 
 
 municate its charm and uplift to all who come 
 in contact with it. Emerson says, — 
 
 *' There is no great and no small 
 To the soul that knoweth all." 
 
 And it is true that all our outer occupations are 
 but as the " gifts " of the kindergarten by means 
 of which to exercise and develop our powers. 
 In that sense it is of little consequence whether 
 this employment be one thing or the other ; but 
 it is of great consequence that the attitude of 
 mind, the quality of the spirit, be kept noble 
 and true, and generous and sympathetic. The 
 spiritual being that each one of us is, — tempora- 
 rily inhabiting a physical body, and temporarily 
 sojourning on earth, — this spiritual being is ac- 
 quiring a development by means of contact 
 with the physical world. The manner of 
 this contact is of minor importance ; but the 
 qualities developed and cultivated are of the 
 very greatest and of eternal importance. It is 
 perfectly possible, in even the lowliest and the 
 most restricted circumstances, to live a life that 
 is lofty, noble, and deeply significant. 
 
 A force that is determining to a degree not 
 yet fully realized, is that of auto-suggestion, 
 
112 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and it may be employed on the physical, the 
 mental, or the spiritual plane, with equally 
 signal effect. It is a subtle, determining 
 power, elusive in its nature, escaping analysis 
 or classification, but acting as the controlling, the 
 all-determining power of our lives. It is as 
 elastic as air, and as flexible and all-pervasive. 
 It is as potent as the mysterious force that 
 Keeley sought to discover, yet this dominating 
 energy by which we are so largely directed is 
 to us mysterious and unknown. The secret 
 of all success and happiness is to learn its 
 nature and laws. 
 
 Auto-suggestion proceeds from the spiritual 
 self. It is the higher controlling the lower; 
 but while we are largely unconscious of the 
 nature and power of this higher self and its 
 relation to the lower, we can never receive the 
 full directions it offers nor clearly comprehend 
 those that we do receive. There has been a 
 great deal of talk about the lower and the 
 higher self, the consciousness and sub-con- 
 sciousness ; and much of this talk has rather 
 steeped the subjects in mystery than left it 
 clear. 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 113 
 
 Leaving the variously vague terms, let us sim- 
 ply call this higher consciousness our real self. 
 Let us conceive of it as the immortal being 
 who is temporarily incarnated in the physical 
 virorld, but whose truest real life is still within 
 the unseen world and companioned by unseen 
 friends. Now it is only a part, a fragment, of 
 the complete consciousness which animates the 
 temporal body. " Our life is hid with Christ 
 in God." That is, our real life is being lived 
 in the unseen world. The degree in which the 
 lower conscious life is able to draw upon this 
 larger and more real life, the finer and more 
 important are its powers and achievements. 
 The secret of success and happiness would 
 be to establish the relations between this 
 higher and more permanent and real self and 
 the lower self, or the objective consciousness. 
 Auto-suggestion is made by the higher self to 
 the lower. Just in proportion as the latter 
 can relate itself to the former and learn to 
 recognize its messages, just in that proportion 
 will life be joy and exhilaration. 
 
 It is possible to realize this higher self in the 
 daily, outward living ; to come into a unity 
 8 
 
114 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 with this larger spiritual force from which the 
 conscious spirit draws its energy, and thus re- 
 ceive the constant guidance, the unfailing 
 instruction. 
 
 How can it be done ? First, by a recognition 
 of its possibility. Let one learn to think of 
 himself as a spiritual being dwelling in a spirit- 
 ual world, with the responsibility upon him to 
 order his outward manifestation of life while 
 here with the serene dignity, courtesy, sweet- 
 ness, and love that is the natural expression of 
 the higher nature. He must live worthily of 
 himself. 
 
 Again, he must train himself to rely on this 
 higher nature. The spiritual self has its spirit- 
 ual perceptions. It can see and hear what can- 
 not be seen or heard by the outer eye and ear. 
 It perceives, as by clairvoyance and clairaudience. 
 For instance, a lady went out one evening to call 
 on two friends. Having made the first call, she 
 was about to turn off to the street on which the 
 other friend lived, when she asked of her higher 
 (her real) self if this friend were at home ? 
 And had she better go to the house ? The reply 
 came after a minute or two, sifting into her 
 
The Spiritual Significance. 115 
 
 objective consciousness, directing her not to go 
 that evening, but to go the next morning. She 
 obeyed, finding that the evening before the 
 friend had been out of town, and the hour 
 chosen in the morning vras the one of all others 
 especially convenient. 
 
 Such incidents, trivial in themselves, are yet 
 the straws that indicate the direction of a law 
 governing human life. 
 
 The familiar experiment of waking one's self 
 at any hour in the morning is well known. Any 
 person can soon train himself to waken at the 
 time he fixes upon the night before with the 
 unerring regularity of the most perfect time- 
 piece. In the same manner he may control the 
 next day by stamping certain images on the 
 plastic astral world over night. He may stamp 
 it with joy, with achievement, with success. It 
 is simply allowing the higher self to take the 
 control ; to live in the spiritual world of forces 
 rather than passively and blindly in the physical 
 world of causes. 
 
 A certain education of the body is essential 
 to the more complete grasping of this life. To 
 eat lightly and simply; to take the cold bath 
 
116 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 on waking in the morning, followed by some 
 measure of exercise; to have a half hour for 
 reading, prayer, of meditation, before breakfast, 
 — this is to begin the day aright, and to train 
 the body to be a flexible, elastic instrument for 
 the spiritual being to use. Certain physical, 
 mental, and spiritual observances will completely 
 transform and regenerate any person who is 
 faithful to the higher ideals. Of course it is 
 this auto-suggestion that cures disease and wards 
 off all illness when its laws are understood. 
 
 An error in any study of auto-suggestion is 
 sometimes made in the mistaking of desire for 
 will. To wish, or to desire, is not to will. The 
 one is of the transient and the temporal ; the 
 other of the eternal and spiritual. Desire acts 
 on the physical plane among effects and results ; 
 while will acts on the spiritual plane among 
 causes. It is literally true that one can do 
 anything that he wills to do ; but it is also 
 true that his will is conditioned by the degree 
 to which he has achieved spirituality of purpose 
 and aspiration. Desire is of the human realm; 
 will is of the divine realm. As man lives in 
 both worlds or on both planes, he may act from 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 117 
 
 both these motives. As a matter of fact, he 
 always acts more or less from desu-e, and he may 
 increasingly learn how to act from will. The 
 power of will is a part of his divine inheritance. 
 The animal desires, but cannot will. Man, in 
 exact proportion as he develops his divine 
 natm-e, comes into possession of the power to 
 create his conditions and circumstances. Every 
 element that enters into these exists in the spir- 
 itual atmosphere. These elements are subject 
 to the will, which can attract and combine them 
 in any form which its creative power is strong 
 enough to draw, to arrange, and to stamp with 
 the image of the purpose conceived. 
 
 There is a great deal of nebulous talk and 
 exhortation in the air regarding '' concentra- 
 tion " and kindred topics, and for the most part 
 this is unrelated in the minds of those who talk 
 about it to anything in particular. It is a 
 fragmentary approach to a great truth. To be 
 advised to meditate and concentrate with no 
 farther application is not unlike learning the 
 alphabet without foreseeing its relation to 
 literature. 
 
 The process of creating by will power involves. 
 
118 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 first, a perfectly clear and definite perception of 
 the condition to be created. A teacher, we will 
 say, desires pupils ; a youth wishes to enter col- 
 lege; a man is anxious to go to Europe, or to 
 enter on a certain profession, or to achieve a 
 specific work. All these, and the multitude of 
 plans and achievements of which these are typi- 
 cal, are perfectly possible to the power of the 
 will. They all depend on certain combinations 
 of elemental conditions. Therefore they are 
 in the spiritual universe, which is sensitive to 
 the slightest energy of thought. 
 
 The vision seen must then be impressed, 
 stamped, by the energy of the will. It is thus 
 created in the spiritual world ; and its embody- 
 ing itself in outward conditions is merely a 
 question of time. 
 
 To illustrate: an artist who had also a dis- 
 tinct gift for literary expression conceived the 
 idea of writing a book on a given subject. But 
 his time was filled with his painting and with 
 classes in art. There was no time for writing. 
 No one, save the heroine of an impossible novel, 
 can work all day and write all night. Nor was 
 there, humanly speaking, any conceivable pros- 
 
The Spiritual Significance, 119 
 
 pect of the leisure required for this new work. 
 Still, the artist held it in his mind and stamped 
 it with the irresistible energy of the will. Sud- 
 denly there came a most singular upheaval of 
 circumstances. Changes of condition, incredible 
 and undreamed of, ensued, and in the twinkling 
 of an eye, so to speak, the painter was free to 
 write. Now the other changes were simply the 
 natural, the inevitable effects of the will power 
 that he had generated by his clear conception of 
 the achievement on which he wished to enter, 
 and the energy of will which had stamped this 
 clear vision and thus created it in the astral. 
 Once created there, the outer life conformed to 
 the inner image, just as inevitably as water 
 poured in a glass takes the shape of the goblet. 
 All external life is plastic and fluidic to the 
 power of will. " The flowing conditions of life," 
 says Emerson. Nothing is fixed ; everything is 
 subject to the power of the will. And in the 
 increasingly larger grasp and comprehension of 
 the creative force of the will when fed from the 
 exhaustless reservoir of the Divine Energy lies 
 the key to the spiritual significance of life. 
 
VISION AND ACHIEVEMENT. 
 
VISION AND ACHIEVEMENT. 
 
 " Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creature." 
 
 Sole and self-commanded works, 
 
 Fears not undermining days, 
 
 Grows by decays, 
 
 And, by the famous might that lurks 
 
 In reaction and recoil, 
 
 Makes iiame to freeze and ice to boil. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 jOTHING is permanent save spiritual 
 energy, and that is continually ad- 
 vancing and conquering new territory. 
 " No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to- 
 morrow in the light of new thoughts," says 
 Emerson. " People wish to be settled ; but 
 only so far as they are unsettled is there any 
 hope for them." 
 
 Certain measures of religious truths do their 
 work ; they must then give way to new forms. 
 The growth of the soul requires a series of the 
 
124 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 *^ more stately mansions." All that was perma- 
 nently valuable in the past persists and enters 
 into new combinations to serve the present. 
 Religion was never a final but a progressive 
 revelation. ^* The pure in heart shall see God." 
 The purer one grows in heart, the more truly shall 
 he see God. " He that doeth the will shall know 
 of the doctrine ; " and the more faithfully man- 
 kind come to do the will of God, the more largely 
 do they perceive His doctrine and methods. 
 
 Emerson's allusion to Swedenborg in the fol- 
 lowing lines is a wonderful phrasing of his recog- 
 nition of the new message given to the world by 
 the great scholar and seer. 
 
 " In spirit worlds he trod alone, 
 But walked the earth unmarked, unknown; 
 The near bystander caught no sound, — 
 Yet they who listened far aloof 
 Heard rendings of the skyey roof, 
 And felt beneath the quaking ground ; 
 And his air-sown, unheeded words 
 In the next age are flaming swords. '* 
 
 To Swedenborg it was given to have the clair- 
 voyant vision that revealed certain actualities in 
 the unseen world in which we dwell. As the 
 telescope shows stars unrevealed to the natural 
 
Vision and Achievement, 125 
 
 eye, as the microscope demonstrates the existence 
 of a world otherwise unsuspected, so the revela- 
 tions of the spiritual sight offer a wealth of new 
 information regarding the manifestations of life 
 on a plane just above that on which we now 
 live. 
 
 On the threshold of the twentieth century the 
 time has come for faith to be informed by knowl- 
 edge. Nor is faith less, but more, when so in- 
 formed. The sublimity of the universe is not less 
 to the astronomer than to one ignorant of side- 
 real laws, but instead, is more impressive and 
 more vast. As we learn to know the laws that 
 govern the unseen world, as we comprehend 
 the close and intimate interrelations between 
 the physical and the spiritual world, we are pre- 
 pared to enter with new uplift of spirit into the 
 Divine Communion. There is a perfect correla- 
 tion of our physical and the spiritual forces. 
 There is the most direct, the most inthnate, the 
 most unceasing telepathic communication be- 
 tween spirit and spirit, the one in the Seen, the 
 other in the Unseen. The present life is vital- 
 ized by heavenly forces. 
 
 Life is a process of perpetual evolution. The 
 
126 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 " material " and the " spiritual " cannot be re- 
 garded as two separate and utterly distinctive 
 states with fixed boundaries : they are no more 
 separated than are light, heat, and electricity ; or 
 than ice, water, vapor, and ether. Condense a 
 cloud floating in the sky, and we have water ; 
 condense the water by intense cold, and we have 
 solid ice ; melt the ice by moderate heat, and 
 there is again water; apply greater heat, and 
 there is steam or vapor ; still greater, and the 
 vapor becomes invisible, because it is still more 
 refined. Spirit and matter are in the relation 
 of cause and effect. Matter is the manifestation 
 of spirit. The entire material world, as we call 
 it, is the manifestation of the spiritual w^orld. 
 All this part of life is experimental. It is the 
 rehearsal before the play, the tuning of the 
 instruments before the concert. We are learn- 
 ing how to begin to live and to realize how inex- 
 haustible are the treasures of the spiritual world. 
 The acceptance of this philosophy which teaches 
 the interpenetration of the ethereal and the physi- 
 cal will give to those who recognize its truth a 
 " knowledge of scientific causes," and as has been 
 well said : " Those who have been fascinated by 
 
Vision and Achievement 127 
 
 the mysteries of science, and come only in the 
 hope of adding some new physical law to those 
 already known will learn to know God through 
 the beauty of our teachings ; and those who will 
 come in the hope of finding at last a solution for 
 social problems will find in these teachings a 
 comforting love and a most admirable science 
 and beautiful understanding of life, the only one 
 able to give to man peace and happiness." 
 Yet it has been remarked that if one contem- 
 plates with any special devotion of thought the 
 nature of existence in its wholeness, it tends to 
 unfit him for " practical " life ; that his convic- 
 tion of infinite progress would lead him to feel 
 that the present had no value. The truth is just 
 the opposite of this. Let one realize the absolute 
 continuity of existence and at once life becomes 
 worth the living. 
 
 Let one — by way of illustration — suppose a 
 day which ended with a night beyond which the 
 individual had no clear idea of the experiences 
 which awaited him. Let it further be supposed 
 that he expected some great change to take 
 place in himself during the night, so that, on 
 again resuming consciousness, he would have 
 
128 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 lost all trace of his identity, and he would be in 
 conditions inconceivable to him at the present 
 time. Could he work with the same energy and 
 clearness of aim that he does when realizing 
 that he takes up his work on the morrow where 
 he lays it down to-day? The analogy holds 
 perfectly true in its relation to life before and 
 after the event of death. The clear realization 
 of an orderly progression under divine laws ; the 
 consciousness that where we leave off here, we 
 begin there ; that every intellectual acquirement 
 and development of those qualities which are 
 immortal — love, patience, generosity, tolerance, 
 sweetness of spirit — enable their possessor to 
 enter on the conditions to which they corre- 
 spond, — this realization is that which encourages 
 and stimulates one in his present experiences. 
 
 Again, the higher spiritual world is not entered 
 exclusively by the gateway of death. It may be 
 entered to-day. It is not the condition of being 
 divested of a physical body, but of realizing and 
 achieving the development of the spirit. Every 
 time that one controls the impatient word or 
 thought ; that he realizes the close ties of human 
 brotherhood : that he is careful for the interest 
 
Visio7i and Achievement 129 
 
 and advancement of others as well as for him- 
 self, — in all these is he living, now and here, 
 ihe higher life of the spiritual state. 
 
 The intuitive certainty of the nature of the 
 life to come is being wonderfully reinforced of 
 late by the demonstrable facts of communication 
 between those who have gone beyond death and 
 those here. If it were true that the event we 
 call death so entirely changed the plane of 
 consciousness that no communication between 
 that state and this were possible, then by all 
 means let us come to the clear perception and 
 the entire acceptation of this theory. Even then, 
 as our present state has definite limits, we 
 need not be as those without hope. We know 
 that sometime within a hundred years from our 
 first entering on this part of life we shall 
 inevitably pass on to another part ; and while we 
 all feel the theatre of the present to be infinitely 
 enlarged, uplifted, and ennobled by the inter- 
 communication with the state just beyond, yet 
 even were it utterly devoid of this and life 
 restricted exclusively to the physical world, still 
 as spiritual beings now and here we would admit 
 
 it to be even then full of the richest significance, 
 9 
 
130 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of noble dignity, of infinite opportunity. So 
 could we for a moment imagine an absolute 
 barrier shut down between the two states of 
 life, — an impenetrable one which forbade to us 
 any intimation of the friend who had passed out 
 of his physical body, — even then life would have 
 its duties, its dignities, even its hopes and 
 beliefs. For while it is a question that seems to 
 include great possibilities of personal happiness 
 during the remainder of life here, yet we all, in 
 the hours of deepest experience, realize that 
 there are other interests than those of personal 
 happiness, and that we may, as Carlyle has 
 said, " do without happiness and find blessed- 
 ness." At all events, there is no person who 
 may not find opportunities for usefulness, and he 
 would be unworthy of the gift of life if he did 
 not value these and pray to fulfil them to the 
 utmost of his ability. Still, these very opportu- 
 nities of being useful to others, of contributing 
 to the progress of his day, are very largely in- 
 creased by the interpenetration of that world of 
 finer force with this one in which the causes in 
 the higher are felt as effects in the lower. And 
 supreme above all mortal reasoning or desire 
 
Vision and Achievement. 131 
 
 rises the greatness and goodness of God the 
 Father and of Jesus the Son ; the overwhelming 
 reality and importance of the Christian life, the 
 marvellous significance of the example and the 
 teachings of Jesus, and one seems to hear a voice 
 that says, " Be still, and know that I am God." 
 In this supreme consciousness, the question of 
 communication between those in the Seen and 
 those in the Unseen reveals itself as one detail 
 only in the great wholeness of life, almost as a 
 letter coming or not coming from a friend might 
 be a detail in a week's experience. If the letter 
 comes, one is glad ; if it does not come, why, one 
 knows that his friend lives and loves him, — 
 that his friend is fulfilling the duties of his 
 place ; and if the letter does not come to-day, it 
 may to-morrow. 
 
 Faith in Christ and in immortality is untouched 
 and unimpaired by either the reality or unreality 
 of specific communication between the two 
 worlds ; yet if this communication is indeed one 
 of the divine laws, what a vista it opens before 
 the eye ! Canon Wilberforce in Westminster 
 Abbey is preaching the truth of the communion of 
 spirit with spirit across the gulf of death ; of the 
 
132 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 higher unfolding of spiritual powers while here 
 in the body ; in the heretofore undreamed 
 potencies that science is discovering ; the truth 
 of thought transference ; the transformation of 
 life by the closer union of humanity with God. 
 It is the present privilege of each and all to live 
 in the spiritual world, among spiritual forces, 
 from motives of love, peace, joy, and good-will. 
 One may create his atmosphere of these ele- 
 ments, and make his life, as Canon Wilber- 
 force so truly says, the daily "coming forth 
 from that Father and coming into the world." 
 The most literal of facts is embodied in the 
 assurance that God will keep in perfect peace 
 those whose mind is stayed upon Him. 
 
 We are always by way of hearing more or less 
 reference made to certain things as being " prac- 
 tical," — as offering a reasonable and logical 
 basis on which to rest. In these days, when 
 thought is recognized as among the highest po- 
 tencies; when a newly discovered ray of light 
 penetrates substance heretofore believed to be 
 solid ; when we are perpetually conquering ter- 
 ritory in this realm of the Unseen, it may be 
 realized anew how practical is the counsel: 
 
Vision and Achievement. 133 
 
 " Commit thy way unto the Lord and He shall 
 bring it to pass." That is, unite one's will with 
 the will of God, one's energy with the Infinite 
 energy ; commit all one's hopes and desires and 
 belief to the irresistible currents of progress ; 
 merge every hope in the universal hope for the 
 triumph of good and the destruction of evil, and 
 the forces of life are transferred to a new centre ; 
 all the elements reorganize and rearrange them- 
 selves, and all things have become new. It is 
 as if on one side were conditions of the most 
 radiant joy and energy, of the divine magnetism, 
 of the uplifting forces. It is easy to live in 
 them. It is optional with one to live in the 
 negative, the lower, the discordant conditions; 
 but the choice is purely mental and does not in 
 the least depend upon outward circumstances. 
 The mind is a magnet ; all the forces in the uni- 
 verse are magnetic, and by concentrating one's 
 own power upon certain lines, all the forces 
 along those lines are drawn and may be used. 
 The universe is an infinite reservoir of all things 
 of which one has need. The supply is not pre- 
 cipitated by a miracle, but a strong desire, mag- 
 netized with right purpose, creates the conditions 
 
134 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 for its fulfilment. One may well stand in awe 
 of the infinite potencies that he may call to him 
 in hours of silent concentration unless he has for- 
 tified himself by uniting his spirit with the divine. 
 There is a scientific basis of spiritual life; 
 that is, there are modes and habits which con- 
 duce to the unfolding and the development 
 of the spiritual man ; there are modes and 
 habits that stifle the spiritual man, and prevent 
 this higher consciousness from manifesting itself 
 through the physical brain. Is not, then, this 
 study the most important and the most practical 
 that can be divined ? This basis teaches that the 
 higher life is twofold, negative and positive, or 
 passive and active. The first consists of avoiding 
 sins ; the second that of practising virtues. The 
 first is not to do certain things; the second is to 
 do certain things. Of course this corresponds pre- 
 cisely to the teachings of the Old Testament and 
 of Jesus ; the one that enjoined the command- 
 ments prefixed with "Thou shalt not;" the 
 other, that enjoined the active practice of love 
 and sacrifice. In the first mode we find an im- 
 portant feature in laying this foundation to be 
 that of truth ; of not uttering, by word or deed. 
 
Vision and Achievement. 135 
 
 any falsehood. For our conduct and our thought 
 is creating the ethereal body; to utter a false- 
 hood is to make a corresponding deformity; it 
 is to produce a flaw in the crystal; it is to 
 generate an influence that interposes as an ob- 
 stacle between our own souls and God. It is 
 the wasting of spiritual force, the true method 
 being to store it. In the first stage, besides 
 not consenting to any shade of falsity, one must 
 scrupulously refrain from unkind and disagree- 
 able thoughts, and from assisting to circulate 
 unpleasant or unkind impressions regarding 
 others. In the second stage, these virtues ad- 
 vance to the positive and active side, and the 
 student not only refrains from doing e^dl, but 
 actively does good. Thus is he modifying his 
 ethereal body which is plastic to his current of 
 thought, and is the result of his prevailing 
 mental and moral attitudes. Not only this, but 
 these mental and moral attitudes control the 
 magnetic and ethereal currents that shape events, 
 that produce all the outer circumstances and 
 conditions of our lives. 
 
 " It is a strengthening and calming consideration," 
 says Canon Wilberforce, " that we are in the midst 
 
136 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of an invisible world of energetic and glorious life, 
 a world of spiritual beings than whom we have been 
 made for a little while lower. Blessed be God for 
 the knowledge of a world like this. It is evidently 
 that region or condition of space in which the de- 
 parted find themselves immediately after death ; 
 probably it is nearer than we imagine, for Saint Paul 
 speaks of our being surrounded by a cloud of wit- 
 nesses. There, it seems to me, they are waiting for us." 
 
 It is a fact in contemporary progress that 
 communication between those in the Seen and 
 those in the Unseen has grown of late years far 
 less difficult. It is hardly anticipating too much 
 to say that the possibility of this communication 
 is a rather generally accepted fact by intelli- 
 gent people. There are few who do not admit 
 the conviction of its possibility; the dividing 
 line being that one believes that this communi- 
 cation is according to a natural law and is good 
 and profitable unto men, while another regards 
 it as the infringement of a law. Yet the day is 
 at hand when intelligent people will no more 
 think of doubting the law that renders commu- 
 nication possible than they would think of doubt- 
 ing the law of gravitation. 
 
Vision and Achievement, 13/ 
 
 Now, this of itself is an immense territory 
 already conquered. The Society of Psychic 
 Research has been a valuable factor in this 
 result ; and the fact that it is so largely com- 
 posed of scholars and of scientific men ; the fact 
 that it subjects to the severest tests all the evi- 
 dence brought before it, — are weighty arguments 
 with the general public. The methods employed 
 by the society have also stimulated new lines 
 of inquiry and have assisted in developing a 
 philosophic as well as a scientific approach to 
 the subject. It is most important that the 
 great truth be established in its wholeness. 
 The average conception of Spiritualism, at 
 present, is that it consists of a belief in me- 
 diumship ; and that the line of differentiation 
 between those who are and who are not Spirit- 
 ualists consists solely in those who seek the 
 phenomena of mediumship and those who do 
 not. Nothing could be more rudimentary than 
 this conception. The philosophy of Spiritualism 
 is the philosophy of the nature and destiny of the 
 soul. It is the philosophy of eternal life. It 
 must be sought within. There are people who 
 will assert that they have spent large amounts 
 
138 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of both time and money "going to mediums," 
 over a long period of years, but they " have 
 never gotten anything satisfactory." Most 
 certainly not. As well might those who are 
 ignorant of the rudiments of mathematics 
 consult the calculations of an astronomer. 
 The elementary necessity is to learn something 
 of the nature and the powers of the spiritual 
 and the psychic nature, — the spiritual being the 
 higher principle and the psychic nature being 
 its manifestation. It is necessary to understand 
 the laws of karma and of vibration. Karma, 
 simply speaking, is simply the working out of 
 causes. And its law is expressed in the words : 
 " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." But the sowing and reaping on the 
 spiritual plane differs greatly from that on 
 the material plane. If a man sow wheat in the 
 early spring, he cannot reap it until the sun- 
 shine and showers of three or four months have 
 caused it to germinate and grow and ripen. 
 But he may sow and reap on the spiritual plane 
 in five minutes. Time has no measure on the 
 spiritual side. 
 
 For instance : Supposing that a man is greatly 
 
Vision and Achievement 139 
 
 annoyed and irritated by the occurrence of a given 
 thing. The occurrence that annoys him is in his 
 karma, and sometime and somewhere he has 
 sown the cause of which this is the effect. It 
 may take him a lifetime to work it out ; or by 
 the use of concentration and meditation — which 
 is really prayer — he may at once, in a minute, 
 free himself from this bondage to an annoyance, 
 and all this is essential to understand the life of 
 spirituality. 
 
 It is this life of spirituality, in its close rela- 
 tions with the Unseen, that Canon Wilberforce 
 constantly teaches in his great sermons at West- 
 minster Abbey. Kant, that finest and most 
 subtle of seers, predicted that a time was at 
 hand in a not remote future when there should be 
 experienced "a communion actual and indisso- 
 luble " between spirits clothed in flesh and spirits 
 clothed in fairer forms. We stand on the very 
 threshold of the general realization of this truth. 
 
 The acceptance of the one most important law 
 that has been revealed to the world since the 
 time of Christ grows larger, broader, and more 
 universal daily. Even those who accepted the 
 philosophy find they had not believed too much, 
 
140 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 but too little. The ethereal world is apparently 
 in entire correspondence with the physical world. 
 As a condition and not a locality it exists side 
 by side; even more, it actually interpenetrates 
 all this physical world, and it thus presents to us 
 a realm of potency which, if we can but learn to 
 use, will enable us to render our lives here far 
 more significant and useful. 
 
 In the winter of 1896-97 Dr. Elmer Gates in 
 Washington made a series of significant experi- 
 ments. He had prepared a small room hardly 
 larger than a cell in which neither light nor 
 sound could possibly enter. Wall after wall 
 covered with various prepared surfaces enclosed 
 it, and once within one might, indeed, well defy 
 all the sights and sounds of the external world. 
 It was these that he desired to shut out and to 
 thus create for himself a sanctuary for higher 
 vibrations. The experiment offered him a num- 
 ber of curious results, one of which was the find- 
 ing that on thus excluding all sense vibrations^ he 
 could "tap," so to speak, any subject he wished 
 and draw information regarding it ; whether 
 music, mathematics, science, or invention. 
 The explanation suggests itself. We are now 
 
Vision and Achievement 141 
 
 in and of the spiritual worid, only that we are 
 imprisoned in the senses. It is as if a man were 
 nailed up in a box placed in a room. The man 
 would be in the room as well as the persons who 
 were walking about on the floor, only that, con- 
 fined by a denser medium, he would be shut out 
 from those who were not so confined. Con- 
 centration is merely the shutting out of the 
 sense perception, the escaping from the im- 
 prisonment of physical limitations. But the 
 higher form is not the experiment of enclos- 
 ing one's self in a barrier excluding sight and 
 sound ; or fixing the eye upon any special object 
 to induce a kind of self-hypnotization, but rather 
 to keep one's thought, one's conscious life, contin- 
 ually in the heavenly world. The assertion in 
 Psalms that no evil can assail the man whose 
 heart is stayed upon the Lord is merely this 
 truth expressed in other terms. 
 
 "But this is not practical or possible," cries 
 some one. " It is necessary to keep the thought 
 fixed on one's work." 
 
 Is there not a way? May not the teacher 
 going to his school, instead of falling into anxious 
 meditation or anxiety over his work or circum- 
 
142 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 stances, lift up his heart instead to the Lord with 
 gratitude that he may co-operate and aid in any 
 degree in the great work of enlarging and illumi- 
 nating and developing life ? Let him enter on his 
 work with this thought alone, and how uplifted 
 will he be ; how wonderfully helped and invigor- 
 ated by invisible influences, by unseen helpers. 
 His heart is " stayed upon the Lord ; " in other 
 words, he has gone into the spiritual world ; 
 he has stepped upon a higher plane, and he is 
 in the marvellous currents of spiritual life. 
 
 Conditions are plastic. They are as clay in 
 the hands of the potter. Everything one de- 
 sires is in solution, as it were, in the air. The 
 only danger is the spiritual danger of choosing 
 that which, however desirable, is not really best 
 for us, and this danger is obviated by holding 
 all things to the one perfect standard of the 
 mind stayed upon God. Life is simply a suc- 
 cession of conditions. One need not in the 
 least wait for death in order to enter on the 
 conditions of the spiritual world. He has but 
 to live in the spirit now ; that is, as he goes to 
 the plough, the office, the school, or the labora- 
 tory, — whatever his work or place, — he has 
 
Vision and Achievement. 143 
 
 but to harmonize himself as being glad and 
 joyful to co-operate with the divine power that 
 is over all in whatever way he can, and the 
 spiritual life, thus beginning to grow, will so 
 increase that he shall come to live the life of 
 spiritual freedom ; to dominate, rather than to be 
 controlled by circumstances ; to transcend his 
 limitations. We are entering upon a time when 
 all this is far more easy than ever before. We 
 are entering upon a higher round of life where 
 we shall soon be in easy and natural communion 
 with our friends and companions in the Unseen. 
 Meantime, even now we may talk to them, and 
 circumstances and results will prove to us that 
 they have heard and understood what we say. 
 
 "I should fear for a revealed religion in- 
 capable of expansion according to the needs 
 of man," wrote Mrs. Browning in one of her 
 earnest letters. 
 
 "What comes from God has life in it, and 
 certainly from all the growth of living things, 
 spiritual growth cannot be excepted. . . . What 
 are these intelligences, separated, yet relating 
 and communicating ? What is this state ? . . . 
 No truth can be dangerous. What if Jesus 
 
144 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 Christ be taken for a medium, do you say? 
 Well, -what then ? As a perfect man, He pos- 
 sessed, I conclude, the full complement of a 
 man's faculties. But if He walked on the sea 
 as a medium; if the virtue went out of Him 
 as a mesmeriser, — He also spoke the words 
 which never man spoke ; was born for us and 
 died for us and rose from the dead as the Lord 
 God our Saviour. The whole theory of Spirit- 
 ualism, all the phenomena, are strikingly con- 
 firmatory of revelation; nothing strikes me 
 more than that. Hume's argument against 
 miracles (a strong argument) disappears before 
 it, and Strauss's conclusions from a priori asser- 
 tion of impossibility fall in pieces at once. . . . 
 We are entering on a reformation far more in- 
 terior than Luther's." 
 
 The knowledge of the higher laws enables 
 one so to live that he need never rail at fate. 
 He can learn so to order his life as not to 
 fill his harvest bin with Sodom apples, but with 
 luscious fruit ; he can discover a chart by which 
 to set sail on rough seas; he can preserve the 
 fine cord of love from wear and jar and fret, 
 and not, instead, break it. All spiritual aspira- 
 
Vision and Achievement. 145 
 
 tioa and ndeavor has its corresponding physical 
 and scientific basis. It is needful only to learu 
 the law, — to so live that one may hear for him- 
 self the Voice. 
 
 " Harken ! Harken I 
 God speaketh to thy soul." 
 
 These words are not merely a poetic fancy, 
 but an actual fact. God speaks to every one, 
 and it is the responsibility of life to so live that 
 one may hear. 
 
 It is curious to trace the way in which this 
 truth has manifested itself all through the ages. 
 It is the secret of the "mortification of the 
 flesh" enjoined on the early Christians. It is 
 the underlying principle of all Delsarte train- 
 ing, of all the work of the schools of expres- 
 sion, and all forms of physical training, whether 
 consciously recognized or not. "Deny thyself 
 till life is spent." Deny the lower propensities 
 and cultivate the higher. It is not that the 
 enjoyments or indulgences of the senses are of 
 themselves invariably wrong; it is simply that 
 if the lower keep one from the higher, he would 
 then do well to sacrifice the lesser and the 
 temporary to the greater and the permanent. 
 10 
 
146 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 It is entirely possible to so live that the 
 psychic body shall take command, as it were; 
 shall live its own free, outgiving life in its 
 infinite energy. By auto-suggestion one may 
 transfer all the consciousness of effort to the 
 psychic body, where effort becomes, — not 
 fatigue, as with the physical body, but expres- 
 sion and achievement, which is a joy and not 
 an exertion. The secret of being always in 
 good health, always full of exhilaration and 
 energy, is to live in the psychic rather than in 
 the physical body. The former has its infinite 
 store of energy which can be drawn upon in 
 proportion as the physical body is kept sub- 
 ordinated by the minimum of food and by ex- 
 ercise and air, and by demanding constantly the 
 supply of spiritual strength. 
 
 The true nature of sleep is not, as has been 
 ordinarily believed, a provision for bodily rest, 
 but rather a provision for spiritual refreshment. 
 All the time it is the spiritual man with whom 
 we have to do. It has long been said that 
 mind controls the body, and governs all things, 
 but a clearer conception of the truth thus 
 embodied is to say that the spiritual self, the 
 
Vision and Achievement. 147 
 
 spiritual man, the real being, that is transiently 
 clothed with a physical body, controls and gov- 
 erns and determines. Instead of saying, "My 
 mind controls conditions," let us frankly and 
 clearly say, "/ control conditions." The con- 
 ception of the "mind'* is hazy and indefinite; 
 but the conception of an individual in the 
 psychic body, complete in form as is the body 
 we see, — and tenanting this visible body which 
 is its means of relation to the natural world, — 
 this conception is clear and simple and rational. 
 "The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of 
 motives." It follows that action is there born, 
 and that terrestrial effects are the result, the 
 manifestation of celestial causes. 
 
 In a sermon of great power preached by Eev. 
 Dr. E. Winchester Donald, the rector of Trinity 
 Church in Boston, — a discourse of singular illu- 
 mination, — he found his text in the words that 
 godliness profiteth a man, " having promise of the 
 life that now is as well as that which is to come." 
 Dr. Donald did not hesitate forcibly to present 
 the argument in its relation to the present life. 
 Godliness is profitable. It is the insurer of 
 those favorable external conditions which en- 
 
148 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 able a man to live his life honestly, uprightly, 
 generously; the life that wins the respect of 
 the community, the estimation of the civilized 
 world, and that thus makes itself the foun- 
 dation, the basis for the development of the 
 higher spiritual and the angelic states in the 
 infinite progression. Dr. Donald taught that 
 the spiritual life, the life of godliness, is the 
 only real life. Man is designed for it. He is 
 a spiritual being. When he lives the life of 
 godliness, he is in harmony with the environ- 
 ment of his real nature. Godliness is profit- 
 able for the life that now is, because this is, 
 now and here, the spiritual life, and all its 
 treasures and aids are the manifestation of 
 spiritual forces. Temporarily liberated by sleep, 
 man returns to his native atmosphere, and par- 
 takes of the conditions that sustain him. 
 
 For more than half a century a connected 
 body of evidence has been given to the world, 
 in constantly increasing intelligence and cohe- 
 rency, testifying to the personal communication 
 possible between spirit and spirit from the realm 
 of the Unseen to that of the Seen. This mass 
 of evidence has been, as Dr. Alfred Russel 
 
Vision and Achievement. 149 
 
 Wallace says, " tested and examined by sceptics 
 of every grade of incredulity, men in every way 
 qualified to detect imposture or to discover nat- 
 ural causes, — trained physicists, medical men, 
 lawyers, and men of business, — but in every 
 case the investigators have either retired baffled 
 or become converts." 
 
 All progress, scientific and moral, finds its 
 unity in the recognition that two orders of life 
 are in direct relation, and producing correspond- 
 ing effects, — one in the Seen, one in the 
 Unseen ; that these two realms are interpene- 
 trated, even in that close way in which the 
 psychic and the physical bodies are interpene- 
 trated while a man remains in the physical 
 world. It is more than two great realms in cor- 
 respondence to each other like the two hemis- 
 pheres on earth; it is interpenetration. The 
 great inventions are simply the recognition by 
 certain minds, like Edison, Marconi, Tesla, of 
 ideas revealed to them from the unseen realm. 
 The larger and more intelligent is the recogni- 
 tion of this companionship about us of those who 
 have gone on into the Unseen, the more exalted 
 does the quality of personal life become. 
 
150 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 " Immediate knowledge of God is our normal 
 state of existence," said Rev. Dr. McKenzie, in 
 the opening lecture of a series on ^* The Divine 
 Forces in the Universe," delivered before the 
 Lowell Institute in Boston ; a series of lectures 
 whose treatment was hardly less sublime than 
 the subject. Of all the great messages that 
 have been given from that platform consecrated 
 to high thought, none could be more remarkable 
 than that given by this celebrated New England 
 divine. " Immediate knowledge of God is 
 man's normal state of existence," — that sen- 
 tence is the keynote of life ; the point of de- 
 parture in all philosophy. To know God ; that 
 is, to comprehend the laws and their workings 
 which God has made, in this lies the one object 
 of man's existence on earth. He does not come 
 here to buy or to sell ; to produce great enter- 
 prises in commerce, in politics, in those inven- 
 tions which enter into and co-operate with the 
 laws of nature; not primarily does he come to 
 this world for any of these; but — to develop 
 the powers of his own soul. All these great 
 and important activities are means to an end, 
 and that end is spiritual development. The 
 
Vision and Achievement, 151 
 
 important inventions and enterprises that sub- 
 due a continent ; that tunnel its mountains ; 
 that build towns and cities in its forests ; that 
 perform marvellous results in civil engineering, 
 in the bridging of rivers and chasms ; the carry- 
 ing of railways up a mountain-side ; the im- 
 provement of harbors and of the mouths of 
 rivers; the great inventions of the electrical 
 world that carry a cable under the ocean ; that 
 convey the sound of the human voice a thousand 
 miles ; that with a battery of concealed magnets 
 hold a battleship imprisoned by this subtle and 
 invisible force as completely as if a granite wall 
 had been built about her ; the beam of light that 
 makes conversation easy at ten miles' distance ; 
 the graphophone, that can produce the hypnotic 
 trance as well as a professional hypnotist, per- 
 sonally ; the electric wire that can convey form 
 and color, — producing a picture, as well as 
 sound; all these and other marvels, which are 
 not less marvellous because they have grown to 
 be familiar appliances in daily life, — what are 
 they all in their last analysis but the manifes- 
 tations of the power of spirit over matter ? Of 
 the way in which man, made in the image of 
 
152 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 the Divine, is calculated to control — not to be 
 controlled by — the laws of nature. 
 
 " In the beginning — God." Later — man, 
 into whom God breathed, and man became — 
 a living spirit ! What is our conception of God ? 
 A living spirit, or, rather, a spirit who is life ; 
 the divine Source of all the life of the universe. 
 If man, then, became a living spirit, by God's 
 personal creation of him as such, how exalted is 
 his place in nature, how significant his responsi- 
 bility in the world of action, which is always 
 and entirely the moral world! It is the* moral 
 universe that holds in solution and controls the 
 material universe. Man, then, is a part of the 
 divine force, and it is his province to co-operate 
 with God in the development of spiritual lawSo 
 " The soul," says Emerson, " has plentiful powers 
 and direct effects," and these powers may be 
 developed into an almost infinite source of 
 energy by those who enter into a knowledge 
 of the law. Now, the initiation by which one 
 achieves the power to so relate himself to the 
 universal energy as to largely overcome the 
 limitations of fatigue and of time is a very 
 positive and not at all a merely passive matter. 
 
Vision and Achievement, 153 
 
 Spiritual receptivity is not a negative attitude. 
 It is not holding up languidly an empty cup, 
 expecting that sometime and some way it will 
 be filled without exertion on our part. Spiritual 
 receptivity is not to be regarded as a matter of 
 emptiness ; but, rather, the condition of the very 
 highest receptivity is that of the highest degree 
 of spirituality. When electricity flies from the 
 static to the dynamic, leaps across any gulf or 
 through any obstacle, it is not because the ob- 
 ject to which it leaps is inert, but rather because 
 it is in a highly charged state which attracts the 
 corresponding potency to itself. This illustration 
 exactly portrays the condition of receiving from 
 the atmosphere this current of infinite and ir- 
 resistible energy, which enables one to achieve 
 a vast amount of work in a very little time, and 
 without exhaustion to himself. 
 
 To come into this condition is a work involv- 
 ing the entire threefold force of body, mind, and 
 soul. While the spiritual man inhabits a physical 
 body, the condition of the body must afiect, pro- 
 portionately, the receptivity of spiritual power. 
 The body is the temple of the indwelling spirit, 
 and it has laws which must be obeyed. The 
 
154 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 body is the result of its range of attraction. It 
 is constantly changing, old atoms being thrown 
 off and new ones attracted, and because of this, 
 one can make his body what he will. It may 
 be gross and heavy, or it may be made light and 
 subtle. As its only use is as the vehicle of 
 spirit, the more light and agile and subtle it can 
 be made, the better it fulfils that purpose. The 
 factors in making it light and subtle are air, 
 water, exercise, food, and thought. Fresh, pure 
 air is one of heaven's best gifts, and no one is 
 less appreciated. Not merely is it enjoyed by 
 going out of doors, but by keeping every room 
 constantly supplied with pure, fresh, life-giving 
 air. The cold bath on rising in the morning is 
 — in its effects, at least — almost as much a con- 
 dition of spiritual as it is physical vigor. It 
 may be made far more efficacious by impressing 
 upon the subtle body the thought of the spiritual 
 cleansing and renewal that is typified by the 
 physical cleanliness. To direct the thought thus 
 upon the purification of the spirit is to invest 
 the bath with an intense current of magnetic 
 power. The day is past w^hen it could be 
 considered an absurdity to stamp the impress 
 
Vision and Achievement, 155 
 
 of thought upon an external act. Let one 
 plead, as he plunges into the cold, sparkling, 
 invigorating water : *' Cleanse Thou me from 
 secret faults." Let him assert to himself as he 
 emerges : " I will arise in newness of life." The 
 bath may be thus invested with fairly magic 
 properties, and one is made anew and made 
 alive, and every nerve responds to a higher 
 range of vibration. It is not necessary to be 
 an athlete in order to take sufficient exercise for 
 the attainment of the finer state of life. The 
 spirit in which one takes his walks in the open 
 air is far more important than is their length, 
 their frequency, or their duration. 
 
 The question of food is always important, 
 and the eating or abstaining from meat is not 
 a merely arbitrary distinction, but is based on 
 laws as exact as those of mathematics. Every 
 substance has its own rate of vibration. The 
 vibration of animal life is on a far lower scale 
 than that- of human life. It is instinct with 
 crude passions, fears, desires, all relating them- 
 selves to a lower plane of existence. When 
 this food, then, is taken into the human body, 
 it sets up its own range of correspondences, and 
 
156 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 it builds up, — not the finer, the subtle^ and the 
 ethereal body, but the coarser one. Food 
 should really be taken for the subtle rather 
 than for the physical body ; it should be of 
 such a quality that the subtle body can ap- 
 propriate the finer aroma. Food that is pure, 
 light, wholesome, fits the body to respond, like 
 a fine-tuned instrument, to the higher vibrations 
 of spiritual energy. Food that is heavy and 
 coarse unfits it to respond to this range, and 
 thus clogs and imprisons the indwelling spirit. 
 Once realizing this principle, man can determine 
 for himself the quality and quantity of the foods 
 that best fit him to express his higher life. 
 There can be no arbitrary rules. Needs and 
 powers vary with the individual, and each must, 
 by test and experiment, determine for himself. 
 The human organism is a chemical laboratory 
 of the most complex variety, and the action 
 and reaction of food depends upon a thousand 
 things, inclusive of both physical and mental, 
 which cannot be decided, in any authoritative 
 way, by one for another. More potent, how- 
 ever, than any one of these, and more potent 
 than all combined, if multiplied a thousandfold. 
 
Vision and Achievement. 157 
 
 is the factor of thought, " As a man thinketh, 
 so is he." It is literally true. Thought shall 
 determine his form, his bearing, his presence, his 
 atmosphere. Thought shall also determine his 
 power of commanding his life, rather than to 
 accept it at the mere drift and mercy of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " Soul's desire is means enow^ *' 
 
 says Emerson. The soul's desire should con- 
 trol the soul's progress. For the soul is the di- 
 vine spark that remains in its high relation with 
 the divine, and thus may be trusted. Mere 
 desire on a lower plane has often to be denied 
 and uprooted before progress can be made ; but 
 the soul's desire is to be held supreme. 
 
 To be able to '^ command our life ; " to recog- 
 nize the forecast, and choose, and select, and 
 combine events to the highest purpose, — is a 
 perfectly normal condition, and it is one which 
 it is man's duty to achieve by this high and har- 
 monious living. 
 
 The physical body corresponds with the phys- 
 ical plane of life. It is manageable on that plane 
 alone. The astral or ethereal body corresponds 
 
158 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 with the ethereal or the astral plane, and may 
 be controlled — that is, held manageable — on 
 that plane. And what is that plane ? It is 
 the plane of all the mental and moral life ; of the 
 spiritual life, — which is, of course, the real, the 
 essential life of the individual as seen apart from 
 physical functions. A man may eat and sleep 
 well and yet be hardly alive in the true sense. 
 He does not Uve—m the true significance of 
 the term — only just in the proportion in which 
 he lives in thought. Now thought not only 
 controls the ethereal or astral body; it creates 
 it. The quality of that body, whether fine or 
 coarse, corresponds to the quality of thought. 
 A life lived in pure purpose and noble aspiration 
 creates a refined and beautiful astral body. A 
 life lived in noble aspiration enables the mental 
 power to so dominate this astral body that it 
 becomes, upon its o\vn plane, manageable and 
 perfect in its service to the real being who 
 dwells in it. Now, when one realizes himself as 
 a spiritual being dwelling in his astral or spiritual 
 body, which is encased, but not necessarily wholly 
 imprisoned, by his physical body he is already a 
 conscious inhabitant of tlie world of spirits. He 
 
Vision and Achievement. 159 
 
 can hold converse with those in the ethereal 
 world, spirit to spirit, just as perfectly as with 
 those in the physical life, to whom he speaks 
 viva voce and whose response he hears. Sight 
 and hearing and response of thought and feeling 
 are faculties of the spirit. To a far less degree 
 — far less keen and fine, and far less swift in re- 
 cognition and response — they are also organs of 
 the physical body ; but only in a dim and muffled 
 and imperfect way compared to their greater per- 
 fection in the ethereal organism. The physical 
 body simply provides a temporary seclusion from 
 the great realities of the ethereal world, so that, 
 by means of this seclusion, man may gain a cer- 
 tain experience to be found only on the physical 
 plane. But the real life is in the ethereal world, 
 just as the real life to a youth or maiden is not 
 in the temporary seclusion of college, where the 
 larger world is shut out in order that certain 
 phases of special development shall be attained, 
 but awaits them after they leave this temporary 
 environment for the larger and more significant 
 one of active life. 
 
 The conservation of energy is under the law 
 of the correlation of forces. Nothing is lost that 
 
160 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 has ill it a spark of spiritual vitality. It emerges 
 into other forms, and reappears in larger and 
 fuller usefulness. All the material and mechani- 
 cal side of life is rapidly changing to subtler and 
 finer forms. In the new city houses the kitchen 
 range is fed by gas, doing away with all the 
 clumsiness of coal and kindlings, ashes and 
 cinders. Horses are rapidly being displaced by 
 the automobile. Wireless telegraphy is on its 
 way to utterly supersede the wire, and it is no 
 baseless fabric of a dream to say that telepathy 
 will come to supersede the telephone and the 
 postal service and wireless telegraphy, and that 
 perhaps, even within the coming century, men 
 will communicate by sending thought to thought 
 from mind to mind independent of any visible 
 means. 
 
 We may reason from the past to the future 
 and from the barbaric to the mediaeval ages ; 
 from mediaeval to modern the mechanical side 
 of civilization has grown finer and finer, and 
 cruder forces have changed to the more subtle, 
 just in proportion as 
 
 " the thoughts of men have widened with the progress of 
 the suns." 
 
Vision and Achievement. 161 
 
 For every visible and tangible phase of life 
 follows thought, and it cannot fail to be evident 
 that thought is the divine element in humanity. 
 So much thought, so much power. The two are 
 indissolubly connected as cause and sequence. 
 Again, the finer the thought, the higher it is in 
 degree, so much finer and higher are the mani- 
 fested results. The individual is enabled to be 
 useful, important to the activities of the world, 
 or the reverse, just in corresponding degree to 
 the quality and force of his thought. One's 
 individual life exteriorizes in proportion and in 
 exact correspondence with this power. 
 
 " As garment draws the garment's hem, 
 Men their fortunes bring with them." 
 
 The whole secret of life is in learning how 
 to spiritualize the conditions ; thought, manifest- 
 ing itself in energy and love, will then come 
 to be the natural, daily experience of living 
 in this purer atmosphere where it is the cre- 
 ative power and where nothing is " retentive to 
 the strength of spirit." More a,nd more are we 
 learning to realize that what we have called two 
 worlds, two lives, is, after all, only the evolution- 
 11 
 
162 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 arj states of one life, which, as it develops and 
 advances, creates constantly new conditions, new 
 "worlds," so to speak. Even in this life on 
 earth we see here that childhood has one world, 
 youth another, and manhood still a new and 
 larger one, all related to one another as a con- 
 stantly progressive sequence of succeeding states, 
 each of which depends for its conditions and its 
 quality on the state that has preceded it. Each 
 depends on a perfect integrity of life, an unfalter- 
 ing obedience to the moral law which is the only 
 foundation on which to rear the superstructure 
 of the life of spirituality. 
 
 Nothing more unerringly registers the degree 
 of progress achieved than the degree to which 
 faculties of communication are advanced. From 
 the slow and uncertain intercourse carried on by 
 means of the stagecoach and the sailing vessel 
 to that by wireless telegraphy is a far cry, yet 
 it is no farther than the distance registered by 
 the difference between the civilization of the 
 days of the stagecoach and sailing ships and the 
 civilization of the age of the biograph, the auto- 
 mobile, wireless telegraphy, and telepathy. 
 
 The latest great project in civil engineering is 
 
Vision and Achievement. 1C3 
 
 the idea of a distinguished French civil engineer, 
 M. Jean Berlier. He considers that an inter- 
 continental tunnel, uniting Spain and Morocco, 
 prolonged by a railway from Tangiers to Lalla 
 Maghnia, would prove invaluable for the success- 
 ful development of the African colonies of France. 
 From soundings taken by him, M. Berlier has 
 proved the existence of a compact rock forma- 
 tion across the straits, which guarantees solidity 
 and impermeability. The undertaking, he says, 
 would be no more difficult than the piercing of 
 Mont Cenis, Saint Gothard, the Arlberg, or the 
 Simplon. He adds that if the diplomatic obsta- 
 cles are not greater than the natural, success is 
 certain. This plan comprehends the connection 
 of the lines of the Algerian railway system and 
 the extension from Tangiers to Lalla Maghnia. 
 The Spanish government has already consented, 
 and the consent of the Moors is anticipated. 
 
 A project, less defined, to tunnel the straits 
 between the extreme northwest point of North 
 America and Asia is in the air, making it 
 possible that future travellers will journey to 
 India by way of Alaska ; and if the British Chan- 
 nel could be tunnelled at the narrowest point 
 
164 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 between England and France, — and it is only 
 twenty-eight miles between Dover and Calais, — 
 the civilized world would be in tlie way of very 
 swift communication and travelling facilities. 
 Nationally and individually facilities of communi- 
 cation mean facilities for better mutual under- 
 standing and closer and finer comprehension of 
 mutual needs. The extension of facilities for 
 communication means the extension of mutual 
 sympathies and the promotion of kindness. And 
 kindness is, as the poet well tells us, the chief 
 good : — 
 
 " ' What is the real good ? ' 
 I asked in a musing mood. 
 
 * Order,' said the law court ; 
 
 * Knowledge,' said the school; 
 < Truth,' said the wise man ; 
 
 ' Pleasure,' said the fool ; 
 
 * Love,' said the maiden ; 
 
 * Beauty,' said the page ; 
 
 ' Freedom,' said the dreamer; 
 ' Home,' said the sage ; 
 
 * Fame,' said the soldier ; 
 
 ' Equity,' the seer. 
 Spake my heart full sadly : 
 
 ' The answer is not here.' 
 Then within my bosom 
 Softly this I heard : — 
 
 * Each heart holds the secret : 
 
 Kindness is the word.' " 
 
Vision and Achievement, 1G5 
 
 Better than wealth or fame or learning is that 
 sweet and responsive sympathy that not only 
 gives the best treasures of life, but that kindles 
 and stimulates, and creates an atmosphere in 
 which all the nobler feelings and more po- 
 tent energies find their room for growth and 
 achievement. Like all the best gifts of life, 
 kindness is within the power of every one to 
 give, and it is the chief treasure of every one to 
 receive. 
 
 Existence is constantly conditioned, and we 
 advance with orderly precision by means of 
 spiritual achievements. Assimilating into life 
 the elements of hope, faith, and love, we ad- 
 vance into the environment that corresponds 
 with this higher quality. This orderly advance 
 will be found one of almost mathematical preci- 
 sion. It is hindered, is broken, by not keep- 
 ing faith with one's plans and promises. The 
 habit of breaking or neglecting engagements, 
 if indulged at all, grows on one with fatal 
 facility. It will be found one that throws 
 the entire environment into disastrous con- 
 fusion. The train of causes set in process 
 by an act or intention is broken off by the 
 
166 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 failure to keep faith with some other intention 
 or promise; and the result is much as if a 
 gardener should nip the buds of the flowers that 
 were to be, and thus prevent their blossoming. 
 Each act or resolution of one's life has its re- 
 sults in posse. These results are the natural 
 evolution, but if they are suddenly frustrated 
 the entire mental atmosphere and environ- 
 ment is thrown into confusion, and life does 
 not proceed to its possible achievements. 
 
 Believe, then, in all noble and beautiful ful- 
 filments ; keep faith with the ideals that reveal 
 themselves ; keep all the strands of purpose 
 definite and disentangled; so shall life be fair, 
 and proceed in the way of divine evolution. 
 
 "What differentiates us one from another is 
 the relation we hold with the Infinite," well 
 said Maurice Maeterlinck. Now this relation 
 is capable of infinite enlargement and multipli- 
 cation. The higher or the lower life is wholly 
 determined by the strength and the number of 
 these relations. In these is the key to knowl- 
 edge and to a clear recognition of the friends 
 in the Unseen. Between spirit and spirit are 
 direct and mysterious relations that transcend 
 
Vision and Achievement, 167 
 
 time and space, and which can be developed in 
 the conscious life in an increasing degree. 
 
 To one who glances with Dr. Alfred Russel 
 Wallace backward over this " wonderful cen- 
 tury," and over the panorama of the centuries 
 that lie behind it, the review suggests to how 
 remarkable a degree the progress of the times 
 keeps pace with the demands of humanity. As 
 man advances, things advance. Circumstances 
 are his servitors. His life attains to a degree of 
 energy that demands swifter transit, and steam 
 supersedes the coach, and the electric motor 
 supersedes steam. He requires better illumi- 
 nation, and the candle succeeds the torch, the 
 lamp the candle, gas the lamp, and electricity 
 succeeds gas. His life achieves a rate of energy 
 which requires swift communication, and the 
 steamer supersedes the sailing vessel ; the sub- 
 marine cable supersedes the steamer ; the tele- 
 graph supersedes the postal service. A still 
 higher degree of achievement requires even 
 swifter and more subtle means, and a Tesla 
 or Marconi discover an hitherto unknown force 
 in the universe, and we have wireless telegraphy ; 
 the powers of man's own soul develop, and 
 
168 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 we have telepathy. Man achieves a certain 
 breadth of view and demands to know the mar- 
 vels of the universe. The result of the demand 
 is the invention of the telescope; the result 
 of increasing knowledge and demand is the 
 further perfecting of the telescope till we have 
 the Lick and the Yerkes, and the extension of 
 both by means of the spectroscope, with its 
 wonderful revelations regarding the true nature 
 of the Pole Star that open a new chapter in the 
 romance of astronomy. The Pole Star had been 
 regarded as the one — and, indeed, the only — 
 fixed and absolute in the universe. Wliatever 
 changed, it was steadfast. Whatever revolutions 
 or process of evolution the vast glittering firma- 
 ment underwent, this beacon light was constant. 
 Suddenly Professor Campbell of the Lick Ob- 
 servatory makes a wonderful discovery. The 
 Pole Star is not one body, but three. It is one 
 of an intricate triple system, all of which are 
 in constant and rapid motion of a complicated 
 order, advancing and receding, and two of the 
 three are revolving about the other. 
 
 Now these two additional and newly dis- 
 covered stars cannot be called " new stars " any 
 
Vision and Achievement. 169 
 
 more than any form of affirmation of the su- 
 premacy of the spiritual life can be called " new 
 thought." A half-century ago Doepler demon- 
 strated the principle by means of which this 
 discovery has been made. If the star is ap- 
 proaching the earth in its orbit, the light waves 
 shown by the spectroscope are shortened ; if it is 
 receding, they are lengthened. With the magic 
 aid that the spectroscope lends to the telescope, 
 Professor Campbell has discovered the nature of 
 the movements of the Pole Star. At first he 
 only inferred that from the curious movements 
 it must be acted upon by companion stars. 
 To the great thirty-six-inch telescope of the 
 Lick Observatory, poised high above the clouds 
 on a peak of Mount Hamilton, the spectroscope 
 was attached, and at last, by the most delicate 
 reasoning and mathematical measurements, the 
 theory suggested was verified. 
 
 Man demanded records of events and thought, 
 and hieroglyphics grew to language, and manu- 
 scripts, laboriously written, found their evolution 
 in the invention of the printing-press. The first 
 crude and mechanical process has been merged 
 into the present splendid system of typographical 
 
170 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 art. Thus does thought create in the ethereal 
 world, and its manifestations actualize themselves 
 in the physical world. " Thought lets us into re- 
 alities," as Emerson has so truly said. Thought, 
 vision, penetrates into the ethereal world and 
 constructs mentally or *^ builds in the astral," 
 as a Theosophist would say. After any object 
 or purpose is clearly held in thought, its precipi- 
 tation^ in tangible and visible form, is merely 
 a question of time. Columbus saw in vision a 
 path through the trackless waters around the 
 world. The vision always precedes, and itself 
 determines the realization. 
 
 The absolute continuity of life, persisting 
 through all changes of condition and form, is the 
 great truth on which to base all plans and con- 
 ceptions of living. For one may make his plans 
 not for time, but for eternity ; not for a period 
 probably terminating within fourscore years or so, 
 but for an immortal and infinite extension. The 
 finest word that has ever been given regarding 
 that progress which is called " growing old " 
 was that spoken by Mrs. Livermore, when she 
 said, in reference to being on the eve of her 
 seventy-eighth birthday, that she was not going 
 
Vision and Achievement, 171 
 
 down hill ; she was climbing up and approaching 
 the summit. Here is the true view of life. 
 The close of the temporary physical sojourn 
 is the entering into a more positive and real 
 and radiant life, the continuity unbroken and 
 rich, with all the wealth of intellectual and 
 spiritual treasure that has been gathered here. 
 It is as logical to begin new studies, to en- 
 ter on new achievements, at seventy as at seven- 
 teen. One does not die because of death. 
 The mere change of form has no power over 
 the spiritual being who has been sojourning 
 here, except to liberate the energy and to give 
 it the stimulus of new and finer conditions. 
 No life is so fortunate that it is free from diffi- 
 culties and perplexity. A truer reading would, 
 indeed, be that no life is so unfortxiwdte as to be 
 free from these, for the soul gains the strength 
 of the hardship it overcomes, and thus its hard- 
 ship is good rather than ill fortune. That he 
 who will keep on, true to the highest ideal that 
 is revealed to him, through good report or evil 
 report, through happiness or hardship, through 
 delights or difficulties, — regarding these as 
 purely incidental matters, as we regard a stormy 
 
172 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 day on which we are obliged to be out not 
 desirable, but still as not a thing that should 
 interfere at all with our duties or pleasures, — he 
 who shall thus keep his pursued ideal in sight 
 will lead a successful life, whatever its outward 
 conditions. Success consists solely in the quali- 
 ties developed, in the degree of spiritual life 
 achieved. To be considerate, courteous, gener- 
 ous, tender, and noble in thought and purpose, — • 
 this is to be successful. To be selfish, inconsid- 
 erate, to lack sympathy and comprehension, — 
 this is to make of life a failure, whatever riches 
 may be amassed, whatever honors or acclaim 
 may be won. 
 
 Nor need one wait for what we call the future 
 life to enter into the kingdom of heaven. " The 
 kingdom of God for any soul is that condition 
 anywhere in the universe when God is that soul's 
 king, where it seeks and obeys the highest, 
 where it loves truth and duty more than comfort 
 and luxury," said Bishop Brooks. There are an 
 increasing number of people who are living 
 daily in that kingdom ; who are pressing for- 
 ward in the identification of the divine laws of 
 the universe with the divine laws of the truer 
 
Vision and Achievement. 173 
 
 life, for it is a fatal error in conception to rele- 
 gate the spiritual life of the spiritual world to 
 some unknown realm after the change called 
 death. It is here and now. We are spiritual 
 beings dwelling in a spiritual world to just that 
 degree in which we live in spirituality. To say 
 that we are spiritual beings now and here is, 
 however, an assertion that requires modification. 
 One might as well assert himself to be de facto a 
 scholar, a savant, before he had achieved scholar- 
 ship. Rather should it be said : We are poten- 
 tially spiritual beings, for spirituality of life is not 
 a gift but an achievement; not a phrase, but 
 an experience. It is the mainspring of an energy 
 of purpose, the force unresistible. Darwin re- 
 vealed to the world the great law of evolution 
 operating on the physical plane. The same law 
 operates on the spiritual plane with increased 
 energy. Science is constantly conquering new 
 territory, and advancing into what had hereto- 
 fore been regarded as the region of unknown 
 forces. The miracles of one decade are the 
 utilities of the succeeding one. Scientific pro- 
 gress proceeds in continually accelerated ratio, 
 and at the present rate every decade does more 
 than the work of the preceding century. 
 
174 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 When Dr. Henry Drmnmond gave to the 
 world his illuminating book entitled " Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World," he opened the 
 portals of higher enlightenment. " Science 
 speaks to us, indeed, of much more than numbers 
 of years," he says. " It defines degrees of life ; 
 it explains a widening environment. It unfolds 
 the relation between a widening environment and 
 increasing complexity in organisms." 
 
 In these words is indicated the true nature 
 of the life beyond death, — a life of widening 
 environment, of more positive and abounding 
 energy, of deeper and of increasing significance. 
 As humanity achieves its higher development the 
 barriers between the Seen and the Unseen are con- 
 quered and overcome. More and more will the 
 two states of being meet and mingle. Already 
 this world is experiencing the results of this 
 facility of intercourse by means of telepathic 
 communication from spirit to spirit, from mind 
 to mind, in the greater ideas, the larger concep- 
 tions, that manifest themselves under all forms 
 of scientific activity. Already the world is full 
 of its hints and prophecies of the grander life 
 achieved in proportion to the degree of develop- 
 ment, irrespective of the eventful change of 
 
Vision and Achievement. 175 
 
 death, which is but one among the many proc- 
 esses in evolutionary progress. 
 
 Since such men as Prof. William James of 
 Harvard University, Sir William Crookes, Mr. 
 F. W. H. Myers, Professor Sidgwick, Dr. Richard 
 Hodgson, Prof. Oliver Lodge, and many another 
 noted name that might be added, unreservedly 
 announce their convictions that there is inter- 
 course between those in the Seen and in the 
 Unseen worlds, it may be permitted to introduce 
 here a communication made on May 9, 1890, by 
 Horace Greeley, to an individual whose name, 
 if one were to mention it here, would carry the 
 absolute assurance of authority. The theory of 
 communication between those in the Seen and 
 in the Unseen so profoundly interested Mr. Glad- 
 stone that in a conversation with Mr. Myers in 
 1885, the great statesman and premier of Eng- 
 land said : — 
 
 " It is the most important work which is being 
 done in the world, by far the most important," 
 he repeated, with a grave emphasis. To a well- 
 known and distinguished officer of the United 
 States Navy, Horace Greeley said through a 
 communication by automatic writing : — 
 
176 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 " A new idea is making its way among the in- 
 habitants of the earth which within a few years will 
 become vividly familiar. My advanced ideas during 
 my lifetime were considered the workings of a dis- 
 torted brain, but they should have proven me, in- 
 stead, to be a man capable of thought. In the 
 present, greater enlightenment prevails, and within a 
 comparatively brief time the science of intercommuni- 
 cation and the philosophy of what may be termed 
 this new religion will be the faith of the masses, — 
 a faith not far removed from the power of the 
 Catholic Church to-day. We on this side are all 
 working for it. The means of this communication is 
 by the gain of electric power in the universe, which 
 has not ripened until this century. It will increase 
 in the ages to come. It will be fully realized 
 that death is the change to a higher life, on which 
 we enter on an eternity of growth far beyond that 
 of any idea man has yet been enabled to grasp. 
 Minds as great as Aristotle failed to perceive the 
 truth that will soon become universal. In his day 
 the manifestations of spiritual life could not be per- 
 ceived as in the present day. There was a lack of 
 confirmation. Let the present progress in spiritual 
 knowledge go on for another century, and death will 
 have lost its stin^: and the grave its terror." 
 
Vision and Achievement, 177 
 
 It need no longer be regarded as a chimerical 
 idea to state clearly and earnestly the conviction 
 of the greater reality of the life entered upon by 
 the change of form whose process we call death. 
 It is no longer chimerical to regard this life as one 
 whose entire scenery and forces are as natural as 
 those of our present life, and of a character which 
 is indicated to us here by the recent advances 
 and achievements of science, — by the electric 
 cable, by the Rdntgen ray, by wireless telegraphy, 
 by that wonderful invention, the telectroscope, 
 shown in the Paris Exposition of 1900, by 
 means of which the eye sees what is passing at 
 a distance of hundreds of miles. All these in- 
 ventions are simply the extension of our experi- 
 mental knowledge into what was formerly held 
 to be the unknown universe. There are excur- 
 sions into the realm of higher potencies which 
 pertain to the ethereal world, — the state of life 
 just beyond this one. It is a tremendous fact 
 if there exists side by side with us, so to speak, 
 interpenetrating all our atmosphere, this other 
 world in which are the causes that manifest 
 themselves on our plane as effects; and if all 
 the revelations of modern science within the 
 12 
 
178 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 past ten years could be viewed aright, as the 
 result of man's increased insight into the myste- 
 ries of nature, his increased power to grasp the 
 workings of law, — if these could be so viewed 
 by the clerical teachers of the day, and these 
 relations to the progress of mental and spiritual 
 life made clear, — religion would become more 
 truly the practical aid and illumination of daily 
 life. 
 
 Psycho-physical culture is a new phase of de- 
 velopment which is claiming much attention, 
 and which, if rightly understood, will work re- 
 generation in man. Its object is simply making 
 the body the perfect, flexible, responsive instru- 
 ment of the spirit. The training consists in 
 harmonic gymnastics and deep breathing, in 
 light food, fresh air, and good sleep. So much 
 for the physical side. On the mental side the 
 quality of thought held is the all-important 
 thing. The securing of restful sleep is the 
 basis on w^hich to build the day's activities. 
 The conditions of perfect sleep are mental and 
 moral as well as physical, and require the har- 
 monious adjustment of the physical and the 
 spiritual natures. Auto-suggestion made just 
 
Vision and Achievement 179 
 
 before sleep will hold a power so potent over the 
 next day as to dominate its entire experiences. 
 The astral world about us is plastic to thought, 
 and can be stamped with any purpose, and 
 thereby the range of all activities can be wisely 
 controlled. This power of auto-suggestion at 
 night to shape and direct the affairs and ex- 
 periences of the succeeding day is marvellous 
 in its aid to the higher life, and, as has already 
 been noted, it operates on the three planes of 
 the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual. 
 Psycho-physical culture is the essential knowl- 
 edge on this new plane of advancement ; for 
 science, which has measured space in the heavens, 
 which has weighed the stars, which has found 
 a way to speak over a distance of a thousand 
 miles, and is soon to speak telephonically over 
 the ocean ; which has invented the means for ex- 
 tracting the iron scattered through tons of rock, 
 buried deep in the everlasting hills, and has 
 discovered the Rbntgen ray that shines through 
 solid substance, — science has now, with the sub- 
 blimest assertion of all, pushed its knowledge 
 out beyond the limits of the physical life, and 
 discovered the nature and the processes of the 
 
180 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 change called death, and the conditions beyond 
 on which the soul enters. 
 
 We learn that death is the process of liberat- 
 ing the psychical (which is the real) body from 
 the physical. Already the higher researches 
 in physiology have found nerve fibres branching 
 out that have no discernible use. They are 
 sporadic, and not merged in those nerves that 
 centre in ganglia and carry the sensations to or 
 from the brain. The psychic investigation may 
 form an hypothesis for these, — one that shall 
 see in them the connecting link between the 
 physical and the ethereal bodies. It is already 
 proven that the ethereal body is affected by the 
 food and habits of the physical, and it has long 
 been realized through vague and unformulated 
 experiences that sensations affect both bodies. 
 This new discovery may offer the physical basis 
 of the spiritual body, and thus of immortality. 
 
 Dr. Elmer Gates has discovered that after 
 exhausting the atmosphere in a tube of his 
 invention (of a stronger power than the Crookes 
 tube), — that after all the air is exhausted, some- 
 tiling yet remains. And what is it ? The finer 
 ether. And what is the purpose of this finer 
 
Vision and Achievement. 181 
 
 ether ? It is the atmosphere of the ethereal 
 body. The spiritual world is — where ? In the 
 atmosphere, — in this inner ether which fills 
 all space. Now, if there is another world cor- 
 responding to our own all about us, and within 
 this inner ether, what a tremendous fact this is ! 
 What an important truth confronts us, if ever 
 at hand is this extension of a finer counterpart 
 of all this realm ! And if this, too, is not the 
 shadow, but the substance ; not the dream, but 
 the reality. " For the things that are seen are 
 temporal, but those that are not seen are eter- 
 nal." All results of research in art or science 
 pale before the importance of clearly discerning 
 the truth regarding this corresponding sphere 
 which is the realm of causes, while the one in 
 which we live is the realm of effects. 
 
 The animal, the vegetable, and the mineral 
 kingdoms have their ethereal correspondences. 
 Interpenetrated with this universe — as the psy- 
 chical body is interpenetrated with the physical 
 body — is the ethereal universe ; and when liber- 
 ated from the physical body and the physical 
 world, man enters on what seems to him a 
 counterpart — only far more beautiful — of the 
 
182 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 world and the life he has left. There is no 
 violent and extraordinary change; indeed, the 
 first feeling is of wonder that the change is so 
 little ; the aspect of the " undiscovered country " 
 so natural. 
 
 " J^ow there is a perfect form," writes an authority 
 from the other side of life, ^' composed of magnetism 
 and electricity, and the magnetic form and the elec- 
 tric form bear the soul within them. The soul is 
 the guiding principle of the spiritual body, and 
 it clothes itself with magnetism and electricity. 
 "When the soul leaves the physical body, it takes the 
 magnetic and electric body with it, for these are in- 
 separable. Magnetism is invisible, except under cer- 
 tain conditions, and electricity is also an invisible 
 substance, except under certain conditions; and if 
 man did not have a magnetic and an electric body, 
 there would be no heat within him, for it is the 
 uniting of magnetism and electricity that causes all 
 light and heat. When the magnetism and electricity 
 are withdrawn, the physical body decays, for its 
 animating principle, all that could tliink, see, and 
 hear, has left it. All that thinks, hears, sees, or 
 feels, the spiritual body retains, for these are of the 
 soul and not of the material body. The soul is the 
 
Vision and Achievement, 183 
 
 animating principle of this electric and magnetic 
 body, and it can move with the swiftness of elec- 
 tricity, or gently float, or remain quiescent." 
 
 It is more than suspected by scientists that the 
 ether is electric in its properties. The magnetic 
 waves of the atmosphere have long been known 
 to science, and there is undoubtedly, in the at- 
 mosphere itself, all the combined qualities of 
 the two worlds interpenetrated. 
 
 The first state after death is no more a final 
 one than is this present condition. It is a state 
 of growth, of progress, of hope, and of faith. 
 Truth and love are its forces, and there is no 
 reason why these forces should not be the fac- 
 tors of life here as well. The acceptance of 
 the great fundamental truth that life is one and 
 indivisible is the basis of hope and of happiness, 
 and ofi'ers the true incentive to progress. The 
 acceptance of the true philosophy of the succeed- 
 ing states and conditions of life alleviates and 
 will, in the end, conquer the pain and sorrow 
 now caused by death. This one reason alone, 
 aside from its potent aid to progress, would be 
 sufficient to commend it to the minds of all. 
 
184 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 The poet's insight proclaims the truth in the 
 lines, — 
 
 " The spirit world around this world of sense 
 Floats like an atmosphere." 
 
 There is the closest analogy between the 
 advances made into the realm of unknown forces 
 by science and those made by spiritual percep- 
 tion and penetration and psychic research into 
 the realm of spiritual knowledge. When such a 
 preacher as Canon Wilberforce compares the 
 operation of intercessory prayer with that of 
 wireless telegraphy, it lends authority to the 
 statement, and gives to us new trust in what 
 may perhaps be called the genius of this age, — 
 the new movement ushering in a larger and a 
 truer conception of the divine laws that govern 
 the relation of man to man and of man to God. 
 The initial factor in this movement, the key to 
 its entire significance, is found in the recognition 
 of thought as a force. The recognition of this 
 truth revolutionizes all the relations of life. It 
 takes precedence even of accelerated telegraphy 
 and of wireless telegraphy, and it leads inevitably 
 to the next step, — the realization that if thought 
 
Vision and Achievement, 185 
 
 can leap from mind to mind here in the physical 
 world, how much more easily can it leap from 
 mind to mind between the physical and the 
 ethereal worlds. 
 
 Although the Christian world and the Chris- 
 tian church have always taught the potency and 
 the privilege of prayer from the very initiation of 
 Christ's kingdom on earth, humanity has yet to 
 learn its infinite potency. Why should not inter- 
 cession by means of prayer be part of God's 
 regularized working as much as wireless teleg- 
 raphy? questions Canon Wilberforce. It will 
 come to be so recognized. In rare instances 
 already men have understood the law, and have 
 availed themselves of it. There is more than one 
 institution entirely supported by the power of 
 this intercession. Prayer is the most practical 
 force in the world. " Why should it not be a 
 natural law," asks Dr. Wilberforce, "and none 
 the less spiritual because natural ? Such forces 
 do exist, — call them thought transference, 
 psychic sympathy, spiritual affinity, what you 
 will. These forces of influence between man and 
 man, acting independently of distance, are rapidly 
 claiming recognition from the physical investi- 
 
186 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 gator. Why should not intercession be one of 
 these secret affinities, appertaining to the highest 
 part of man, and acting by divine natural law, 
 directly upon the object prayed for, originating 
 from the divine nature in you, and passing, full 
 of the infinite resources of God, directly to the 
 one for whom you pray ? Moreover, who shall 
 dare to limit this divine outflow of spiritual 
 sympathy, this wireless current of God's dynam- 
 ics, to the experience of this earthly life ? Why 
 should any suppose that it cannot pass into the 
 spirit world, into the other dimension ? '* 
 
 The evidence that it does so pass into the 
 spirit world is accumulating so rapidly, is at- 
 tracting the interest of so large a proportion of 
 thoughtful people, is arresting the attention of 
 so many, that it is only a question of time — and 
 not a long time — when this new revelation of the 
 divine law shall take its place as one of the 
 most momentous movements of all the ages. 
 The moral effect will be most important. 
 
 It is readily seen how the introduction of 
 swift communication into the methods of the 
 working world has raised the standard of mo- 
 rality. Crime cannot hide itself successfully 
 
Vision and Achievement 187 
 
 when the knowledge of the deed and the descrip- 
 tion of the evil-doer is flashed swiftly all over the 
 world. The electric light is also conceded to be 
 a moral agent, and the illumination of great 
 cities is regarded as more effective than would 
 be the enlargement of the police force. 
 
 The new accelerated telegraphy raises this aid 
 in degree. The new method increases the 
 transmission of words to some 200,000 an hour, 
 and now another advance condenses the work of 
 an hour into a single minute. A despatch was 
 recently transmitted from Budapest to Berlin in 
 six seconds. Marconi's wireless telegraphy gives 
 greater results than those obtained by any other 
 method, and is destined to serve such purpose 
 in navigation as to decrease disaster at sea and 
 to change the whole face of civilization, indeed, 
 by the results that a century ago would have 
 been regarded as a miracle. 
 
 Now, if morality is to be increased and crime 
 lessened by the results of the cable, the tele- 
 graph, and wireless transmission, the next logical 
 step and the next higher and more significant 
 series of results will be wrought by the telepathic 
 intercommunication of mind to mind, by means 
 
188 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 of the dynamic force of thought. If it were real- 
 ized that the entire physical world was open to 
 the view of the entire ethereal world ; that is to 
 say, if it were believed that they whom we call 
 the dead saw clearly — far more clearly than 
 when here — the acts of persons in this world ; 
 and not only the acts, but the motive, the thought, 
 the intention ; if it were recognized that commu- 
 nication existed between the two conditions of 
 life, — this life and the one " more abundant," — 
 what a potent influence is at once established to 
 decrease the evil and increase the good ? Still 
 more, if the barriers grow so faint that those in 
 the Seen realize and recognize the nobler sig- 
 nificance and the loftier standards of that truer 
 life, how all the ambitions and aspirations of 
 this part of life are purified and ennobled and 
 exalted ! 
 
 Psycho-physical culture admits to that infinite 
 reservoir of knowledge which Emerson desig- 
 nates as the Over-Soul, and which has been 
 latterly termed the Cosmic Mind. Balzac has 
 said : — 
 
 " The world of ideas divides itself into three 
 spheres, — that of instinct (simple consciousness) ; 
 
Vision and Achievement. 189 
 
 that of abstraction (self-consciousness) ; and that of 
 specialism (Cosmic Consciousness), ... As an in- 
 stinctive, man is below the level ; as an abstractive, 
 he attains to it ; as a specialist, he rises above it. 
 Specialism opens to man his course ; the infinite 
 dawns upon him ; he catches glimpses of his destiny." 
 
 Balzac proceeds as follows : — 
 
 " There exist three worlds, — the natural world, 
 the spiritual world, the divine world. Humanity 
 moves hither and thither in the natural world, which, 
 is fixed neither in its essence nor in its properties. 
 The spiritual world is fixed in its essence and variable 
 in its p7'operties» The divine woidd is fixed in its prop- 
 erties and in its essence. ^^ 
 
 Unquestionably, there is about us an atmos- 
 phere, a realm, which interpenetrates our own, 
 and whose inhabitants are in the closest magnetic 
 interchange of thought with the inhabitants of 
 the physical world ; these inhabitants are our 
 friends and acquaintances who have passed the 
 change called death, and who are therefore liv- 
 ing under new conditions, but conditions of 
 which we also partake. For man, by virtue of 
 his spiritual nature, is an inhabitant of the 
 
190 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 spiritual as well as the physical world. In fact, 
 we are essentially and permanently spiritual 
 beings, and only incidentally and temporarily 
 physical beings. The next step in progress — 
 of which we are on the threshold — is that clair- 
 voyance and clairaudience will be recognized 
 as normal faculties. The development of spirit- 
 ual sight and spiritual hearing is just as pos- 
 sible to the spiritual man while still sojourning 
 in his physical body, as is the development 
 of the finer perceptions and higher faculties 
 in any direction ; and the sight and hearing 
 in relation to the unseen realm will become 
 just as much a normal part of our percep- 
 tions as are sight and hearing on the physical 
 plane. The psycho-physical culture opens to 
 man another discrete degree of life. A well- 
 known scientist has recently affirmed his belief 
 that the acuteness of the senses will be increased 
 from five to ten times during the next century 
 alone. " The man of the remote future will have 
 senses which wq do not possess. He will be 
 able to hear higher pitches of sound and to 
 recognize a greater number of tone qualities. 
 He will be able to discriminate between colors 
 
Vision and Achievement, 191 
 
 below the red and above the violet. Five thou- 
 sand years from now the human race will detect 
 ten different steps in each fundamental color. " 
 
 The next step onward in life is that men 
 will live from the psychical rather than from 
 the physical basis. The subtle body has been 
 almost wholly ignored; the physical body has 
 been the one on which care and thought were 
 bestowed. It has been made the recipient of 
 drugs; it has been overloaded with injurious 
 food ; it has been denied the invigorating stim- 
 ulus of pure air, exercise, and cold water to a 
 degree that attests a signal triumph of spirit 
 over flesh in that it has any working power left 
 at all. At the least inactivity and indisposition, 
 doctors and drugs are summoned. Man has 
 failed to realize that his physical body is not 
 himself; that it is only informed with vitality 
 and activity by the determination of the psychic 
 body ; that he might almost as well perpetually 
 patch and repair one suit of clothing, endeavor- 
 ing to make it last, as to treat his physical body 
 to mere physical repair and restoration. The 
 physical body can be perpetually renewed and 
 restored, but the means thereby are inner and 
 
192 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 not outer ones. When Saint Paul said : ^' Be ye 
 transformed by the renewing of your spirit," he 
 gave the most practical directions for health, — 
 physically as well as spiritually. 
 
 The secret of health in the high sense of equi- 
 poise, of equilibrium, of unfailing energy, is to 
 live in the psychic (or subtle) rather than in the 
 physical body. This consciousness can be trans- 
 ferred from the one to the other. In a general 
 way man has gone about with a conviction that 
 his visible body was himself. He believed that 
 he " had " a soul, — some mysterious possession 
 which was largely a mere latent treasure for 
 this life, and whose use was reserved for some 
 vague and mysterious future after death. Mean- 
 time, he identified himself with his body ; and 
 when it was fatigued or out of repair in any 
 way, he believed that various sorts of internal 
 and external applications would restore it. 
 There is some truth in this belief, but the aid 
 is largely that which results by the exciting of 
 hope and belief in cure, this hope and belief be- 
 ing attributes of th6 psychical body, and being 
 curative and invigorating in their very nature. 
 But the restoration is largely not because of 
 
Vision and Achievement. 193 
 
 drugs and appliances, but in spite of them. 
 There is a more excellent way. 
 
 May we suppose that one confronts a task of 
 magnitude to be completed within so short a 
 space of time as to be fairly appalling, when 
 judged from the ordinary standpoint. There is, 
 for instance, a work ordinarily requiring a month 
 which needs to be completed within a week. 
 How is he to endure so severe a tax ? Is he to 
 " overwork," as we say, and at the end, even 
 if he pulls through, find himself in a state of 
 exhaustion ? Not at all. 
 
 Here comes in the truer philosophy. As 
 Emerson has so well said : " Our painful labors 
 are unnecessary ; there is a better way." 
 
 Let him, then, sit down in silence and peace 
 and concentrate his thought on higher themes. 
 Let him realize that he is a part of the Infinite 
 Energy, and the Infinite Energy is creative. 
 God, the Supreme Source, speaks achievements 
 into being. " Let there be light," He said, " and 
 there was light.'^ The more truly man advances 
 in the divine path which it is his privilege, by 
 virtue of his divine nature, to tread, the more 
 he acquires tliis power which is fairly creative. 
 
 13 
 
194 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 He pauses and contemplates his task. He 
 lifts up his heart to God. He realizes the inti- 
 mate relation that he holds to the infinite energy 
 of the universe, that it is electric in quality, and 
 will flow through him, so to speak, and will do 
 the work of itself, he needing only to be the 
 directing energy. If he is an artist, and wishes 
 to paint a landscape, he stamps upon this energy 
 the direction he wishes it to take. This subtle 
 body will work, will execute, will achieve to the 
 most extraordinary extent if it be trained to 
 action. The intellectual choice and direction de- 
 termines the form, manner, and treatment of its 
 work, but it will work with the absolute freedom 
 from fatigue that characterizes mechanism, if 
 one learns thus to transfer the burden from the 
 physical to the subtle body, as spirit does not 
 know fatigue. It is electrical in potency, and is 
 self-renewing. It is only the physical that is 
 tired, or ill, or out of tune. Transfer the activity 
 to the psychical, and it is possible to accomplish 
 work to a degree that is incredible viewed from 
 the materialistic standpoint. 
 
 The relation of those in the realm of the Seen 
 to those in the realm of the Unseen is constantly 
 
Vision and Achievement. 195 
 
 becoming a more momentous matter in the pres- 
 ent daily life. The mere fact of communication 
 between the two worlds, interesting as it is, 
 all-comforting as it is, is still only one in a chain 
 of facts that hold determining influence on the 
 aifairs and the progress of humanity. For if 
 there is a twofold life pertaining to this planet 
 in which its inhabitants live ; if all the conscious 
 life is largely influenced and determined by a 
 deeper and more significant life of which we 
 are not yet conscious, it is a most important 
 truth. 
 
 Rev. Dr. S. 0. McConnell, rector of Holy 
 Trinity in Brooklyn, questioned in a recent dis- 
 course as to what is our connection with those 
 who have passed on to the life more abundant^ 
 and continued : — 
 
 " Is there any interplay of affection, any exchange 
 of kindly offices 1 Are they in any way concerned 
 about us, or we about them'? To answer these 
 questions intelligently we must ask, *What is the 
 belief of our church concerning the condition of the 
 departed ] ' Not this individual, or that, but the 
 categorical statement of authority with regard to 
 the multitude of dead. 
 
196 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 " The belief of our church, — and I say it carefully 
 but plainly, — the formal, official declaration of the 
 Prayer Book, is not the Protestant belief. That be- 
 lief is summed up in the statement that Hhe souls of 
 believers are at death made perfect unto holiness and 
 immediately pass into glory.' A very little reflection 
 will show that this is inconceivable, unthinkable. 
 Humanity is thus put into two categories. A line 
 is drawn through humanity, on one side being the 
 righteous and on the other side being the wicked. 
 
 " No such distinction is possible. There are no 
 righteous and no wicked. The good and the evil 
 are so mixed up in all of us that its classification 
 cannot be made. 
 
 " Life is a probation, and always will be. The 
 next life, or any life, is a life of probation. It 
 continues and is complete if it fulfils the conditions. 
 Is there any place for moral recovery? Is there a 
 place Avhere faults may be corrected and a new life 
 begun *? My answer is this : Life is growing, in this 
 or any other state. Growing is changing for the 
 better. I cannot conceive of an existence where 
 growth is not possible. We die as men, and when 
 we wake to consciousness we awake as men. The 
 possibility of recovery must exist as long as the 
 human soul exists and wherever it exists." 
 
Vision and Achievement 197 
 
 Certainly, the event of death does not relegate 
 man to a final and fixed state of happiness 
 or of misery; the life just after death is the 
 natural result in evolutionary progress of the 
 quality of the life lived here; and the with- 
 drawal of the substantial body (the psychic) 
 from the temporal body (the physical) does not 
 produce any immediate and violent change in the 
 individuality. The basis of reasoning in the 
 past has been wrong. The unit of departure is 
 the psychical body and the spiritual life. It 
 has been vaguely held that at death, in some 
 mysterious and incomprehensible way, man ac- 
 quired a spiritual body, but the truth now ap- 
 parent is that this spiritual (or the psychic and 
 substantial) body is the real one always and the 
 permanent one, to whose form and organs the tem- 
 porary, physical body corresponds. This psychic 
 body has sight and hearing ; the physical eye 
 and ear is the outer sign. The change we call 
 death is simply the withdrawal of this psychic 
 body from the physical body. Spirit alone is 
 substance and permanence, so that Swedenborg 
 well calls this subtle body the ^^substantial" 
 one, and he adds : — 
 
198 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 " That when a man passes from the natural into the 
 spiritual world, he takes with him all things belongs 
 ing to him as a man, except his terrestrial body, has 
 been proved to me by manifold experiences. For 
 when he enters the spiritual world, or the life after 
 death, he is in a body, as he was in the natural 
 world, — to all appearance in the same body. But 
 his body is spiritual. ... A human spirit enjoys 
 every external and internal sense which he possessed 
 in the world. He also longs, wishes, thinks, loves, 
 and wills, as before. He who is delighted with 
 studies, reads and writes as before. In a word, when 
 man passes from one world to the other, it is just as 
 if he passed from one place to another. . . o 
 
 " However, the difference between his life in the 
 spiritual and the natural world is great, as well with 
 respect to the external senses as with the internal 
 senses and the affections of both. The senses of 
 those in heaven are far more exquisite than they were 
 in the world ; they see and hear more perfectly, and 
 think more wisely. For they see by the light of 
 heaven and hear by a spiritual atmosphere." 
 
 Now, when this psychic body withdraws 
 from its outer covering, the individual is the 
 same in his intellectual and spiritual degree. 
 He sees and hears on the spiritual plane, and 
 
Vision and Achievement, 199 
 
 just in proportion to one's power for developing 
 the psychic sight and the psychic hearing while 
 in the physical body, is he enabled to communi- 
 cate by virtue of his life on the same plane. 
 Spiritual communion does not mean to material- 
 ize those in the Unseen, but to spiritualize those 
 in the Seen. It means that man may assert his 
 own innate spiritual supremacy. This thought 
 is the next step onward in all the Christian 
 world. The true seeker for the spiritual up- 
 lifting of life that may enable him to live in 
 conscious sympathy and response with the life 
 of the next plane just beyond, will find his 
 aid less in phenomena than in ethical thought 
 and in aspiration. He would find his aid in 
 the church rather than in the stance. But the 
 fact, the already demonstrated truth, that the 
 intercourse between the two realms of the Seen 
 and the Unseen exists, is of tremendous import 
 in modern religious life. It infuses a new 
 vitality into Christianity. It renders the rela- 
 tion between man and God more clear and com- 
 prehensible. It offers the energy of a new 
 encouragement, and informs faith with knowl- 
 edge. In short, it illuminates the entire nature 
 
200 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and destiny of man, revealing to him with scien- 
 tific proofs something of his true place in the 
 cosmos, and imparts to him new hope, new 
 endeavor, and increases his sympathy and his 
 love for his fellow-man. 
 
 Fifty years ago Dr. Horace Bushnell sat in a 
 convention listening to a theological discussion, 
 when he arose and said : — 
 
 " Brethren, it is not for me to say that these ques- 
 tions are trivial, but their vital importance is passing 
 away. Graver and deeper matters loom up before us 
 in the near future, not of election and reprobation, 
 not of trinity or atonement, but we shall soon be 
 asked, * Is there a God or any Divine government ] 
 Is there any future life ? * And these questions we 
 must be ready to meet, not by dogmatic assertions, 
 hut by argument and illustration that will satisfy 
 reason and conscience, and awaken spiritual life." 
 
 Religion is no mere fixed statement, unalter- 
 able in its promises, but it is rather the view of 
 God and of the Divine Universe that enlarges 
 as man's intelligence and spirituality increase ; 
 that comprehends with increasing grasp and 
 clearness the laws that govern life, and reveals 
 
Vision and Achievement. 201 
 
 how moral integrity is the one and the only 
 gateway to progress. Force and matter are 
 alive and are in a constant state of activity. 
 They may be harnessed for the use of man. 
 Humanity is now entering on this new and more 
 glorious era, where the advance into wisdom 
 is proportionately an advance into happiness ; 
 where a larger knowledge of the divine laws 
 shall invest all conscious life with nobler activi- 
 ties, with fairer joys, and with the holy earnest- 
 ness of great achievements before which Vision 
 ever goes, like the cloud which was the pillar of 
 light in the darkness, unerringly pointing the 
 onward way. 
 
BETWEEN THE SEEN AND 
 
 THE UNSEEN. 
 
The following of Christ is a journey of enlarging and unceasing 
 discovery. — Rev. George D. Hereon, D.D. 
 
 The free ivinds told him what they Jcnew^ 
 
 Discoursed of fortune as they blew ; 
 
 Omens and signs that filled the air 
 
 To him authentic witness hare ; 
 
 The birds brought auguries on their wings. 
 
 Well might then the poet scorn 
 To learn of scribe or courier 
 Things writ in vaster character. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
BETWEEN THE SEEN AND THE 
 
 UNSEEN. 
 
 The properties of the ether, and their relation to such 
 physical phenomena as have been the subjects of research, 
 are so little knawn that no one has yet ventured to 
 embody them in an all-embracing philosophy so as so 
 deduce apparent phenomena from them. 
 
 Professor Dolbeare. 
 
 |IR HUMPHRY DAVY postulated the 
 existence of an ethereal matter which 
 could never be evident to the senses, 
 but which bears the same relation to heat, light, 
 and electricity that these bear to gases. When 
 the wave theory of light was discovered, it was 
 at once seen that its transmission must depend 
 upon a medium, as no wave motion could exist 
 in a vacuum. Science thus expressed her pre- 
 vision of the logical necessity of the ether before 
 its existence was discovered. Not only light, 
 but all electric and magnetic phenomena de- 
 
206 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 maiided this medium ; and its universal value, as 
 I10V7 determined, is such as to lead Professor Dol- 
 beare to assert that " all physical properties are 
 modes of motion of the ether in the ether," and 
 its discovery has simply revolutionized all pre- 
 vious fundamental conceptions of physics. '' The 
 mystery of phenomena is not lessened, but made 
 greater," says Professor Dolbeare, in his notable 
 treatise on " Matter, Ether, and Motion," which 
 is an illumination on tlie nature of the universe, 
 — *^ the mystery of phenomena is not lessened, 
 but made greater by the discovery that every- 
 thing vrhich affects our senses is finally resolvable 
 into a substance having physical properties so 
 utterly unlike the properties of w^hat we call 
 matter that it is a misuse of terms to call it 
 matter, and no one hitherto has been able to fore- 
 cast its properties." Professor Dolbeare empha- 
 sizes this view, indeed, to the degree of declar- 
 ing that '^ Every physical phenomenon runs at 
 last into an inexplicable, into an ether question." 
 As the reader perceives, this great scientist offers 
 " the inexplicable " and " the ether " as synony- 
 mous terms. So marvellous, indeed, does he 
 regard this " inexplicable " environment, the 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 207 
 
 ether, which holds in sohition the explanation of 
 every unexplainable problem, that he says : — 
 
 " The ether is a storehouse of unlimited energy of 
 many kinds ; so if every particle of matter were in- 
 sta^ntly annihilated, there would still be a universe 
 filled with energy, though it might not be service- 
 able because lacking the conditions for transforma- 
 tion into useful forms. This may be said to be one 
 of the functions of matter, — the transformation of 
 the energy it gets from the ether." 
 
 This remarkable statement not only arrests 
 the attention, but carries the student of physics 
 to its corresponding and interpenetrative psychic 
 realm. Modern science has discovered that 
 vital force is not an entity; that it has no ex- 
 istence. Dr. John Fiske says, " The hypothesis 
 of a vital principle is now as completely dis- 
 carded as the hypothesis of phlogiston in chem- 
 istry. No biologist with a reputation to lose 
 would for a moment think of defending it." 
 All the phenomena of organic life are now inter- 
 preted by means of physical and chemical laws. 
 The recognition that vital force is not an entity, 
 that it is a product, a result of certain chemical 
 
 J 
 
208 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 conditions, transforms physiological science and 
 opens a new field for speculation and experi- 
 mental study regarding the psychic nature of 
 man. Yet, as Professor Dolbeare points out, the 
 old conception regarding vitality had become so 
 thoroughly incorporated into life and literature 
 that ^^a whole generation of men had to be 
 buried before any attention was paid to what had 
 been proven. Joule's work, showing the trans- 
 formation of force into heat and light, made no 
 impression," continues Professor Dolbeare, "and 
 for seven years he was refused a place in the 
 Royal Society." Yet the scenery of daily life now 
 presents to us perpetual illustrations of the cor- 
 relation of forces whose law is the basis of much 
 of our transit, of our mechanical achievements, 
 and of the heating and lighting of cities. All 
 the latter-day achievements that have so inter- 
 penetrated social and industrial life as to be- 
 come inseparable from its manifestations give 
 "definite conceptions and relations where be- 
 fore only ghosts and genii were supposed to 
 do duty." 
 
 This assertion is as applicable to psychics as 
 to physics. Beginning with the hitherto myste- 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 209 
 
 rious conception of vital force as some strange 
 and incalculable entity that defied any knowl- 
 edge as to whence it came or whither it went, 
 and which is now known to be a matter of cer- 
 tain combinations of physical and chemical con- 
 ditions ; and proceeding to mental and spiritual 
 phenomena, — the student of life in its whole- 
 ness is coming to see that "ghosts and genii" 
 are indeed slain, and that, in place of ignorant 
 awe, if not terror, of the unknown, man is ad- 
 vancing to an intelligent grasp and a reverent 
 recognition of the series of natural laws that 
 govern the universe, whose marvellous scope and 
 adaptability exceed in their power and beauty 
 anything that imagination could conceive. There 
 is no conceivable limit to the advance of man's 
 discovery regarding the nature and the laws 
 of the universe. Any day is liable to see some 
 new invention or recognition that offers solu- 
 tions to old problems. In touching these mat- 
 ters, a writer labors under the same embarrass- 
 ment that beset an English compiler of the 
 population of the new western cities in the 
 United States, which he said were liable to 
 double their population while his book was in 
 
 14 
 
210 The Spiritual Significance 
 
 press. Even the problem of transit through the 
 air " is not half so unlikely as it seemed a few 
 years ago," says Professor Dolbeare, "since it 
 evidently requires for accomplishment only a di- 
 rected reaction against the ether, and we already 
 know how to produce the reaction of electrical 
 means, and every point in space has the energy 
 for transformation. When this reaction can be 
 neutralized at one pole and not at the other," 
 he continues, " the navigation of space will at 
 once become mechanically possible." 
 
 As such revolutionary possibilities may lie in 
 any day, the speculative data of any student 
 may be crystallized into actuality before its 
 publication. If all the problems of the universe 
 resolve themselves, at the last analysis, into ether 
 problems, their solution must be acknowledged 
 to be only a question of time. The supreme 
 result of all scientific progress is the revelation 
 of the simplicity, rather than the complexity, 
 of all laws ; the properties of the ether con- 
 stitute the field for research. In these there 
 seems to lie the key to the mysteries of be- 
 ing, and to all the vast achievements of the 
 future. 
 
Behveen the Seen and the Unseen, 211 
 
 This brings us face to face with a scientific 
 fact that reveals a corresponding truth regard- 
 ing the life in the ethereal world. One of the 
 extraordinary properties of the ether is that 
 the stress we call gravitation must have a 
 velocity in it more than a million times greater 
 than light ; that is, more than one hundred 
 and eighty-six thousand million miles a second. 
 ** The proof of this/' says Professor Dolbeare, 
 '• is that the movements of the planets would be 
 different from what they are observed to be if 
 gravitative action was less than that figure. 
 And the movements of double and triple stars 
 show that gravitation controls them as it does 
 the moon and planets. Such a velocity is not 
 comparable with any velocity exhibited by any 
 kind of matter with which we are acquainted." 
 Now, if gravitation in the ether has a velocity 
 more than a million times greater than that of 
 light, does not this suggest the scientific ex- 
 planation of the swift movement of the in- 
 habitants of the ethereal world? Professor 
 Dolbeare offers these proofs supporting the 
 theory of this velocity in the ether. " Shoot- 
 ing stars," he says, *^ come into our atmosphere 
 
212 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 with a velocity of about twenty-five miles a 
 second. Some comets have moved about the 
 sun with a velocity of nearly four hundred miles 
 a second, yet have not had their speed reduced 
 by friction as they would have had if the me- 
 dium they moved in was like a gas, even if it 
 were very rare. It is concluded, therefore, that 
 the ether is frictionless, and, as light comes to 
 us from such distant bodies, that the ether 
 must fill all the space within the visible 
 universe, also that it cannot be made up of 
 particles like ordinary matter. Phenomena 
 would be different from what they are observed 
 to be if it were otherwise constituted. In most 
 particulars the properties of the ether are so 
 diff*erent from the properties of matter that it 
 will not do to call it matter ; it is something 
 else." 
 
 All study of the nature of man is inextricably 
 united with study of the universe. The powers 
 and possibilities of the soul are conditioned by 
 its successive environments, although the degree 
 of its achievement of spiritual energy predeter- 
 mines the outer manifestation which we call 
 environment. Science, that is continually pene- 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 213 
 
 trating the laws of the universe and revealing 
 its mysteries, offers an increasing illumination 
 on the nature and destiny of human life. There 
 is no limit to the quest of knowledge; the far 
 horizon line of yesterday is in the middle distance 
 of to-day. The telescope reached its limits of 
 discovery, and, behold, the spectroscope was 
 invented as an attachment which so extended 
 the power of the telescope as to enable the 
 observer to determine whether a heavenly body 
 was moving toward, or away from, our solar 
 system, and to even approximate to its rate of 
 motion. The spectroscope has even revealed, 
 under the scientific skill of Professor Keeler of 
 Lick Observatory, that the rings of Saturn are 
 rotating at different rates. "Attempt has been 
 made with the spectroscope," says Professor 
 Dolbeare, "to discover whether or not the 
 earth, in its astronomic movements of rotation 
 on its axis and revolution about the sun, makes 
 any disturbance in the ether, — whether it drags 
 the ether with it, as a moving railroad train drags 
 the air, or not ; but all the evidence so far seems 
 to show that the ether is not disturbed in tlie 
 slightest degree. It appears as if the earth 
 
214 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 moved through it as a coarse mesh sieve will 
 go through water, not displacing it in any 
 appreciable degree." 
 
 This fact suggests, by analogy, the relations 
 between the physical and the ethereal worlds. 
 If the earth moves through the ether as a coarse 
 mesh sieve will go through water, not displacing 
 it in any appreciable degree, so is it not conceiv- 
 able that all the phenomena of physical life 
 are moving among the phenomena of ethereal 
 life, — a universe unperceived by us except as 
 some development of the spiritual powers per- 
 ceives it by the finer sight and hearing of the 
 psychic body ? 
 
 Prof. Oliver Lodge, writing of "The Inter- 
 stellar Ether," said : — 
 
 "By investigations now going on, no merely ma- 
 terial prospect will be opened before us, but some 
 glimpse into a region which science has never yet 
 entered, but which has been sought from afar, and 
 perhaps blindly appreciated by painter or poet, by 
 philosopher or saint." 
 
 Since the discovery of the Rontgen ray there 
 has been no such marvellous revelation of hith- 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 215 
 
 erto unsuspected resources of nature as that 
 offered by Tesla, in the existence in the atmos- 
 phere of a current which, under sufficient electri- 
 cal pressure, will transmit power to any extent 
 and to any distance. The discovery by Rontgen 
 of the X-rays, of the possibility of wireless teleg- 
 raphy by Marconi, and of this atmospheric cur- 
 rent by Tesla, constitute a group of new insights 
 into nature which are of the utmost importance, 
 — not only in revealing potent resources hitherto 
 undiscerned, but as indicative of the progress of 
 humanity in conquering new territory in the Un- 
 seen. What is the nature of the spiritual world ? 
 we are always questioning ; and the answer 
 seems to be that it is a world corresponding to 
 this, only of higher potencies. All the present 
 life of humanity is twofold, and is lived partly 
 in both worlds, — the Seen and the Unseen. 
 Telepathy, that is now scientifically recognized as 
 a mode of communication as real as is telegraphy, 
 is a method of the Unseen universe. Wireless 
 telegraphy belongs to that realm. Just as 
 rapidly as the power of the spiritual man 
 develops and demands methods of life pertain- 
 ing to the spiritual world, these methods are 
 
216 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 evolved. It is a part of the divine inheritance 
 of humanity. " Natural things and spiritual," 
 — these are interrelated in a manner that 
 nothing can separate. But when the recognition 
 of this becomes a conscious and intelligent one, 
 then all the basis of action is enlarged and en- 
 nobled, and life has a new centre. The physical 
 world as surveyed from the spiritual plane has 
 been thus described : — 
 
 " To begin with, you appear to us like a double 
 mau. We see the physical body only ; instead 
 of being solid and material, it is transparent and 
 shadowy to our eyes, and we see you seated on 
 a transparent and shadowy chair surrounded by 
 shadowy papers and equally shadowy furniture. In 
 fact, you present the appearance of a ghost to us. 
 There is a spiritual duplicate of everything, and 
 while this is invisible and intangible to the senses, 
 it is tangible and visible to the spirit touch and 
 sight. . . . The two worlds are interblended, natural 
 and spiritual. . . . The material body is what you 
 call the physical body ; the spiritual body is what we 
 call the spiritual counterpart of the former, visible 
 only to us, and appearing to our senses to be material 
 and solid, while the physical body seems ghostly and 
 
Betiveen the Seen and the Unseen, 217 
 
 transparent. What we call the soul is not the spirit 
 body nor material body, but is the life essence that 
 dwells in the spiritual body, and of which the latter, 
 as well as the material body, are only outer envelopes. 
 When we speak of ' the spirit ' as an inhabitant of the 
 spirit world, of course we mean the soul and its spirit 
 body. You are, however, just as much ' spirits ' as 
 we are, only that you possess, in addition to the soul 
 and spirit body, a material body. . . . During the 
 time that the material body is awake, the man is not 
 conscious of what goes on in the spirit world ; but 
 when it is asleep the spirit resumes its conscious- 
 ness. ... It is commonly the cause that the friends 
 in the Unseen who are in attendance on the body by 
 day, permit the spirit to enjoy their companionship 
 consciously at night. . . . The spirit sees all that is 
 going on and will waken the body, if necessary." 
 
 To come into a clear comprehension of these 
 laws of life, of the manner in which man is an 
 inhabitant of two worlds and has to do with the 
 realm of causes as well as with the realm of re- 
 sults, is to enter on a more intelligent conception 
 of moral responsibility and spiritual potentiali- 
 ties. The initial step to religious life is to under- 
 stand the true nature of being. Prayer is the 
 
218 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 most powerful of motors, because it links man 
 with the world of the Unseen ; because it is a 
 channel through which divine forces may pour 
 themselves into his purpose and inform and de- 
 termine his conduct. Prayer is the safeguard of 
 life, simply because it performs this office of re- 
 lating man to the Divine. This truth illumines 
 the entire ceremonial life of religion ; it teaches 
 man how " to live worthily," how to live so that 
 his energy shall radiate and shall make glad all 
 who come near him, and shall enable him con- 
 stantly to extend and ennoble his contributions 
 to contemporary progress. 
 
 In Mr. Walter WyckofF's remarkable series of 
 studies from the life entitled " The Workers," 
 he recounts a conversation with two of his 
 fellow-laborers at the period of his experiences 
 when he had the care of horses in a livery stable, 
 when the talk turned on astronomy, and Mr. 
 WyckofF narrates : — 
 
 "Ed commented disparagingly on any claim of 
 astronomers to weigh the heavenly bodies and to 
 measure their distances from one another and from 
 the earth, and John agreed with him, and insisted 
 that not until a line could be carried from one to 
 
Behveen the Seen and the Unseen, 219 
 
 another, and each star weighed accurately in a scale, 
 would he put any confidence in these pretended 
 results." 
 
 This method of reasoning reminds one of 
 assertions not unlike it often made regarding 
 facts pertaining to the spiritual life. From the 
 time that Thomas exclaimed that except he could 
 see the print of the nails he would not believe in 
 the risen Christ, up to the present hour, the same 
 doubting attitude has prevailed among those 
 who would require physical evidence of spirit- 
 ual truth. Now, as Saint Paul says, there is a 
 natural body and there is a spiritual body, and 
 while the physical senses discern the evidences 
 of the one, the psychical senses discern the evi- 
 dences of the other. Theologies have invested 
 death and the life beyond with the greatest dark- 
 ness of mystery, whereas the direct teachings of 
 Jesus and the disciples, if taken in the simple 
 and literal way in which they are given, illumi- 
 nate and make plain the way. The world at 
 large is even yet under a nebulous impression 
 that death is a sleep, a period of utter uncon- 
 sciousness, of infinite duration ; and that some- 
 time, somewhere, and somehow, a " last trump " 
 
220 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 shall sound, and some incomprehensible miracle 
 occur to the incomprehensible beings into which 
 we shall all have become transformed. Or, in 
 a somewhat higher light, though little less re- 
 mote from demonstrated truth, there is a vague 
 belief that those who die enter on a conscious 
 life, somehow and somewhere ; that '^ the soul " 
 lives in some way undreamed of and totally 
 incomprehensible to us here ; but that this life 
 is on a plane of consciousness so entirely re- 
 moved from our own that the separation is ut- 
 terly complete, and that until we, too, pass 
 through the change called death, the removal 
 is absolute, and the mystery of the life beyond 
 insoluble. 
 
 Tennyson indicates the nature of this life in 
 the stanza : — 
 
 "And doubtless, unto thee is given 
 A life that bears immortal fruit 
 In such great offices as suit 
 The full-grown energies of heaven." 
 
 " There is a natural body and there is a spiritual 
 body." Here is the basis of the true explanation. 
 This spiritual body is the real, the permanent 
 being. We are all, here and now, spiritual 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 221 
 
 beings in the spiritual body, and in touch with 
 spiritual forces. But — this spiritual body is 
 temporarily clothed upon with a physical cover- 
 ing, in order that the individual may temporarily 
 enter into relations with the physical world. 
 We need to transpose our standard. The real 
 world, the real life, is the spiritual ; the temporal 
 world, the temporal life, is the physical. We 
 are here to learn to live ; but the living itself 
 comes on the higher plane. This higher plane 
 is one with which we are in touch just in 
 proportion to our own development of spiritual 
 energy. The law of evolution is as constant on 
 all planes as are the laws of gravitation and 
 attraction that hold the stars in their courses. 
 The change of form produces no violent or mys- 
 terious alteration. The man who died last night 
 is the same in all essentials to-day that he was 
 yesterday, except that he has withdrawn from 
 the visible form. 
 
 This philosophy, which is substantiated at 
 every step by the teachings and assertions of 
 Jesus and the apostles, and by all the observa- 
 tions of the phenomena of life, uplifts the drama 
 of existence to the plane of significance and of 
 
222 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 divine illumination. One's life is, primarily, be- 
 tween one's self and the Lord. 
 
 " By thine own soul's law learn to live. " 
 
 If recognition and sympathy come to one, so 
 much the happier. If they do not come, what 
 then ? It is only a mere question of time to him 
 who keeps his face turned towards the morning. 
 
 " Sing thou thy song and do thy deed ; 
 Hope thou thy hope and pray thy prayer." 
 
 The unseen friends companion us, give us 
 sympathy, recognition, aid ; all that is best in 
 aspiration, all that is purest in purpose, enters 
 on its expression in the higher and Unseen realm. 
 
 The various degrees of this aid from those in 
 the Unseen correspond to the various needs of 
 those who receive it, and is conditioned, also, by 
 the degree of advancement of the helpers in the 
 Unseen. More and more clearly is it coming to 
 be recognized that the real unit of measurement, 
 so to speak, the true point of departure, the 
 absolute standard from which to judge, is the 
 spiritual and not the physical realm. Modern 
 thought has evolved the theory that the spiritual 
 world is in correspondence with the physical; 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen* 223 
 
 that continents, oceans, hills, forests, flowers, all 
 natural scenery that exists here, has its prototype 
 there. But the still nearer approach to the 
 truth is that it is the physical world which is 
 in correspondence with the spiritual ; that the 
 realm of the Unseen is the real, the positive, 
 the permanent world, and that the realm of the 
 Seen is its manifestation. That is to say, the 
 world beyond does not exist because this world 
 does, but this one is the reflection in form of 
 that. We see a tree, and that which we see is 
 the visible manifestation of the ethereal tree, as 
 seen by those in the ethereal world. All this at- 
 mospheric realm in which we live is twofold : we 
 see one side of it ; those who have passed out of 
 the body see the other side. Heaven is not a lo- 
 cation ; it is a condition ; but no change as meas- 
 ured by geographical space could be more en- 
 tirely a new world than to go from the condi- 
 tions of the Seen to those of the Unseen. Thus 
 the same room may be at once in the physical and 
 in the spiritual world. It may be, and as a matter 
 of fact it more or less is, inhabited by two classes 
 of beings, — by those in the physical and those 
 in the spiritual body. The change is only as 
 
224 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 the same object, under different conditions, pre- 
 sents different aspects. Conjoined with the rose 
 is the ethereal rose, and the flower we see is but 
 a faint reflection of the rich color and fragrance 
 of the one we do not see. 
 
 Still there is no hard and fast line between 
 these two worlds. They merge and blend accord- 
 ing to the faculties and capacities of individual 
 development. It is readily seen how what we 
 call " the world " is almost a matter of individual 
 recognition. It is one thing to the child, another 
 to the man or woman. It is one thing to the 
 man of culture, another to the ignorant. It is 
 one thing to the man whose moral and spiritual 
 faculties are developed ; another to him who has 
 made little progress in the unfolding of the finer 
 and higher life. Then, besides this variation of 
 individual development there is the race develop- 
 ment, in which each sliares to a greater or less 
 degree. The steam engine, the telegraph, the 
 telephone, the heliograph, the automobile, are 
 the inventions of a few ; but the race shares in 
 the advantages they bring. They are less inven- 
 tions, indeed, than discoveries in the realm of 
 unseen potencies; and what we call "the 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 225 
 
 other life," or " the life to come," is simply ad- 
 vancing into the recognition of higher forces and 
 finer conditions. The two worlds are merely a 
 succession of states or conditions. The spiritual 
 man, even while imprisoned and limited by his 
 physical body, may make great advance in realms 
 beyond the usual limits of the physical. 
 
 This possibility is now being marvellously ful- 
 filled by those scientific seers who recognize forces 
 and laws not heretofore known to man. They 
 are fairly " seeing the invisible." They are discov- 
 ering and utilizing laws which have not before 
 been brought into use in this part of life. The 
 limits of the world of the Seen are being pushed 
 forward into the world of the Unseen, so that 
 man on earth to-day is enjoying opportunities, 
 privileges, and conveniences that formerly he only 
 came into a knowledge of by leaving his physical 
 body. 
 
 The line between the two realms is thus seen 
 to be not a fixed arbitrary boundary, but one 
 that advances as we advance. We are con- 
 stantly, and of late very rapidly, conquering 
 new territory in this world of the finer forces. 
 What is telepathy but the language of the future 
 
 15 
 
226 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 life? What is the flashing of messages by 
 means of wireless telegraph, or the sending of 
 pictures by electric means, but a hint of the 
 miechanisra of life that prevails in the life that 
 opens after laying ofi* the physical body? 
 
 This world of the Unseen is pressing upon 
 us from every side. We are companioned by 
 invisible friends. They speak to us, and we are 
 learning how to distinguish their words. We 
 receive a vast and an increasing amount of im- 
 pressions, and the degree to which we receive 
 these impressions is determined entirely by our 
 own degree of development. The infant is un- 
 conscious of whatever intelligence or genius may 
 be about him. The child becomes more sus- 
 ceptible to impression, and recognizes in increas- 
 ing degree, as he develops, the wisdom, the 
 love, that enfolds his life. This analogy holds 
 true in man's perception of the Unseen world 
 by which he is surrounded, and from which 
 he receives aid and suggestion and perpetual 
 guidance. 
 
 " In order that men may be induced to labor 
 diligently to efi*ect their own purification, to re- 
 press their evil tendencies, and to vanquish their 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 227 
 
 worldly passions, they must see the advantages 
 which such a line of action will secure to them 
 in the future life," wrote M. Leon Hippolite- 
 Rivail. "In order that they may be able to 
 identify themselves with that future life, to con- 
 centrate their aspirations upon it, and to pre- 
 fer it to the life of the earth, they must not only 
 believe in its existence, but must also under- 
 stand it. They must be able to contemplate it 
 under an aspect which shall be in harmony with 
 their reason and their common sense, with their 
 innate desire of happiness, and with their high- 
 est idea of the greatness, goodness, and justice 
 of God." 
 
 Psychic science discovers the Unseen realm, 
 and makes progress in a knowledge of its laws 
 as the science of astronomy progresses and en- 
 larges its grasp of truth. The faith inculcated 
 by Jesus establishes the certainty of the Unseen 
 world to all who believe, but psychic science 
 explores and demonstrates it, and proceeds in- 
 creasingly to find out and formulate the laws that 
 govern it. The common remark among people 
 who have never given one minute's study or 
 research in this direction, that, "If communi- 
 
228 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 cation between the Seen and the Unseen is 
 true, then why does not So-and-so come to rae?" 
 is about as wise as to say, " If the X-ray is a 
 fact, why can't I see through my hand as I hold 
 it up to the light?" or, "If Saturn has four 
 moons and two rings, why do not I see them ? " 
 A person who has never given an intelligent 
 thought to the literature of psychic research, 
 who has never read or studied into spiritual 
 laws, will assert his wonder that in case there 
 is truth in the spiritual philosophy he should 
 not himself have known and experienced it! 
 The study of the higher mathematics, including 
 astronomy and the calculations of tides and 
 eclipses; the study of electricity with all its 
 marvellous developments ; or of chemistry, in 
 the absolutely new world it reveals, — all these 
 are by comparison simple to the vast, the com- 
 plicated, the wonderful study of the relation 
 existing between the physical and the ethereal 
 worlds. The average status of real knowledge 
 concerning this is hardly more than was the 
 average knowledge of astronomy in the fif- 
 teenth century. Even experience and observa- 
 tion of the phenomena involved in the various 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 229 
 
 "manifestations" of intercommunication offer 
 but a slight contribution to any intelligently 
 comprehensive view of the subject. The gen- 
 erally prevailing vagueness of idea concerning 
 our own immediate future is extraordinary ; 
 for life is one and indivisible. The event of 
 death works no miraculous change of transfor- 
 mation. Man does not "become a spirit" by 
 the process of dying, which is a mere chemical 
 change ; he becomes more and more a spiritual 
 being, day by day, and year by year, as he de- 
 velops his higher qualities, as he lives in the 
 spirit, which is to live in justice and truth and 
 generosity and love; to live in intellectual de- 
 velopment and increasing sympathy and good- 
 will to all humanity. He becomes less and less 
 a spirit in proportion as he lives the life of the 
 senses, and finds his interests and enjoyments 
 on the sensual and the lower rather than on 
 the spiritual and the higher plane. The "re- 
 wards " and " punishments " after death form a 
 merely figurative phase of expression. The 
 reward of noble living is to achieve for our- 
 selves noble qualities, to become noble in every 
 fibre. The punishment of vice is to be vicious 
 
230 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 and low. The reward of study is iu the gain- 
 ing of knowledge. The punishment of wasting 
 time is in being ignorant and inconsequential, 
 and in being unworthy to hold a place in the 
 ranks of the scholar and the thinker. The 
 undergraduates of any university find rewards 
 and punishments, in this sense, awaiting them 
 as they come out to take their places in the 
 world. Each takes in time the exact place in 
 the community for which he has fitted himself. 
 Twenty years later one member of the class will 
 be a man noble, honored, beloved ; another will 
 be ostracized from all better life. But neither 
 the one nor the other is part of an arbitrary 
 system of "rewards" and "punishments," but 
 each state is simply the outward result of in- 
 ward qualities. "A man's fortunes are the 
 fruit of his character," said Emerson. The 
 acquirement of wealth is not a test. The money- 
 acquiring instinct may accompany the higher 
 and nobler qualities; it may accompany baser 
 ones. But it lies with a man himself as to 
 whether he shall have the respect and the con- 
 fidence of the community in which he lives. 
 If he fail to inspire it, or if, having acquired 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 231 
 
 it, he forfeit it, in that lies his punishment, and 
 for it he alone is responsible. 
 
 This analogy holds good for the experiences 
 that await the man who enters the ethereal 
 world. That which he has achieved he carries 
 with him, be it great or small. If while here he 
 has developed the loftier qualities of his nature, 
 he enters on a realm whose conditions are more 
 suited to them than those existing here, and he 
 is correspondingly happy. 
 
 Dr. Drummond has called attention to the 
 deep significance involved in the words, "Thy 
 will be done." " Now mark the emphasis on 
 done,'' he says. " It is not that God's will be 
 borne, endured, put up with. There is activity 
 in his prayer. It is not mere resignation. How 
 often is this prayer toned off with mere endur- 
 ance, sufferance, passivity. * Thy will be done,' 
 people say resignedly. ^ There is no help for it. 
 We might just as well submit. God evidently 
 means to have His way. Better to give in at 
 once and make the most of it.' This is far 
 from the ideal prayer. There is nothing noble 
 in resignation of this sort, — this resignation 
 under protest, as it were, and it disguises the 
 
232 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 meaning of the prayer, ' Thy will be done.' It 
 is intensely active. It is not an acquiescence 
 simply in God's dealing. It is an appeal to the 
 mightiest energy in heaven or earth to work, to 
 make more room for itself, to energize." 
 
 Nothing could be more helpful and transform- 
 ing in its influence on life than this new reading 
 of the old, old words, " Thy will be done." As 
 Dr. Drummond so well says, we have always 
 used them very largely, if not wholly, in a spirit 
 of resignation. At the extreme verge of sorrow 
 and despair we have cried : " Nevertheless, not 
 my will, but Thine be done." Resignation it- 
 self has been vaunted as a high virtue, but it is 
 nothing of the kind. It is far more nearly a 
 vice. Because if a thing is good, is desirable, 
 is according to the will of God, we should not be 
 merely " resigned " to it ; we should espouse its 
 progress with enthusiasm and joy ; we should 
 identify ourselves with its achievement and ful- 
 filment ; we should offer up our whole being on 
 the altar of its perfecting ; and to be " resigned " 
 only, like a blind mole on a hole in the ground, 
 is a puerile attitude for a human being. Again, 
 if a cause is not worthy and noble, to be " re- 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 233 
 
 signed " to it is most ignoble and cowardly. If 
 a measure is not right, no human being should 
 be '^ resigned" to it. He should oppose it with 
 all his power and strength and mind. He 
 should never cease opposing it. But when any 
 movement is distinctly seen to he the will of the 
 Lord, it is a man's business joyfully and ener- 
 getically to co-operate with it, — not merely 
 endure it. "Thy will be done; " as Dr. Drum- 
 mond says, that term denotes activity. There 
 is something to do. If God's will is to be done, 
 then the object of man's stay on earth is to do 
 it. And that is precisely the truth; that is 
 what man is on earth for, and this doing God's 
 will includes all of duty, all of privilege. Desire, 
 in the sense of possession, is the first thing to 
 be uprooted and plucked out in the life of him 
 who would do God's will. 
 
 " Life is the elaboration of soul through the 
 varied transformations of matter." One takes 
 the essence of things — their essential part — 
 into his life, but the thing itself is temporary 
 and perishes. To do God's will is to hold the 
 polarity true to constant spiritual progress. Li 
 the path of this progress, however, arise con- 
 
234 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 ditions that binder and entangle and impede. 
 They are not arbitrary. They are the conditions 
 that we have ourselves made, — sometime, — for 
 when one puts an error into his life it is like in- 
 troducing a poison into the body, and it works 
 there. The good action, likewise, bears its 
 fruits, and thus conditions are constantly being 
 created. They have a certain tenure of existence. 
 Every act and thought is like dropping a seed 
 into the ground, which germinates, springs up, 
 grows, and at last is cut down and destroyed, or 
 is plucked and used, or decays. The results of 
 these causes (which are known as karma) con- 
 stitute a framework from which one can only 
 extricate himself in certain ways. One is by 
 simply accepting these results as they come, 
 never seeking to discover their cause, or means 
 of exterminating them, and thus allowing them 
 to go on indefinitely, not only in this life, but 
 through successive lives, to an extent impos- 
 sible to foresee. Sometimes, when one turns to 
 give himself with new and deeper consecration 
 to the Divine, he will suddenly be confronted 
 and surrounded by the most unjust and unkind 
 and annoying things, that arise out of nothing, 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 235 
 
 apparently, and beset him. The most unde- 
 served and inexplicable injustice, the miscon- 
 struction of all his motives and acts, may so 
 rise about him that he will be utterly discouraged 
 at the outset. But he need not falter. Annie 
 Besant explains this stage of spiritual experience 
 very clearly when she says : — 
 
 "The karma that would have spread over hun- 
 dreds of lives will have to be passed through in a 
 few, perhaps in one, and so naturally the path is 
 difficult to tread. Family troubles come round the 
 man; business troubles press upon him; troubles 
 of mind and of body assail him. It may seem to him 
 that his Master has forsaken him. Why, when, he 
 is trying his best, should the worst befall him] 
 Why, when he is living better than he ever lived 
 before, should all these difficulties and pains assail 
 him] It seems so unjust, so hard, so cruel, that 
 when he is living more nobly than he ever tried to 
 live before, he finds himself more hardly treated than 
 ever before by destiny. He must stand the test ; he 
 must refuse to allow any sense of injustice to pene- 
 trate into his inner life. He must say to himself : 
 * It was my own doing ; I challenged my karma ; 
 what wonder, then, that I was asked to pay it 1 ' 
 And, at least, he has the encouragement of remem- 
 
236 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 beriiig that the debt once paid is paid forever. 
 Every karmic debt he pays is struck off from his 
 life's ledger forever." 
 
 Yet, besides the living out of karmic condi- 
 tions, sw^iftly and all at once, precipitated into 
 a short space of time, there is the highest 
 possibility of all, — of overcoming it without hav- 
 ing to live it out in detail, — to overcome and 
 annihilate it by bringing to bear that infinite 
 potency of spirituality, which, once achieved, 
 holds in solution all conditions, or terminates 
 and totally annihilates them. This is what 
 Jesus meant when he said, " Overcome evil 
 with good." For as man is divine, he can 
 develop and exercise divine powers. He can 
 lift up his heart with the petition, " Thy will 
 be done," and enter into co-operation with the 
 divine forces to do His will, and, as Dr. Drum- 
 mond so truly says, there is activity in that prayer. 
 
 Finer and more subtle than even the ether is 
 the all-pervading power of spiritual energy. To 
 enter into that high activity in doing the will 
 of God is to enter into the atmosphere of this 
 highest potency. The condition which we call 
 heaven surrounds us as an ethereal atmosphere, 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 237 
 
 and the only separation between this ethereal 
 realm, filled with the life and light of God, and 
 the physical realm is the separation of condition. 
 " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom ; " 
 that is, the selfish, the gross, cannot pass the im- 
 palpable veil that divides the world of the 
 senses from the world of realities. Let one 
 learn to attach slight value to mere things and 
 possessions and devote himself to the furtherance 
 of truth. God has always been revealing Him- 
 self increasingly to man. The very progress of 
 all knowledge depends on the degree in which 
 man is able to recognize and receive this revela- 
 tion. 
 
 As Mr. F. W. H. Myers has said : — 
 
 " Unless some insight is gained into the psychical 
 side of things, some communications realized with 
 intelligences outside our own, some light thrown upon 
 a more than corporeal descent and destiny of man, it 
 would seem that the shells to be picked up on the 
 shore of the ocean of truth will ever become 
 scantier, and the agnostics of the future will gaze 
 forth ever more hopelessly on that gloomy and 
 unvoyageable sea. For vast as is the visible universe, 
 infinite as may have been the intelligence that went 
 
238 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 to its evolution, yet while viewed in the external 
 way in which we alone can view it, — while seen 
 as a product and not as a plan, — it cannot possibly 
 suggest to us an indefinite number of universal laws. 
 Such cosmic generalizations as gravitation, evolution, 
 correlation of forces, conservation of energy, though 
 assuredly as yet unexhausted, cannot, in the nature of 
 things, be even approximately inexhaustible." 
 
 The new and deeper interest imparted to daily 
 life by a clearer idea of its scope is not the least 
 of arguments for a study of the spiritual signif- 
 icance. To many a demonstration of the truth 
 of immortality is required, — a physical evidence 
 that the soul continues to exist in a palpable 
 body. Such evidence imparts vividness to the 
 conceptions of a future life, — to that world 
 whose power of response to his aspirations is 
 limited only by his power to aspire. 
 
 This fuller conception of the continuity of the 
 spiritual significance of life will, as Professor 
 Hyslop says, "almost completely revolutionize 
 the ideals of religion, morality, and politics. 
 It will disturb dogmatic theology, but it will 
 rejuvenate the church's moral influence by in- 
 spiring confidence in the immortality of the 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 239 
 
 soul. In morals the economic idea of simply 
 getting enough to live with will be changed to 
 a spiritual ideal and to a serious regard for the 
 hereafter." 
 
 Psycho-physical science is the revealer of 
 new truth ; and spiritualism, so far from be- 
 ing superstition, is destined to prove, instead, 
 that the Unseen world is as much a sphere of 
 universal nature as our own and is the sol- 
 vent of mysteries that have perplexed philoso- 
 phers. 
 
 The roll-call of those whom the world has 
 termed " visionaries " is a notable one. At once 
 there occur to the mind the names of Galileo, 
 Copernicus, Galvani, Luther, Buddha, Mahomet, 
 Wesley, Socrates, Harvey, Newton, Columbus, 
 Franklin, Young, Watt, and Stephenson ; and 
 Jesus himself, whose life and teachings empha- 
 size the truth that " visions are the creators and 
 feeders of the world." As the eternal comes to 
 supplant the temporal, as the spirit lays hold 
 on the true realities, it is seen that Judgment, 
 Resurrection, Heaven, and Hades are typical 
 names for conditions, and are the ever-present 
 spiritual laws operating on every plane of life. 
 
 ^ 
 
240 The Spiritual Significance 
 
 One convincing proof of the reality of an un- 
 seen world around us inhabited by unseen beings 
 was unexpectedly offered by experimental study 
 of the magnetic relations which affect human 
 life. M. le Docteur Moutin, a distinguished 
 French savant of the Paris Faculty de M^decine, 
 gave some important data of his own observa- 
 tions in a paper before a scientific congress in 
 London some two years ago. In this resum^ 
 of experiences that extended over some twenty 
 years, the facts seem to point to the conclusion 
 that with many the partial release from the phys- 
 ical organism resulting from magnetic treatment 
 reveals to the subject a realm of conscious life 
 unperceived by the bodily senses. Dr. Moutin 
 says : — 
 
 " The Baron du Potet, one of the first pioneers of 
 mesmerism in England, once observed that ' magnet- 
 ism has opened through somnambulism a door lead- 
 ing into the invisible world.' Cahagnet, with his 
 lucid subjects, has abundantly proved the aphorism, 
 and it is much to be regretted that modern experi- 
 mentalists, including nearly all SpirituaHsts, have 
 neglected this modus faciendi. It is certain that a 
 subject profoundly entranced by magnetic procedures, 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 241 
 
 as we say in France, and not by the hypnotic methods 
 employed at the present time by a few medical men, 
 is in communication with unseen beings, and is there- 
 fore an intermediary whose consciousness functions 
 differently from that of the majority of mediums, 
 terming or believing themselves such, who obtain 
 only trivial results, — automatic writing, movement 
 of tables with contact, a variety of visions, or, more 
 correctly, hallucinations, etc. Hence also the state- 
 ments which emanate from these two classes of sub- 
 jects are entirely different. What is the reason of 
 this divergence 1 To ascertain its causes is the pur- 
 pose of the present study. 
 
 " In the profound state of hypnosis — I ask leave to 
 employ this word, though I am scarcely an advocate 
 of hypnotism — the spirit of the subject becomes 
 more or less disengaged from its terrestrial bed-rock, 
 and, receding, lives for the time being the spiritual 
 life, seeing what takes place in the beyond and being 
 able to furnish a tolerably clear notion, though not 
 one altogether exact, concerning it. 
 
 " The sleeper beholds more or less distinctly accord- 
 ing to his capabilities. All clairvoyants do not 
 perceive with the same precision, but all, notwith- 
 standing, agree in affirming the same thing with 
 regard to the existence of the soul. 
 16 
 
242 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 " Without seeking to depend on the labors of my 
 predecessors, nor yet on those of my contemporaries, 
 I may observe, in passing, that all who have con- 
 cerned themselves seriously with Puysegurism have 
 reached identical conclusions as to the existence of 
 souls and the possibility of communicating with these 
 by means of somnambulists; my own experiences 
 enable me to make the same deduction, and I base 
 on them my affirmation of that which I hold to be 
 true. 
 
 " All those who study these questions will be aware 
 that a subject, whether medium or somnambulist, is 
 a sensitive who perceives that which a well-balanced 
 being in the normal state is not able to discern; 
 that he is often the sport of forces which are as yet 
 badly defined, and that he often obeys these forces 
 unwittingly. Thus, for example, every one knows 
 that it is open to an operator to suggest verbally a 
 thousand things to a subject who is sufficiently en- 
 tranced, while the few only know and admit mental 
 suggestion or the transmission of thought, — a matter 
 outside our province, which is of far other import- 
 ance. Subjects who present these phenomena are 
 rare, very rare, it is true ; but powerful and reliable 
 mediums are also rare. 
 
 " During a period of many years I have made ex- 
 periments with a number of somnambulists, but not 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 243 
 
 wishmg to bind myself exclusively to their state- 
 ments, and with a view to controlling them, 1 have 
 engaged my friends and pupils to verify the phe- 
 nomena and communicate to me the result of their 
 investigations. This result was identical absolutely 
 with my own : I was therefore warranted in believ- 
 ing that my clairvoyants had not deceived me and 
 that they had not been themselves deceived." 
 
 Dr. Moutin relates several instances, of which 
 the following may serve as typical : — ■ 
 
 " The subject, an individual named Moussol, aged 
 forty years, supremely sceptical, affirmed the exist- 
 ence of souls while in the magnetic sleep. 
 
 " The first time that I entranced hira he beheld 
 crowds at a distance, was attracted towards them, 
 and sought to approach them, but it was not till the 
 fifth sitting that he could describe their physical 
 condition. 
 
 "'Ah! at last. ... I see. . . .' ^What do 
 you see % ' ^ My friends ! ' * Where are your 
 friends r * Below, at a great distance, but how 
 fair it is in that place and how beautiful are its 
 hues ! . . . Stay, Louis ! . . . How very strange ! 
 What a pace he is going at ! I cannot overtake 
 him, and yet I long to come up with him ; there is 
 
244 The Spiritual Significance^ 
 
 so much I should like to ask him. ... I was not 
 there when he died.' 
 
 " ' What are yt)u saying to me % Is it possible 
 that this gentleman is dead whom you are trying to 
 overtake ? ' 
 
 " ' By Heaven, it is long ago, but you know well, 
 it is Louis my brother.' 
 
 " ' Explain yourself all the same ; he is dead. 
 How should you be able to see him? How can you, 
 who believe in nothing, experience such an aber- 
 ration *? ' 
 
 " * But it is true, it is true. I do believe in God, 
 and I do perceive plainly that this concourse which 
 I beheld first of all from afar is composed of the souls 
 of people who once lived on the earth. . . .' 
 
 " Before proceeding further, I should observe that 
 this occurrence took place in the month of Septem- 
 ber, 1879; that this was the first lucid subject I 
 had met with ; and that my views were then in- 
 clined altogether towards materialism, imbued as I 
 then was with academical theories. I could not, 
 therefore, have suggested any such notion to my 
 somnambulist." 
 
 Dr. Moutin proceeds to say : — 
 
 "There is, therefore, no room for further doubt 
 that psychic phenomena are real and undeniable ; 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 245 
 
 we possess scientific proof that the soul survives 
 matter, and it is the somnambulism of Puysegur, 
 long before Modern Spiritism, which has given us 
 these proofs. 
 
 " By the help of magnetism we are, in my opinion, 
 enabled to make a thorough study of the faculties of 
 the soul. As a fact, through the body we reach the 
 soul, and as the bond which unites them is not broken, 
 we can, in a way, even dissect it. We can, at will, 
 study the mystery; we can do so more easily than 
 with mediums, who, moreover, in most instances, 
 produce only the phenomena of animism, so well 
 described and distinguished by Aksakof. These, 
 when they are truly spirit phenomena, are not sus- 
 ceptible of our control, and escape us often at the 
 very moment when we think that we have grasped 
 them. 
 
 " The world of the beyond would seem in every- 
 thing similar to our own ; so also on most occasions 
 it is difficult to say (though we are taught at times 
 to our cost) whether we are dealing with a serious 
 being or with a jester, while, on the other hand, 
 knowing our somnambulists at once, Ave can appre- 
 ciate them at their true value. 
 
 " For more than twenty years I have studied both 
 magnetism and spiritism ; I have witnessed many 
 
246 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 things which authorize me in maintaining that which 
 I have advanced above until the contrary has been 
 proved. 
 
 " May my plain speaking, therefore, be excused, 
 and may I be included among the most devoted de- 
 fenders of Modern Spiritualism ] " 
 
 Prof. Oscar Browning of Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, England, relates an incident known at 
 Oxford as the " Connington Ghost Story." It 
 seems that Professor Connington, who held one 
 of the important chairs of Oxford, was in the 
 midst of the delivery of a course of lectures 
 when he was warned by his physician that 
 he had not two weeks to live because of the 
 progress of some internal malady. Anxious to 
 complete his lectures, he would not consent 
 to rest, and as a matter of fact, he lay dying 
 on an afternoon on which he was announced 
 to speak, and so suddenly had this last illness 
 come that no news of it had spread abroad 
 among the students. Mr. Andrew Lang, in 
 walking through one of the long passages lead- 
 ing to the hall where Professor Connington was 
 to lecture, met the professor in his cap and gown, 
 with books under his arm. He thought nothing 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 247 
 
 of it until, at dinner that night, he was told of 
 Professor Connington's death. 
 
 "Impossible," he exclaimed. "Why, I saw 
 him at three o'clock going to his lecture-room." 
 
 Nevertheless it was true, and at the very time 
 Mr. Lang saw him — or believed he did — the 
 professor lay delirious on his bed, talking inco- 
 herently of his lecture. Psychic science would 
 assert that the subtle body, or the "etheric 
 double," withdrew from the physical body and 
 walked in the familiar way. 
 
 There is a curious but authoritative experience 
 of Bishop Wilberforce often narrated among his 
 friends. It seems that when the Bishop was a 
 young man he was a guest at a country house in 
 England, — a very old estate that had formerly, 
 if one mistakes not, been a monastery, and in 
 the house there still remained the ancient 
 library. At dinner on the day of his arrival 
 Mr. Wilberforce looked around and wondered at 
 not seeing at the table a young priest whom he 
 had met on the stairs. For a day or two he 
 continued to encounter the priest here and 
 there about the house, and he finally asked the 
 hostess regarding him. She replied that no such 
 
248 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 guest was in the house. Mr. Wilberforce was 
 bewildered. One evening when he was writing 
 in his room, suddenly the young priest again 
 stood before him. " What do you want ? " 
 asked Mr. Wilberforce. " Whatever it is, show 
 me and I will try to aid you." The priest made 
 a gesture of invitation to follow, and led Mr. 
 Wilberforce through long passages into the old 
 library, where he pointed to a certain volume. 
 Mr. Wilberforce opened it and there fluttered 
 out a page of manuscript. The priest pointed 
 to the fireplace and Mr. Wilberforce complied 
 and burned the paper. The hostess afterward 
 confessed that there was a legend that the house 
 was haunted by a priest, but that she had never 
 believed it. After this night, however, he was 
 seen no more. 
 
 The student of all such phenomena becomes 
 more and more convinced that in science lies the 
 key to all the spiritual laws that underlie occur- 
 rences that have heretofore been relegated either 
 to the domain of falsehood and fraud, or to that 
 of inexplicable mystery. 
 
 Tennyson, in a letter to a friend written in 
 1874, thus describes an experience of his own: — 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 249 
 
 "A kind of 'waking trance' (this for lack of a 
 better word), I have frequently had quite up from 
 boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often 
 come upon me through repeating my own name to 
 myself silently, till all at once, as it were, out of the 
 intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the 
 individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away 
 into boundless being ; and this not a confused state, 
 but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the 
 surest, utterly beyond words, whose death was an 
 almost laughable impossibility — the loss of person- 
 ality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but only 
 true life. 
 
 "I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I 
 not said the state is beyond words'? But in a 
 moment, when I come back into my normal condi- 
 tion of sanity, I am ready to fight for * Meine Liebe 
 Ich,' and hold that it will last for seons of aeons." 
 
 The demand of the hour is for a larger grasp of 
 law ; for insight instead of dogma. Social prog- 
 ress depends on right thinking. Socrates in his 
 day excluded inquiry as to the movements and 
 nature of the sun and the moon, and directed the 
 attention of man to ethics and politics. Comte 
 included the solar system as a legitimate matter 
 for research, but excluded the study of fixed stars 
 
250 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 as unattainable, and a learned savant of the time 
 of Dante declared that geography should only 
 concern itself "with that part of the earth in- 
 habited by us." Yet this conviction is hardly 
 more limited than one that should assert that 
 man, in his present life, has no concern with its 
 extension into the higher realms which now 
 and here are part of his environment. "The 
 dead are no more in eternity now than they 
 always were, or than we are at this moment," 
 says Dean Farrar. The present life must be 
 recognized as merely one of the phases in the 
 evolutionary progress of the immortal being, and 
 as offering a vantage-ground from which we can 
 study the conditions of the future, which is the 
 inevitable and the invariable effect of such causes 
 as we ourselves set in motion, producing them 
 by the series of choices that we make, each one 
 of which creates its own conditions. Intelligence 
 and morality are thus closely conjoined ; and the 
 more clearly man realizes his own nature and 
 his relations to the divine universe, the more 
 nobly may he live and the more swiftly may he 
 advance to the higher conditions of freedom and 
 of happiness, in which he shall realize the life of 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 251 
 
 the spirit, which is joj and peace. The first 
 requisite to this happier condition is in self- 
 control, in its larger sense of control of thought, 
 of deed, — of all that goes to make the quality of 
 life. The acquirement of self-control in a com- 
 plete and perfect sense is the achievement of a 
 lifetime ; but the control of all the finer forces 
 of nature would then be acquired also. That 
 Jesus could control the elements was because he 
 had achieved complete self-mastery. 
 
 This control of one's mental life — the con- 
 trol of thought — is the very first essential of 
 achieving that harmony and elevation in which 
 is developed that faculty of inner hearing, 
 or of clairaudience. One cannot live the life 
 of the spirit until he learns to control his 
 thought. He cannot dwell on the spiritual 
 plane until he learns to live the life of the spirit. 
 A mind at peace, full of outgoing sweetness 
 and love, is fitted to receive and recognize these 
 high communications. Of course in this human 
 life of ours we are not always at our best nor 
 at our worst. We desire to live on the higher 
 plane and to live the better and the nobler life, 
 and we do so — part of the time I Now, if we 
 
252 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 can live on the higher plane and live the life 
 of the spirit one hour out of the twenty-four, 
 why can we not the other twenty -three ? If 
 we can do so one day out of the seven, why can 
 we not the other six days? Annoying and irri- 
 tating things happen? Of course. That is a 
 part of our spiritual discipline. How is one to 
 achieve the grace of patience if his patience is 
 not taxed and tried ? How is one to acquire 
 the habit of serenity unless he is educated to 
 it by annoyances ? To be serene and at peace 
 when everything is delightful is no special 
 virtue ; it is when things are the reverse of de- 
 lightful that the quality is best cultivated. 
 
 It would sometimes almost seem as if the be- 
 lievers in the spiritual faith, of all others, had 
 the most potent aids, the most wonderful en- 
 couragement, to live the life of joy and peace 
 and love. To know that the spiritual world 
 is now and here; that we are now spiritual 
 beings whose life is not broken or changed in 
 its purpose by the event of death ; to know that 
 the Unseen world interpenetrates the world of 
 the Seen ; that our friends there are only more 
 closely and tenderly our friends and companions 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 253 
 
 than was possible here; to know that every 
 advance made in spiritual achievement draws 
 one into higher and more perfect conditions of 
 life ; that material losses and crosses are of very 
 little significance in this world of spirit in which 
 we dwell, — to have this realization is to have 
 the utmost stimulus to press on to the high 
 calling as sons of God. 
 
 The more real and sigaificant life is that which 
 is entered upon when the subtle body is released 
 from its interpenetration with the physical. The 
 ethereal body then enters into the corresponding 
 ethereal world. For, as we have seen, the subtle 
 body corresponds with the environment of the 
 successive higher state just as the physical body 
 does with the present environment. From this 
 point can we follow our vanished friends ? Can 
 psychic science penetrate and gain experimental 
 knowledge of the regions to which Intuition and 
 Philosophy, no less than Faith, have pointed the 
 way ? " Can man by searching find out God ? " 
 Can he, by study and analogy, continually ad- 
 vance into a larger comprehension of the divine 
 laws? Every achievement of the age has a 
 tongue which replies to this question with tri- 
 
254 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 umphant affirniation. The future life of hu- 
 manity is not to be darkened by the shadow of 
 death, but, rather, to be illuminated and to be 
 stimulated in thought and purpose by the vital 
 encouragement that results from viewing life in 
 its greater completeness, finding the change of 
 form from the physical to the subtle body merely 
 one event in its onward progress. Life here 
 and now is capable of a diviner quality, which 
 a clearer understanding of the close relations 
 between the Seen and the Unseen will enable 
 it to achieve. " The whole secret of the phys- 
 ical has not been read until its power of becom- 
 ing spiritual by service of the spirit has been 
 discerned," said Phillips Brooks. " Every lower 
 life is made to reach up and fulfil itself in a 
 higher. The entire order of the universe sup- 
 ports this proposition." 
 
 The transition from life here, lived essentially 
 in the atmosphere of high thought and noble 
 aspiration, to the next plane, where all this 
 diviner trend finds a still more congenial and 
 stimulating environment, cannot be one that 
 leaves between the two planes any chasm that 
 Bunders the communion of spirit with spirit. 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen, 255 
 
 Canon Wilberforce bids us recognize "the dig- 
 nity of life, the nothingness of death, the cer- 
 tainty of immortality, the solidarity of humanity," 
 And of those who have vanished from us into 
 the Unseen he says : " I cannot but believe that 
 they are very near to us, in a sense nearer than \ 
 when in the restrictions of the flesh, and that \ 
 they are affected by our conduct and condition." 
 A supreme comfort lies in this thought, which 
 we intuitively recognize to be a truth; the in- 
 finite comfort of feeling that between them and 
 ourselves the sweetest open communion exists ; 
 that the understanding is clearer, the compre- 
 hension larger, the sympathy more intimate, than 
 was possible in the conditions here. "The soul 
 in the body hears but dimly, and sees not at all 
 the innumerable influences with which it is 
 surrounded." It is as if when two or a group 
 of persons were walking together, each blind 
 and each hearing only partially, one of the num- 
 ber suddenly regained perfect sight and perfect 
 hearing. Then could he be much more to his 
 companions than before; he could comprehend 
 their nature, their environment, the incidents 
 and experiences they were meeting, as he could 
 
256 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 not possibly have done when sharing their 
 limitations. 
 
 Then, too, all the logic of analogy, all the 
 wider knowledge which science is now pouring 
 out to the world, tends to support and to con- 
 firm tlie probability that the real, the positive, 
 the more significant life is that entered upon by 
 casting off the physical body. The old tradi- 
 tions alluded to the state after death as vague, 
 shadowy, phantasmic. As well might the un- 
 conquerable force of the electric current be re- 
 garded as vague and feeble in comparison with 
 the tangible and visible force of an ox-cart. It 
 is the things unseen that are the most potent 
 as well as the most eternal in their nature. The 
 present world is the place where its inhabitants 
 are, not so much living as preparing to live. 
 All the enterprises of this part of life are 
 valuable, — not in and of themselves, but as 
 the means by which they exercise and develop 
 the faculties of man. 
 
 The change called death cannot be one to ab- 
 solutely unknown regions and conditions. Our 
 own spiritual faculties are laying hold of spirit- 
 ual knowledge. We are finding out the spiritual 
 
Between the Seen and the Unseen. 257 
 
 laws ; we are ourselves making constant advance 
 into spiritual conditions. 
 
 The poet Longfellow crystallized a truth in 
 the lines : — 
 
 " Believing in the midst of our afflictions 
 That death is a beginning, not an end." 
 
 There is the true point of departure, — that 
 ^^ death is a beginning, not an end." ^Circum- 
 stances and conditions separate friend from 
 friend in this life. The nearest and dearest 
 relations must inevitably be subject to more or 
 less partings and separations. And, after all, 
 the separation by death is only one of these 
 transient partings. To each and all sometime 
 and somewhere the summons comes, and we, 
 too, pass on and rejoin our beloved in a fairer 
 world under happier conditions. Just what 
 are these conditions ? 
 
 It is not, perhaps, too much to assume the 
 reality of communication between those in the 
 Seen and in the Unseen. To array all the data 
 that might be presented in favor of this assump- 
 tion would be to encumber the present volume 
 unduly, and the little narrative of personal expe- 
 
 17 
 
258 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 rience that will be submitted in the next chapter 
 must simply be judged on its own merits. The 
 problem of communication between the Seen and 
 the Unseen is one invested with far more subtle 
 and complicated conditions than the two arbitrary 
 ones of genuineness or of fraud. No one who 
 is studying the new revelations of psychic law 
 is, one may believe, a special pleader in any 
 way. There can be but one common aim, — 
 that of discovering and accepting the truth, 
 whatever that may be. Is it not true that there 
 could be no greater error — one might well say 
 calamity — than to hold the truths of religion as 
 commonly represented by the Christian Church 
 in all its various sects and denominations as 
 something on one side, and the possibility or 
 certainty of spirit intercommunications on the 
 other side, as antagonistic rather than as mutu- 
 ally complementary truths ? One has little pa- 
 tience with any formula that places the ^* Church 
 versus Spiritualism," or postulates as antago- 
 nistic "Christians and Spiritualists.'' If a 
 " Spiritualist " is not a " Christian '' — Heaven 
 help him ! And if a Christian is not a Spir- 
 itualist, then the only conclusion is, that if 
 
Behveen the Seen and the Unseen. 259 
 
 Spiritualism is true, then the matter of the 
 Christian becoming also the Spiritualist, com- 
 ing to include the truth of intercommunica- 
 tion with the other truths of the Christian life, 
 as taught by Christ and as taught by the 
 Church, is simply a question of time. For all 
 that is true will sometime be accepted by every 
 one. It is a matter of evolution. " In Thy light 
 we shall see light," wrote the psalmist, and as 
 Dr. Brooks well said of this truth : " To him 
 everything is comprehensible and capable of be- 
 ing understood only as it exists within the great 
 unfolding presence of God." Now, if the fact of 
 intercommunion between those here and those 
 who have passed beyond death really exists, then 
 it is a truth, — one truth among those essential 
 and sacred relationships that the soul of man 
 bears to God, or that the spiritual man, tempo- 
 rarily clad in a physical body, bears to God and 
 to Jesus the Christ. While the question of this 
 intercommunication is of the profoundest interest 
 and importance, it is yet always and essentially 
 subordinate to the supreme truth of our spiritual 
 relation to the Divine ; for that is the larger ques- 
 tion and includes the lesser one. I can live — 
 
260 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 you can live — all through this part of life with- 
 out specific communication with even our nearest 
 and dearest who are in the Unseen, but you can- 
 not live, nor can I, without the perpetual in- 
 tercourse with the Divine Spirit, without His 
 leading, His care, His love. The former is desir- 
 able ; the latter is essential. Yet there are those 
 of us who believe that the lesser is included in 
 the greater ; that the desirable is also interwoven 
 with the essential, and that the Lord is equally 
 the Giver of both in His divine ordering. 
 
PSYCHIC COMMUNICATION. 
 
After all, what an entrancing thing death is ! — Dr. Henry 
 Drummond. 
 
 My position, therefore, is that the jjhenomena of Spiritualism 
 in their entirety do not require further confirmation. They are 
 proved quite as well as any facts are proved in other sciences ; 
 and it is not denial or quibbling that can disprove any of them, 
 hut only fresh facts and accurate deductions from these facts. — 
 Alfred Russel Wallace, D. C. L., LL.D., F. R. S. 
 
 Notwithstanding my age and my exemption from the controver- 
 sies of the day, I feel it my duty to bear testimony to the great 
 fact of spiritualism. No one should keep silmt. — Fichte. 
 
PSYCHIC COMMUNICATION. 
 
 At some future day it will be proved — I cannot say 
 when and where — that the human soul is while in earth 
 life already in an uninterrupted communication with those 
 living in another world ; that the human soul can act upon 
 those beings, and receive, in return, impressions of them 
 without being conscious of it in the ordinary personality. 
 It would be a blessing if the state of things in the other 
 world and the conditions under which an interchange of 
 the two worlds may take place — perceived by us in a 
 speculative manner — would not only be theoretically ex- 
 hibited, but practically established by real and generally 
 acknowledged facts thus observed. — Immanuel Kant. 
 
 HE intelligent and increasing interest 
 in the question of communication be- 
 tween those in the Seen and in the 
 Unseen, not less than the eminence of the body 
 of men and women associated under the name of 
 the " Society for Psychical Research," have re- 
 deemed the subject alike from flippant discussion 
 or ignorant prejudice. There is a vast and a con- 
 stantly accumulating mass of evidence of con- 
 scious and intelligent communication which can 
 
264 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 no more be denied than can be the possibilities 
 of the wireless telegraph. The results — so 
 far as one may speak of results in what is 
 still an initial and experimental stage — of 
 the scientific investigation brought to bear 
 on the phenomena which the world knew as 
 Spiritualism have tended to establish the per- 
 sistence of personal identity beyond death ; the 
 possibility of conscious communication between 
 those in the ethereal and those in the physical 
 world; but this investigation has also led to 
 the discovery of an entirely new class of the 
 faculties and endowments of man which had 
 never before been officially recognized and 
 tabulated. More than a quarter of a century 
 ago Sir William Crookes engaged in serious 
 study of the spiritualistic phenomena. He 
 may well be accepted as the head of a distin- 
 guished group of investigators which includes 
 Prof. Oliver Lodge, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Dr. 
 Richard Hodgson, Prof. William James, Profes- 
 sor Sidgwick, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Dr. 
 Zollner, Dr. Desertis, and many other notable 
 men of varying nationalities. These investiga- 
 tions have been largely individual and to some 
 
Psychic Communication. 265 
 
 extent incidental among otlier work of an 
 absorbing nature carried on at the same time. 
 Nor are these conditions without their signal 
 advantages. If there is sometimes gain in 
 the exclusive devotion to an idea, there is 
 also a gain in being constantly able to test 
 the validity of that idea by its relation to 
 works and days; to give it no undue promi- 
 nence as the zeal of monomania, but to let 
 it take its chances in the scale of a wide 
 and varied range of significances. So the 
 fact that most of the investigators of the 
 phenomena that Hume brought so prominently 
 before Europe and that a host of latter-day 
 psychics have kept alive, are men who are in 
 the midst of important pursuits, — college pro- 
 fessors, scientists, scholars, authors, meeting con- 
 stant demands of the activities of progress, — is 
 a rather fortunate fact in this phase of study. 
 If, like Saul, they have not found a kingdom 
 when they went forth on a lesser errand, they 
 have found new phases of human life. Their 
 indirect and unforeseen results are of transcen- 
 dant importance and establish the truth that the 
 spiritual self of man has powers, here and now, 
 
^266 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of a nature that had never before been associ- 
 ated with human life on the physical plane. 
 The most important of these discoveries is that 
 of multiple personality, due primarily to Mr. 
 Myers. The number and variety of experiments 
 in this line made on both continents contribute 
 untold value to ethics and to psychology. 
 Hypnotism and auto-suggestion, so closely allied 
 with it ; thought transference, or telepathy ; the 
 exteriorization of sensibility ; the strange animic 
 force so ably discussed by Dr. Paul Gibier, — 
 these and other discoveries offer demonstrable 
 proof of the existence of an inner self, whose 
 faculties far exceed those manifested through 
 the physical organism and whose powers cor- 
 respond largely to a different environment from 
 that of the physical world. Much that was 
 formerly believed to be the manifestations of 
 " spirits " (as if a man only became a spirit 
 after death ! ) at seances is now fully recognized, 
 in the open light of science, to be the result of 
 the psychic faculties or powers of persons in 
 this life. Of course this includes both the 
 fraudulent — of conscious intention — and those 
 phenomena sincerely believed to have their 
 
Psychic Communication. 267 
 
 origin in the Unseen, because the faculties that 
 involuntarily produced them were not known. 
 Uncritical acceptance has given way to intelli- 
 gent discrimination. Psychology, medicine, and 
 ethics have greatly advanced by means of dis- 
 coveries which were a surprise to the discov- 
 erers themselves. The physical phenomena of 
 the stance room, even to slate- writing and to 
 materialization, may be produced entirely by 
 those persons who are present without any 
 conscious deception or intentional fraud. So 
 much any serious student of modern science and 
 psychology must inevitably accept. It is not 
 relinquishing the higher possibilities of a connec- 
 tion between the Seen and the Unseen. It is 
 in no way inimical to the simple faith of the 
 believer in Jesus and His divine promises. On 
 the contrary, it is a part of that life more abun- 
 dant which the Christ promised to man. On 
 the side of intelligence and of what Mr. Myers 
 well calls "the intellectual virtues," these dis- 
 coveries rank with that of the circulation of the 
 blood. They are of untold importance to life in 
 completeness of meaning. Nor do they in any 
 way lessen the simple faith in Christ and His 
 
268 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 teaching — which of itself is enough — any more 
 than discoveries in astronomy or in chemistry 
 lessen the religious faith and feeling. 
 
 The day, indeed, has passed when the realities 
 of the Unseen are regarded as unworthy serious 
 consideration ; for an age in which man sees 
 through a solid wall by means of the Rontgen ray, 
 or sends messages from continent to continent 
 by means of the Marconi transmitter and the 
 Guarini repeater ; or speaks by the human voice 
 over a thousand miles of space ; an age which is 
 on the very eve of perfecting the marvellous telec- 
 troscope, which will do for the eye what the tele- 
 phone has done for the ear, — it is not for such 
 an age to refuse to consider the accumulating 
 evidence that communication exists across the 
 gulf we call death. " I am in continual amaze- 
 ment," said Leibnitz, " at the nature of the 
 human mind, of whose powers and capabilities 
 we have no adequate conception." 
 
 The initial condition of. establishing familiar 
 and constant intercourse with those in the 
 ethereal world is not by their materialization, but 
 by our own spiritualization, — by the faith that 
 makes faithful; the prayer that pleads for the 
 
Psychic Communication. 269 
 
 help of Jesus, the Christ, to be uplifted into the 
 divine communion. 
 
 The initial question regarding this communi- 
 cation is, not whether it is desirable, but 
 whether it is true. The arguments against this 
 theory which have been advanced by persons 
 whose purity of heart and loftiness of character 
 invest their convictions with claim to respect, if 
 not to absolute acceptance, have their possible 
 origin in the tenacity of impression made by the 
 older theological teachings, in which the con- 
 ception of death differs so widely from the more 
 scientific and — may one venture to say ? — the 
 more spiritual one of modern thought ; for does 
 not man approach more nearly to God, does he 
 not come into closer relations with Jesus, by a 
 clearer knowledge of the divine laws of the 
 universe ? Religion is, indeed, in its true sense 
 as progressive as chemistry, not that God and 
 His divine orderings change, but that man 
 advances in a larger comprehension of these 
 laws ; and these successive views of humanity, 
 modified to a greater or less degree with every 
 age, form the basis of all the phases of religious 
 belief. 
 
270 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 When religion made of death an inscrut- 
 able mystery, an irreparable sorrow, when it 
 relegated all who had endeavored to follow 
 Christ to some far realm of infinite holiness and 
 infinite and impassable distance from human life, 
 it is easy to realize how the reverent mind 
 shrank from believing in the possibility of 
 familiar intercourse. The dead were held to 
 have become angels around the throne of God. 
 The friend who loved us yesterday was supposed 
 to have been so completely changed in both 
 nature and environment that imagination faltered 
 before any possible conception of his new experi- 
 ences. This order of conception has been greatly 
 modified, if not almost transformed, within the 
 past fifty years, and while one cause has been 
 that of the experimental demonstration of life in 
 the Unseen as closely allied with our own, vari- 
 ous other causes have contributed to the result, 
 in the way of scientific advance in biology, in 
 psychology, and in the nature of the forces of the 
 universe itself, as well as that growth of mind 
 " that widens with the progress of the suns." 
 
 The Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, speaking 
 of the need of growing enlightenment, said: 
 
Psychic Communication. 271 
 
 " The world's religions have failed and are fail- 
 ing to-day. They have been too much either 
 mystic exaltations or hard methods of economy. 
 Surely there is something better which they 
 might be, by being both. Such the complete 
 religion must be when it is perfectly revealed." 
 Is it too much to hope that to this complete 
 religion a truer realization of the nature and 
 destiny of man and his relation to the Unseen 
 world may contribute light^ which is the medium 
 for constant communication, just as, in the phys- 
 ical world, the air is the medium for the trans- 
 mission of sound ? 
 
 The entire drama of life is uplifted and simpli- 
 fied when we relegate the event of death to its 
 true place as an incident only, in the onward 
 progress. In about 1886, Frederic W. H. Myers 
 pointed out the truth of the "subliminal " or 
 subjective self, -—meaning just what might more 
 clearly be termed the spiritual self, — and it was 
 Mr. Myers who first pointed out the law of 
 telepathy between persons still in the physical 
 body. It is Mr. Myers and some of his associ- 
 ates in the Society for Psychical Research who 
 antedated by some seven or eight years the dis- 
 
272 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 covery of this law before it was ever mentioned 
 elsewhere. The assertion that telepathy is 
 limited in its action to those who are still in the 
 physical body is a misleading one, because the 
 event of death is the mere throwing off of the 
 physical body, and the telepathic intercourse 
 between spirit and spirit is not affected by it ; 
 save that it becomes somewhat clearer and 
 easier when one of the two is freed irom the 
 limitations of the physical. When both are free, 
 then the ease and instantaneous intercourse by 
 thought is, of course, still more perfect. The 
 spiritual faculties of man are his real self. To 
 exercise and develop those faculties in work, 
 in generous expressions, in aid to others, in 
 the communion of thought with the friends in 
 the Unseen world, as well as in the Seen, is the 
 true mode of development appointed by the 
 Divine Power. 
 
 Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace regards the facts 
 of psychical research as in harmony with the 
 constant advancement of science, and especially 
 with the modern conceptions of matter and of 
 the ether. 
 
 To the relidous world faith in Christ and 
 
Psychic Communication, 273 
 
 in immortality is untouched and unimpaired by 
 either the reality or unreality of specific commu- 
 nication between the two worlds. Yet to some 
 minds it offers the only convincing argument. 
 Professor Newbold of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania says that while he formerly doubted a 
 future existence^ he now knoivs that it is true, 
 because he has seen the evidence ; and, com- 
 menting on this. Rev. Dr. Heber Newton ob- 
 serves : " If Spiritualism offers even a chance to 
 demonstrate existence after death, it deserves 
 not contempt, but close scientific investigation." 
 Blessed, however, are they who have not seen 
 and yet have believed, and one of these is Bishop 
 Moreland of California, who has recently said : 
 
 " As a Christian and a spiritual being, I believe 
 that communications with the spiritual world are 
 reasonable and to be expected ; indeed, that our 
 whole religion reveals it and requires it, and that, 
 as a matter of fact, we practise intercourse with the 
 spiritual world every day of our lives." 
 
 The eminent group of representative names 
 engaged in psychic research assures a certain 
 authority to the concurrence of their convictions, 
 18 
 
274 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 while among all, the results of Dr. Hodgson's 
 work must be held as supreme in importance. 
 Dr. William James is a busy professor in Har- 
 vard, as is Professor Sidgwick in Cambridge 
 (England) ; Prof. Oliver Lodge is now the presi- 
 dent of an English college ; Sir William Crookes 
 is a professional scientist, and Mr. F. W. H. 
 Myers is an instructor and a literary man. Pro- 
 fessor Hyslop holds an important chair in 
 Columbia College ; and so, in one way or another, 
 all the more prominent *^ psychical researchers " 
 are inevitably engaged, for the most part, with 
 other work, except Dr. Hodgson, who refuses 
 whatever brilliant prospects would otherwise be 
 his to devote his time and energy to this work, 
 which Mr. Gladstone well characterized as "the 
 most important before the world at the present 
 time." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson's words regarding his own experi- 
 ence are convincing in their sincerity. 
 
 "During a period of twelve years,"' he said, "I 
 have had, through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper, 
 communications with the spirits of those who have 
 been for some time dead. During the first few 
 years I absolutely disbelieved in her power. I had 
 
Psychic Communication. 275 
 
 but one object, to discover fraud and trickery, and 
 I had had plenty of experience with these. Frankly, 
 I went to Mrs. Piper, with Professor James, about 
 twelve years ago, with the object of unmasking her. 
 To-day I am prepared to say that I believe in the 
 possibility of receiving messages from what is called 
 the w^orld of spirits. I entered the house profoundly 
 materialist, not believing in the continuance of life 
 after death, and to-day I simply say, / believe. The 
 proof has been given to me in such a way as to re- 
 move from me the possibility of a doubt. 
 
 "The influence which guides Mrs. Piper now 
 announced that in the future its action would be 
 exercised in such a way as to diminish the distance 
 which separates the two states, — the state before death 
 and the state subsequent to death. The change 
 took place in June, 1897. The earlier guides, Phin- 
 uit, Pelham, and others, quitted in effect the circle 
 of Mrs. Piper's influence, and their places were 
 taken by two individuals in particular, who actually 
 direct the communications which she receives. We 
 recognize the first, who communicates by the voice, 
 under the name of Imperator, and the second, who 
 whites, is known as Rector. I have received from 
 the first innumerable communications, especially on 
 the relations which exist between Man and the 
 Infinite." 
 
276 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 The problem of psychic research is so in- 
 timately connected with the name of Mrs. Piper 
 that a word regarding the methods of her 
 mediumship may contribute to the elucidation of 
 the phenomena produced through her organism. 
 She becomes entranced ; a little table is drawn 
 up at her left side with cushions on it, on which 
 her head is supported. In this perfectly uncon- 
 scious state her right hand is stretched out where 
 a table with writing pad and pencils is placed, 
 and her own hand writes the messages. The 
 theory is that her hand is used as the instrument 
 by the unseen person present, and this theory is 
 one supported by so authoritative an array of 
 testimony that no attempt to reproduce it will 
 be made here. The records of the Society for 
 Psychical Research offer such overwhelming 
 evidence from representative names all over the 
 world, that he who runs may read. Those 
 who have experimented with Mrs. Piper's 
 mediumship are not seekers — nor finders — of 
 any physical phenomena. Her organism is 
 apparently a species of telephonic transmitter, 
 and the communication resolves itself into a con- 
 versation of mingled speaking and writing, — 
 
Psychic Communication. 277 
 
 oral on the part of the sitter ; written through 
 the hand of Mrs. Piper on the part of those in 
 the Unseen. 
 
 Recent investigations into the nature of the 
 human body offer knowledge that throws light 
 on the mystery of mediumship. The name is 
 associated with so much that is fraudulent and 
 so much that, even if genuine, is utterly inconse- 
 quential, that it has been a serious and largely 
 an ungrateful task on the part of scientific men 
 to study its phases; but such experiments as 
 Colonel de Rochas of Paris has made in the ex- 
 teriorization of sensibility, the experiments at 
 the Salp^trifere in hypnotism and magnetism, and 
 other demonstrations familiar to the reader, 
 suggest how the mysterious mechanism of the 
 physical organization is complicated with the 
 spiritual life in a way that we are only begin- 
 ning to understand. Prof. Benjamin Peirce, the 
 great astronomer, defined man as a machine for 
 converting material into spiritual force ; and a 
 truer comprehension of the spiritual man will 
 reveal more and more clearly that the denser 
 body is a delicate and wonderful mechanism for 
 the transmission of intelligence, which is but 
 
278 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 another name for the spiritual power that acts 
 with creative energy on the world of matter. 
 Dr. Le Conte says of this wonderful organ- 
 ism : — 
 
 " The keyboards of this marvellous instrument 
 (the human body) are the nerve-terminals of the 
 sense organs, in touch with the material world, and 
 the brain-cells, in touch with the spiritual world." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson and Professor James regard the 
 organism of Mrs. Piper as telephonic and of a 
 nature to lend itself to other intelligences than 
 her own. The atmosphere of the unseen life 
 which transmits messages through her organism 
 is of a most refined and exalted type. The 
 entire conversation is simple and natural ; and if 
 it be not demoralizing to enjoy social intercourse 
 with our friends here, it is difficult to understand 
 why it should be when they have passed from 
 the Seen into the Unseen. The condition of 
 mediumship is believed to be determined by a 
 certain preponderance in some organizations of 
 the luminiferous ether which forms the trans- 
 mitter as natuj-ally as the wire transmits elec- 
 tricity. Yet all the preceding matter of this 
 
Psychic Communication, 279 
 
 volume has been written to very little purpose 
 if it does not plead for the evident truth that 
 each human being, by virtue of his own spiritual 
 nature, may so develop his own higher faculties 
 as to come into telepathic communication with 
 his friends in the ethereal world without resort 
 to any specific mediumship. Still, when this gift 
 is a genuine one, why should one feel any more 
 reluctance to avail himself of it than he does to 
 avail himself of the telegraph operator in order 
 to send a message to a friend ? 
 
 It may be permitted to state here in connec- 
 tion with the mediumship of Mrs. Piper that a 
 noble and exalted intelligence under the name of 
 " Imperator " assumes the direction of the 
 seances. The readers of a book called " Spirit 
 Teachings " will recall a curious experience in 
 the life of the late Rev. W. Stanton Moses, an 
 Episcopal clergyman of England. Mr. Moses 
 held a deep prejudice against the modern thought 
 known as Spiritualism, and, strangely, his own 
 hand began to write automatically, purporting to 
 be controlled by a spirit signing himself Im- 
 perator, and the arguments and objections in the 
 mind of Mr. Moses were met with such impres- 
 
280 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 sive intellectual power and reverent beauty of 
 hiofh feelins: that he became convinced of the 
 authoritative source of this writing through his 
 own hand. 
 
 Paragraphs of which the following is typical 
 were given to Mr. Moses : — 
 
 " The operations of the Supreme are uniform in 
 this as in all things else. The evil and the good 
 are mingled. He does not use great messengers for 
 that work which can be accomplished by more ordi- 
 nary spirits. He does not send the high and exalted 
 ones to minister conviction to an undeveloped and 
 earth-bound spirit. Far otherwise : He proportions 
 His causes to the effects which they are intended to 
 produce. In the operation of the ordinary processes 
 of nature, He does not produce insignificant results 
 from gigantic causes. So in this domain of spirit 
 agency. They who are crude in intellect and un- 
 developed in aspiration, whose souls do not soar to 
 heights of moral and intellectual grandeur, — such are 
 the charge of spirits who know best how to reach 
 and touch them ; who proportion their means to 
 the end in view ; and who must frequently use ma- 
 terial means for operating on an undeveloped in- 
 telligence. To the uneducated in mind and soul, 
 the spiritually or intellectually unprogressed, they 
 
Psychic Communication. 281 
 
 speak in the language most intelligible to their wants. 
 The physical operation of force that can he gauged 
 by external sense is necessary to assure some — nay, 
 very many — of existence beyond the grave." 
 
 The reverence and purity of purpose that 
 characterize Iinperator are indicated in such 
 an invocation as the following, — one representa- 
 tive of many v^^hich open or close a stance with 
 Mrs. Piper : — 
 
 ^^ Holy Father, God of mercy, Life and Light, render 
 ns Thy helping hand. Pour forth Thy blessings upon 
 lis, Thy messengers. Give us Thy heavenly light 
 that we may make Thy voice heard through all eternal 
 ages. Give us strength, through which we may open 
 the ears and eyes of Thy children. Father, it is 
 Imperator Servus who asks for light. I humbly 
 ask Thee to assist me in all I undertake." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " Throw off all earthly and impure conditions of 
 mind, and live in the pure atmosphere of God. We 
 are His messengers. We have never ceased to in- 
 spire some one, — to bring truth, light, joy, with 
 Thy word. The messengers of the Most High visit 
 all planets and teach His Holy Word. We walk in 
 
282 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 the light of God, and to us the way would seem 
 dark were we not led by Him." 
 
 In regard to the state of the one seeking com- 
 munication from those in the Unseen, Imperator 
 wrote : — 
 
 " We feel intensely thy conditions. ... Do not 
 worry. Trust us to give you all you need ; we 
 are capable of so doing. We dislike to speak so 
 much on this point, yet it is, after all, the important 
 one. . . . We must reach thee as not of the earth, 
 earthy, but in a more godlike and superior condition. 
 It is His holy and divine will that we should return 
 to thee, and we are not displeased with thy conditions. 
 Usually we see thy spirit clearly, yet at times we 
 see it imprisoned in thy body." 
 
 The spiritual quality and condition of the one 
 seeking communication through a psychic very 
 largely determines the character of the com- 
 nmnication. The same assertion is as applicable 
 to any form of social intercourse in this world. 
 What the friend or the stranger says to one is 
 conditioned on his own capacity and the quality 
 of his inner life. Imperator expressed some- 
 
Psychic Comraunication. 283 
 
 thing of this truth, writing through Mrs. Piper's 
 hand, when he said : — 
 
 " Unless thy thoughts are clear and on a high plane, 
 "we find it difficult to meet thee." 
 
 A most important and determining factor in 
 this intercommunication is thus seen to be the 
 spiritual condition of the person on this side. 
 Just in proportion to the degree in which man 
 may live in the spirit, may he enter into the com- 
 munion of spirit. The growth of the man or 
 woman into recognition of higher things, into a 
 perception of the invisible world, is just as 
 normal as is the growth of the infant into the 
 child ; of the child into youth and manhood. 
 
 ^'Do you think I could have a satisfactory 
 sitting with Mrs. Piper ? " asks the novice. As 
 well might he ask, " Do you think I can have 
 a satisfactory talk with Dr. Edward Everett 
 Hale ? " Whether he could, depends not wholly 
 on Dr. Hale, by any means, but depends upon 
 himself, his degree of understanding, his mental 
 and moral quality, — in short, whether he is, or 
 is not, fitted to enter into a sympathetic atmos- 
 phere with this great and good man. And to 
 
284 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 have satisfactory meeting with even one's near- 
 est and dearest who have gone on into the 
 spiritual world and life presupposes some de- 
 gree, at least, of understanding sympathy with 
 the conditions of that life. 
 
 It must be remembered that all psychic phe- 
 nomena are normal, and are under a spiritual law 
 in orderly sequence. Unquestionably the " me- 
 dium" is but a temporary bridge, so to speak. 
 The cruder physical demonstrations first aroused 
 the world ; these have given place almost en- 
 tirely to the forms of using the vocal organs 
 of the medium to speak, or the hand to write. 
 At first only an appeal to the physical senses 
 would have aroused the world; but this form 
 was only a temporary means, and when the 
 world was aroused, then the end was served, 
 \j and a finer and more subtle form, appealing to 
 the mind rather than to the ear and eye, was 
 instituted. 
 
 The next phase will be the development of 
 man's psychic faculties, enabling each individual 
 to enter directly, without benefit of medium, 
 into communication with those in the Unseen 
 by means of the development of his own spir- 
 
Psychic Communication, 285 
 
 itual nature. If, indeed, it be true that death 
 is only "an entrancing thing," as Dr. Drum- 
 mond phrases it, and is not that unspeakable , 
 
 grief that it has been regarded ; if it be true 
 that we may transfer all our love and our reality 
 of recognition from the physical form that lies 
 inanimate to the ethereal form that we do not 
 see ; if we may comprehend that the reason we 
 are unable to see it lies in the scientific fact that 
 this subtle body is in a state of higher vibra- 
 tion than the physical eye can command, but 
 that we may know its reality as we know the 
 reality of electricity, although unable to see it, 
 — if all this be true, it is of such overwhelming 
 importance as to compel every one to share 
 whatever experience might be calculated to con- 
 tribute any light on the problem. Death has 
 been the one irreparable loss. Are we about 
 to enter on a period in which this sorrow is to 
 be transfigured to a new joy ? Are the spiritual 
 faculties of man so to transcend this change of 
 form as to bridge the gulf of separation and find, 
 instead, a closer and more satisfying companion- 
 ship than is possible to the life on earth? Is 
 the world to enter on a period of receiving larger 
 
286 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 knowledge from the plane just beyond in a 
 manner that shall be consciously and intelli- 
 gently recognized? The trend of actual ex- 
 periences — -of experiences which are becoming 
 almost universal — points to this conclusion. 
 Communications are received that involve, on 
 the part of the person from whom the message 
 comes, statements of matters unknown to the 
 recipient, but which are afterward verified and 
 which prove a continuity of consciousness from 
 the life here to the life in the ethereal world as 
 unbroken as on the part of one who had crossed 
 the ocean and wrote to his friends from the 
 other side. Thought-transference can hardly 
 account for matter not known to the one to 
 whom it is communicated. Much that he 
 knows is not told; much that he does not 
 know is told. 
 
 All in all, the more one studies the whole field 
 of psychic law and intercourse between the Seen 
 and Unseen worlds, does it not seem that the 
 conditions are full of subtle and complex varia- 
 tions which cannot be sweepingly relegated to 
 the too arbitrary divisions of genuineness or 
 fraud, but which are simply a series of mental 
 
Psychic Communication. 287 
 
 phenomena existing in both the physical and 
 the ethereal world ? " Mediums sometimes 
 cheat," admitted Mrs. Browning. " So do 
 people who are not mediums." The friend in 
 the Unseen often forgets certain things. So 
 does the friend in the Seen. Do we not, then, 
 find that all the variations of phenomena that 
 perplex us in dealing with those who have 
 passed out of the physical world have their 
 prototype in all our dealings with those in the 
 physical world? For myself, at the present 
 status of whatever study and research I have 
 been enabled to make, I find this true : I find 
 that all intercourse, either by letter, telepathy, 
 or viva voce, with all my friends or acquaint- 
 ances or with strangers, on the present plane of 
 life, presents a similar and a corresponding range 
 of phenomena to that which I recognize in all 
 forms of communication with those who are on 
 the plane of life just beyond. I find in myself, 
 and in my associates in this world, curious 
 lapses of memory, unaccountable moods, incon- 
 sistent mental attitudes, inexplicable attractions 
 and repulsions, — all the variation of phenomena, 
 indeed, that I encounter in intercourse and 
 
288 TJie Spiritual Significance, 
 
 association with my friends in the Unseen 
 world. 
 
 What then ? Does not one take heart to 
 enter on renewed effort with this realizing sense 
 of the continuity of life ; that all advancement 
 made to-day is felt to-morrow ; that all achieve- 
 ment made this year is so much gained for next 
 year; and not only in this specific way, but 
 also that every advance made uplifts one more 
 and more into the region of intenser life, of 
 nobler purposes, where progress proceeds in an 
 accelerated ratio ? On this upward way are en- 
 countered unseen companionships of the loftier 
 order. The potent influence of the friends we 
 do not see has been erroneously relegated to the 
 mystical realm, rather than recognized as one 
 of the most actual and practical factors in 
 daily life. " Who knows the pathways ? " says 
 George Eliot. '^We are all of us denying or 
 fulfilling prayers ; and men, in their careless 
 deeds, walk amid invisible outstretched arms 
 and pleadings made in vain." The best re- 
 sults of all true culture are in that they so 
 refine and exalt the real nature of the indi- 
 vidual that he becomes more susceptible and 
 
Psychic Communication, 289 
 
 more sensitive to these unseen influences that 
 are around him to lead him upward in spir- 
 itual life. 
 
 " What would this life be," said Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, — "what would this life be if it had not 
 eternal relations? Nothing would be worth 
 doing, certainly. But I am what many people 
 call a 'mystic/ and what I myself call a 're- 
 alist/ because I consider that every step of the 
 foot or stroke of the pen here has some real 
 connection with and result in the hereafter. 
 'This life's a dream — a fleeting show?' 'No, 
 indeed. Everything is worth doing, — every- 
 thing good, of course, — and everything that 
 does good for a moment does good forever. 
 I believe in a perpetual sequence according to 
 God's will, and in what has been called a * cor- 
 respondence' between the natural world and 
 the spiritual. . . . What comes from God has 
 life in it, and certainly from all the growth of 
 living things spiritual growth cannot be ex- 
 cepted." 
 
 The unbroken continuity of life is the one 
 supreme fact that makes for all achievement 
 that is of value and for all progress and happi- 
 19 
 
290 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 ness ; and how this truth is concentrated in the 
 one line from Robert Browning : — 
 
 " T^o work begun shall ever pause for death." 
 
 In the attempt to select, from the mass of ac- 
 cumulated evidence, incidents of a nature to 
 relate in this volume, the embarrassment is in 
 the fulness and the vast masses of the data. 
 These conversations with one in the Unseen, 
 carried on by means of the writing through Mrs. 
 Piper's hand, were all more or less linked to- 
 gether, and, what is the most important element 
 in it of all, they were constantly relating them- 
 selves, in the intervals between the sittings, to 
 the actual course of life in daily affairs. No one 
 seance stands out isolated ; each and all bear 
 the interrelation of a constant communion of 
 spirit to spirit, which apparently persisted — 
 and persists — between the friend referred to 
 and myself. Thus, all the stances with Mrs. 
 Piper were like actual talks, viva voce, in cer- 
 tain meetings with a friend with whom one 
 has been all the time in perpetual daily corre- 
 spondence. At such meetings friends are apt 
 to speak to each other more or less of the 
 
Psychic Communication. 291 
 
 matters which they have mutually discussed in 
 their daily letters. If telepathic intercourse 
 may be substituted for epistolary correspondence, 
 there is the analogy of the communications re- 
 ceived through Mrs. Piper's hand, as relating 
 itself to my own constant telepathic intercourse, 
 day by day, w4th this friend in the ethereal world. 
 
 To those who have made a special study into 
 the science of communication if it be one, two 
 phases are experienced, — the one telepathic 
 and direct, from spirit to spirit; the other ob- 
 jective through the medium employed. These 
 two relate themselves to each other constantly ; 
 the objective form often making reference to 
 some mental state which the sitter is aware 
 of having experienced. Yet, at the same time, 
 things that are strongly in one's mind will not 
 necessarily be given through the medium, and, 
 conversely, statements are made which the sitter 
 only learns then and there for the first time, 
 and which he may afterward verify. 
 
 One instance in which subsequent events 
 seemed to corroborate the theory of direct tele- 
 pathic intercourse with those in the life beyond 
 was as follows : — 
 
292 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 Returning from Europe at one time soon after 
 she had passed into the Unseen, it was my inten- 
 tion to journey onward to that far island of the 
 Pacific so associated with her presence. Sitting 
 alone late one evening, I suddenly felt her draw 
 near ; and her words, though inaudible to the 
 ear, fell clearly on my mind, when, calling me by 
 name, she said : ^^ Do not go ; all you want will 
 come to you here." The counsel commended 
 itself to my acceptance, and within two months 
 the four persons most closely associated with 
 her during her stay in that far island of the sea 
 had come into the immediate vicinity of my 
 home, and to have made the journey would 
 have been to miss meeting them. This ex- 
 perience seemed to confirm the reality of the 
 apparent message from her that the desire would 
 be met by remaining at home. Often, in stances 
 with Mrs. Piper, conversations that had been 
 held in my room would be commented upon; 
 and in one case a statement made regarding a 
 decision of her own before her death was vehe- 
 mently denied. Later, the assertion was found 
 to have been erroneous, as she claimed (writing 
 through Mrs. Piper's hand), although the error 
 
Psychic Communication, 293 
 
 resulted only from a natural and almost inevit- 
 able misapprehension on the part of the person 
 making the statement, who had every reason to 
 believe that it was true. Now, in this study of 
 psychic communication, still in its experimental 
 stages, every fact contributes to the establish- 
 ment of truth. If those in the ethereal world 
 understand conversations here, either by hearing 
 the words spoken or perceiving the vibration in 
 the ether, — ■ which may correspond to what we 
 see as writing, — it is a fact with which to 
 reckon. One of the modern advertising methods 
 is to flash words on the air, as if written in 
 letters of fire, by means of electricity. It may 
 be that thought, as the very highest and most 
 intense potency known, writes itself in the ether 
 every time we speak, and that those in the ethe- 
 real world whose minds are in sympathetic com- 
 munion with our own thus read the words that 
 we speak. At all events, it was constantly evi- 
 dent that she took up the possibilities of psychic 
 communication from her new life with that same 
 intense ardor that characterized her here when 
 she experimented with Planchette; when she 
 entered so ardently into the wonder of the tele- 
 
294 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 phone when it was first invented, or gave herself 
 to so exhaustive an investigation of the Mormon 
 problem. The insistent manner in which she 
 penetrated into facts characterized this intelli- 
 gence which was flashing constant communica- 
 tions from the Unseen, and which evinced such 
 a keen persistence in experiment by means of 
 the organism of Mrs. Piper. The absolute iden- 
 tity of expression with those of her own when 
 here was a striking feature of the continued in- 
 tercourse. 
 
 It would almost seem that the entire extermi- 
 nation of materialism is the heaven-destined 
 work of psychic research; or, to phrase this 
 better, psychic research, conducted as it is by 
 leading scientific men, whose conclusions must 
 perforce be accepted as true by all intelligent 
 people, is making the scientific demonstration 
 which is the corollary of religious teaching. 
 Jesus said that blessed were they who had not 
 seen, and yet had believed ; but there are minds 
 so constituted as to be more or less impervious 
 to purely spiritual recognition, and although to a 
 great degree spiritual things must be spiritually 
 discerned, still, to a certain degree also, spirit- 
 
Psychic Communication. 295 
 
 ual things can be scientifically proved and 
 demonstrated. 
 
 One could not, however, affirm that the 
 present is a materialistic age. On the con- 
 trary, we are so entering into a practical knowl- 
 edge and use of the forces in the Unseen, 
 and into such a beautiful consciousness of the 
 larger life, that it is an increasing joy to live. 
 Is it not indeed true, as that most eminent 
 biblical scholar. Rev. Dr. Briggs, said from the 
 pulpit of Trinity Church in Boston, that the world 
 is advancing from the age of faith to the age of 
 love? The best evidences of spirituality — its 
 highest fruits — are love to God and man ; and 
 truly, if man love not his brother whom he hath 
 seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
 seen? The world is coming into the age of 
 love; man's spiritual nature is developing so 
 that in his daily experiences he is able to persist 
 because of the light of larger hopes and of a 
 faith informed by knowledge, and to endure as 
 seeing Him who is invisible. In an age when 
 man discovers the nature of the stars, when he 
 penetrates the secrets of the universe, shall he 
 not learn to know the nature of his owji life ? 
 
296 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 Psychic research is one of the divinely appointed 
 factors of the day in leading men to a truer 
 knowledge of the nature of life and its con- 
 stant evolutionary progress toward the Divine. 
 Still, it is probably true that even the greatest 
 leaders in this work feel themselves to be 
 as yet only on the threshold of the opening 
 revelation of knowledge. Mental phenomena 
 are so varied in their character that no one law 
 of identity can apply to all. The communications 
 given through a medium, for instance, may be 
 from a friend in the Unseen, or from a friend 
 still in the physical body, or from the subliminal 
 self of the sitter ; and whether its origin is one 
 or the other must be determined just as we 
 determine the varied phenomena of intercourse 
 with our friends in the physical world. 
 
 " What the spiritualists ascribe to friends in 
 the Unseen I ascribe to God," remarked an esti- 
 mable lady one day. 
 
 Certainly we may all ascribe everything to 
 God ; only is it not possible that in the part 
 of life a little farther on, just as in the life 
 here, He works by means and not by miracles? 
 If one gives a pair of shoes to a man who needs 
 
Psychic Communication, 297 
 
 them^ it is primarily God who thus meets the 
 poor man's need, only He does not materialize 
 shoes before him, as a miracle, but puts it into a 
 man's heart to buy and give them. God wants 
 to send a poor family a load of wood, but He 
 does not precipitate it through the roof; He 
 puts it into the heart of some one to act as his 
 messenger. Our great reward in this part of 
 life, in endeavoring to live in purity and prayer 
 and abounding good will, is that we may be not 
 quite unworthy to be co-workers with God in this 
 way. Is it not conceivable that our friends in 
 the Unseen thus find their employment and 
 enjoyment in all forms of co-operation with the 
 Divine Power, to carry out His will, to give His 
 messages, to minister, in short, in every possible 
 way ? The highest and noblest among us here 
 minister most largely and truly to humanity. 
 Does not the analogy hold true as we develop 
 and progress ? 
 
 The onward progress of man will comprehend 
 the development of his spiritual faculties so that 
 he shall no longer need to resort to any special 
 " mediumship " in order to hold intercourse with 
 friends in the Unseen ; but by the unfolding of 
 
298 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 his own powers he shall see and hear what is 
 beyond the present usual range of eye and ear. 
 
 There can be little doubt that humanity is 
 pressing onward with an accelerated ratio of 
 development into the finer perceptions and 
 the clearer knowledge of the nature of life 
 considered in the light of spiritual evolution. 
 
 It has been objected that much of the com- 
 munication offered by the study of members of 
 the Society for Psychical Ressarch is of a " ma- 
 terial" character. A writer in "The Catholic 
 Times" has said: — 
 
 " I do not for a moment say that such communi- 
 cation is not possible, but I do say that to think for 
 one instant that the dead would communicate with 
 those whom they loved in this world ou such sub- 
 jects as these is not only monstrous and impossible, 
 but also wicked and blasphemous. ' As is the earthy, 
 such are they that are earthy.' And very earthy 
 indeed are these communications from the dead, — not 
 one word of hope or encouragement to those who 
 are left behind, no message of love nor any warning 
 as to a future world, nothing but trumpery recol- 
 lections of certain unimportant and insignificant de- 
 tails of their lives which happened to be unknown 
 
Psychic Communication. 299 
 
 to the relative on earth. If these be the subjects 
 on which the thoughts of the departed dead dwell 
 and in which they seek consolation, what hope is 
 there in any heavenly perfection, and what trace is 
 there of the image of the heavenly which Saint Paul 
 says we are to bear 1 " 
 
 Nor does this seem altogether unreasonable 
 to those who hold sacred the teachings of the 
 Church and the Divine Word. Yet may there 
 not be a basis of mutual understanding on 
 which the writer of the above paragraph and 
 the student of psychical research may meet ? 
 Might it not be conceded that the initial ques- 
 tion in these communications is that of iden- 
 tity, and that the tests of identity are neces- 
 sarily those involving the memory of the life on 
 earth ? Still more, may it not be conceded that 
 if these recollections include facts unknown to 
 the friend on earth, but which he afterward 
 verifies, the test is more absolute in that it elimi- 
 nates the explanation of mind-reading on the 
 part of the medium, or of unconscious thought 
 transference, which are always possible ex- 
 planations of the phenomena involved when the 
 matter given is already known to the sitter ? 
 
300 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 It is often the most insignificant detail that 
 carries the greatest weight in presumptive evi- 
 dence. It is not, however, true — even restrict- 
 ing the present inquiry to the work through Mrs. 
 Piper alone — that the entire body of the com- 
 munications received are of a trivial quality. It 
 is hoped that the reverse may be shown even in 
 this one chapter devoted to the more technical 
 illustration of these experiences. Sir William 
 Thompson says that science is bound by the 
 everlasting law of honor to face fearlessly every 
 problem which can fairly be presented. Cer- 
 tainly this problem of the interrelations between 
 the two worlds of the Seen and the Unseen is one 
 whose importance appeals equally to both sceptic 
 and believer, and the only desire on either side 
 can be simply to ascertain the truth. It does 
 not necessarily follow — may we not believe — 
 that the thoughts of those who have passed into 
 the life just beyond dwell to any extent on " in- 
 significant details of their lives on earth " simply 
 because, as matters of test and identity, these are 
 sometimes cited. A man sojourning in Rome 
 or in London, involved in experiences of the 
 most serious and momentous nature, might still, 
 
Psychic Communication. 301 
 
 in a letter to his family in New York, refer 
 to details or facts that would seem to the world as 
 very trivial and quite unworthy to hold a place 
 in his mind. Is it not a truer reading of life 
 to feel that attention to comparatively insignifi- 
 cant details is not incompatible with the utmost 
 breadth of mind or exaltation of purpose ? Yet, 
 as has been said, these communications, even 
 limiting our inquiry to those through the organ- 
 ism of Mrs. Piper, are far from being without 
 " a word of hope or encouragement to those 
 who are left behind " or of " messages of love or 
 warning." 
 
 The initial truth in this reconstruction and 
 enlargement of the Christian faith which appears 
 as the result of a larger acquaintance with the 
 divine laws, is the realization that those in this 
 world are not " left behind " by those who die 
 in any sense save so far as they individually 
 fail to achieve spirituality of life. Surely, this 
 achievement is the privilege of humanity here 
 and now, and just in proportion as it is accom- 
 plished, one is already an inhabitant of the 
 spiritual world and in natural communication 
 with its other inhabitants, for we must bear in 
 
302 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 mind that what we call heaven is a condition 
 and not a place. Scientific investigation in its 
 essential nature is inevitably based on facts of 
 the outer world, and not on opinions or expres- 
 sions. If A and B, who have been close friends 
 on earth, are suddenly separated by death, the 
 fact that B remembered some seemingly trivial 
 incident in their companionship on earth might 
 be a striking test of individuality ; while an elo- 
 quent and uplifting description of paradise, or a 
 moral counsel of infinite value in itself, might 
 still fail to establish that one question of his per- 
 sonal identity. The establishment of this is not, 
 then, a mere interest of A's alone, but it be- 
 comes a factor in a chain of presumptive evidence 
 to prove or disprove, as may be, the hypothesis 
 that between spirit and spirit, irrespective of the 
 physical body, intercourse may exist. If this 
 change that we call death is of a far less dis- 
 tinctive character than has been heretofore be- 
 lieved, it is the most important discovery at the 
 present time before the civilized world. 
 
 The reproach of triviality in communications 
 is not, indeed, entirely from those on this side. 
 In one communication from the ethereal world it 
 was said : — 
 
Psychic Communication. 303 
 
 " . . . If those on earth would put sympathy, 
 feeling, and earnestness into their desire to get some- 
 thing from the spiritual world, it is an unmistakable 
 fact that they would receive it." 
 
 The communications from the intelligence 
 signing himself " Iraperator " indicate the rever- 
 ent and uplifting thought that prevails in the 
 world beyond, even as in the world here, among 
 the more spiritually developed. 
 
 At one time Imperator wrote of love : — 
 
 "It would be impossible to explain for the under- 
 standing of mortal minds what the word ' love ' really 
 means. It is the divine essence of God Himself. 
 Man, where the spirit of love is not in him, is not 
 in rapport with God." 
 
 Again this noble intelligence wrote : — 
 
 " We do not desire to give a long line of inco- 
 herent statements ; on the contrary, we desire to 
 teach thee all about God and His divine and won- 
 drous workings during the past, middle, and present 
 
 What are the occupations of the life beyond ? 
 Perhaps the first condition for entering on this 
 
304 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 quest is to realize that the physical body is but a 
 transient phenomenon, and has little determin- 
 ing power over the spiritual being who is there- 
 by related by it, for a season, to the physical 
 world. The scholar, the thinker, the statesman, 
 the inventor, the discoverer, the teacher, the 
 poet, the man of affairs, — or the ignorant, the 
 vicious, — what and where are each and all 
 when they vanish from human sight ? Is it not 
 according to the law of spiritual evolution that 
 each advances along the line of the forces he in- 
 augurated here, — his faculties unfolding and 
 achieving constantly higher planes of action ? 
 
 When at almost every stance with Mrs. Piper 
 I have asked her the question, " What are you 
 doing now ? " the reply has always indicated the 
 natural continuity of progress. At one time she 
 replied : '' I have been writing the history of my 
 experiences since coming here, for distribution 
 among the denser spirits." 
 
 One notable fact in this higher life is that the 
 motive of work is changed from self-interest — 
 in the way of remuneration or fame — to the 
 interest of co-operating with the divine powers 
 in helping and uplifting all who are in need. 
 
Psychic Communication. 305 
 
 This aid may be by teaching and by awakening 
 the moral faculties ; or by contributing intel- 
 lectual stimulus through books and lectures, or 
 by penetration into the higher laws of nature, 
 revealing them to the comprehension even as 
 great scientists and inventors reveal them in this 
 world, save that these various occupations are 
 all on a larger and a more important scale. The 
 psychic body subsists by its spiritual energy. 
 It obeys the slightest bidding of the soul. If we 
 could imagine all the work of the world here 
 as accomplished from the inner spring of love 
 as a motive, — love of man and devotion to 
 God, a desire to enter increasingly into co- 
 operation with His plan for mankind, and to 
 make ourselves His ministers, — if one could 
 imagine a life like this on earth, it would be a 
 not untrue prototype of that beyond the change 
 of death. It is, indeed, simply the elimination 
 of the physical conditions, the living in the 
 spiritual significance of life. 
 
 At one time two sittings with Mrs. Piper, 
 held under the auspices of the Society for Psy- 
 chical Research, were arranged for me by Dr. 
 Hodgson for two consecutive days, and on the 
 20 
 
306 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 second of these I asked her to tell me — as •typi- 
 cal, of life in the Unseen — just what she had 
 been doing from the hour I left her the day before 
 until I was again at Mrs. Piper's. 
 
 She wrote : — 
 
 " I was rather tired after talking with you so 
 long, and I walked in the garden awhile to 
 refresh myself, and then we all went to the 
 temple and heard a great lecture by a very bril- 
 liant man on ' Light.' He analyzed its com- 
 position and its relation to color. A great many 
 scientific people w^ere there and discussed the 
 subject after the close of the lecture. Then we 
 came home, and I sat down talking to my father 
 and mother, and then I said : * I must look into 
 
 earth life and see what [mentioning my 
 
 own name] is about.'" 
 
 " And did you see me ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes, you were sitting by the window, with 
 your hands full of my letters." 
 
 As only one night had elapsed, this period 
 was fresh in my memory, and her reply described 
 precisely my occupation at the time. I was 
 then engaged in the writing of her biography, 
 and in connection with the work I had been 
 
Psychic Communication, 307 
 
 examining packages of her letters written to 
 me over a period of fifteen years. 
 
 My friend in the Unseen continued : — 
 
 " And I said to you, ^ Dear, I do not come 
 alone, but I bring a friend with me.' " 
 
 " Whom did you bring ? " I questioned. 
 
 "Rosa Bonheur," she replied. "She was 
 attracted by your writing about her." 
 
 It had been my privilege to meet Mademoiselle 
 Bonheur at her home in France ; and at her death, 
 which occurred about this time, I had been 
 engaged in writing an article on her life and 
 marvellous art. 
 
 "And after you and Mademoiselle Bonheur 
 had left my room, what did you do then ? " I 
 questioned further. 
 
 " I had a period of repose," she replied, " and 
 this morning I have been at a musical convention 
 with Addie Phillips. We are composing some 
 music together." 
 
 Adelaide Phillips, the great singer, had been 
 an intimate associate of my friend, and they 
 were always much together up to the time of 
 the death of Miss Phillips. 
 
 Now here was a perfectly rational and natural 
 
308 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 account of the experiences of twenty-four hours, 
 indicating the same life of intellectual activity 
 and artistic purpose that she lived while on 
 earth. 
 
 In Lowell's poem on Channing he indicates 
 a probable state of the life beyond in the 
 stanza : — 
 
 " Thou art not idle ; in thy higher sphere 
 Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, 
 And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here 
 Is all the crown and glory that it asks." 
 
 Canon Lytleton of England, touching the 
 nature of the life beyond in one of his dis- 
 courses, said : — 
 
 "I believe that we may worship God in doing 
 His will as well as in joining the praises and prayers 
 of the great congregation. And I cannot think that 
 the whole condition of our existence will be com- 
 pletely changed, our very nature not only transformed 
 but unmade, when we enter our heavenly rest. Our 
 occupations may be different, but all occupations 
 will not be at an end. If we are to argue at all 
 from the analogy of Scripture, there can be no doubt 
 upon this point. What is the heavenly rest now? 
 What is the rest of the angelic host % Cherubim 
 
Psychic Commtinication. 309 
 
 and seraphim do indeed cry, 'Holy, Holy, Holy,' 
 as they veil their faces before the awful majesty in 
 which they stand, but they have wings and they 
 have feet, as servants ever ready to do the will of 
 Him who sitteth upon the throne." 
 
 Certainly the diversities of gifts will find their 
 fuller occupations and achievements beyond. 
 The heavenly rest is a life of harmonious action. 
 " My Father vrorketh hitherto, and I vrork," said 
 the Christ. If the life of mere contemplation 
 is not the highest on earth, why should it be 
 in heaven ? Does not all spiritual energy find 
 in expression its fulfilment ? 
 
 On the occasion of another seance with Mrs. 
 Piper, my friend in the Unseen came, and after 
 predicting a certain action on the part of a 
 mutual friend, she said : — 
 
 " I know he will. I give this for a little test. 
 
 You see, Dear , I am looking for tests a 
 
 little." 
 
 " You are looking for tests as we are ? " 
 "I wish you to know that I am intensely in- 
 terested in returning here," she rejoined with 
 her characteristic vehemence, "and I am anx- 
 
310 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 ious that my wishes should be carried out, 
 and one of my special desires is to be able to 
 impress my friends on earth and make them un- 
 derstand just what I wish them to do. I will 
 
 go to and whisper in his ear, so to speak, 
 
 and give him special instructions as to what 
 disposal to make of those matters." 
 
 Her desire that the person in question should 
 not be informed of this stance and of any 
 communication with her was scrupulously ob- 
 served ; but all the details that she had declared 
 she would " whisper in the ear " of the in- 
 dividual alluded to were actually carried out 
 by him, apparently as the results of his own 
 judgment, — details involving no little com- 
 plexity of business affairs. If she herself did 
 not impress her wishes upon him telepathically, 
 then was the occurrence one of a long chain of 
 most extraordinary coincidences. In reply to the 
 question as to the best conditions for this tele- 
 pathic intercourse to exist, she replied that it 
 depended on harmony. 
 
 " What do you see when in my room ? " I 
 one day asked her. 
 
 "Well, Dear, when I am actually in your 
 
Psychic Communication. 311 
 
 room, I see your spiritual body and the material 
 body also, yet the material is much the darker 
 of the two, and yet I see them both ; and the 
 outer one looks like the outline of a portrait." 
 
 "Can you see my gown, for instance, its 
 color, or general effect ? " 
 
 " Yes, at times, yet not at all times." 
 
 "Would it depend on my state of mind 
 whether you saw it more or less clearly ? " 
 
 " Not especially that. Dear ; but on all other 
 conditions." 
 
 " Is there anything I can do to make the con- 
 ditions better for you to be near me ? " 
 
 " Yes, when your thoughts are with or upon 
 me, so to speak, and when you are in an espe- 
 cially rested condition, I come more easily." 
 
 As an indication of the conditions that make 
 possible the direct intercourse between spirit 
 and spirit came this counsel from her : — 
 
 "... You know my heart, and nothing could 
 change my love. But I have been disturbed over 
 some things, and I ask you to grant me the favor to 
 listen when I speak to you. Keep very calm and 
 I will speak directly to you. I wish you to get the 
 best, the very best, out of life, and if you strive for 
 
312 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 this, such happiness as you never dreamed of awaits 
 you here. . . . There is nothing on earth you need 
 fear. . . . Live in the body as long as you can." 
 
 One very striking instance in this series of 
 stances with Mrs. Piper is the story of a ring 
 that had belonged to my friend, and vi^hich be- 
 came the means of a test communication which 
 is in part recorded in the Third Series of " The 
 World Beautiful," but as its sequence had not 
 been reached when that volume was published, 
 a brief resum^ will be given here, together with 
 the impressive denouement. 
 
 Among other articles of jewelry that had be- 
 longed to my beloved friend there came into 
 my possession a ring engraved within, " January 
 14, 1878." My first meeting with her had been 
 in October of 1880, and I had no conceivable 
 idea as to where she had been in the January 
 of 1878. I was very curious to see what she 
 would tell me of this inscription in the ring 
 at the next stance after recei\dng it, and I in- 
 quired what it meant, and if it were an affair of 
 romance ? 
 
 " Oh, no," she wrote. " It marked a matinee 
 t^l^phonique, — the telephone, you know," she 
 
Psychic Communication, 313 
 
 added, a trifle impatiently. " You know, I as- 
 sisted Professor Bell to introduce the telephone 
 in London." 
 
 I knew this only vaguely. She added some 
 particulars, and I returned home to renew my 
 search among her papers — which had been 
 given to me for biographical use — only to be 
 completely baffled in finding any data bearing 
 on the year 1878. So the summer went on 
 until one August day, when I was surprised 
 by hearing her say to me, not audibly, but 
 falling on the inner sense, calling me by name : 
 
 " , there is another trunk of papers. Ask 
 
 for another trunk." 
 
 At this time I had, as I believed, all her 
 manuscripts. Still, I followed the direction, 
 and replied : — 
 
 " Certainly there is another trunk of papers, 
 but, supposing you did not want them, I sent 
 it to Indianapolis. I will have it forwarded to 
 you immediately*" 
 
 In due time the trunk arrived, and in it was 
 her diary for 1878. These diary entries cor- 
 roborated the assertions made through Mrs. 
 Piper's hand in every particular save one, and 
 
314 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of this one I only obtained the corroboration 
 two years later. It was this : — 
 
 I had asked where she obtained the ring, — 
 whether Professor Bell gave it to her ? 
 
 "No," she wrote, " I bought it and had it 
 engraved myself." 
 
 The diary records made no allusion to the 
 ring. I wrote to Professor Bell, who replied 
 that he knew nothing about it, which negatively 
 confirmed the statement of my friend. Thus 
 the matter rested until I came to learn the 
 address of Colonel William Reynolds, in New 
 York, who had been closely associated with the 
 Bell telephone matter in London and had accom- 
 panied my friend and another lady when she 
 went to Osborne House, Isle of Wight, to sing 
 to the Queen through the telephone. Writing 
 to Colonel Reynolds, I told him of the assertion 
 (through Mrs. Piper) that she bought her ring 
 and asked him if he knew ? Under date of 
 "No. 11 Broadway, New York City, Oct. 31, 
 1899," Colonel Reynolds wrote : — 
 
 " . . .1 can assure you from my own knowledge 
 the statements made purporting to come from Miss 
 Field are absolutely correct. I know where she 
 
Psychic Communication. 315 
 
 bought the ring and why that date was engraved 
 upon it." 
 
 Another instance that goes far to confirm 
 the probability of telepathic communication 
 from my friend in the Unseen to myself, irre- 
 spective of the presence of any medium, was 
 this : — 
 
 Among her papers was a long letter from 
 Edgar Allan Poe written to her father. I had 
 decided to include this with her other autograph 
 letters, all of which I gave to the Boston Public 
 Library, where, by the courtesy of Mr. Herbert 
 Putnam (then librarian) and the trustees, they 
 constitute, with the manuscripts of her comedi- 
 ettas and a photograph of her portrait by Ved- 
 der, a " Kate Field Memorial Department." 
 Just before I had finished collecting these to 
 make the gift, — on an August day of 1897, I 
 was suddenly aware that she said to me : — 
 
 " I want you to give the Poe letter to Mr. 
 Stedman." 
 
 I did not at the time know of any reason for 
 this choice of Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman 
 beyond the fact that he was one of her most 
 valued friends. I sent the letter, however, and 
 
316 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 under date of August 20, 1897, Mr. Stedman 
 wrote me, saying : — 
 
 "... As for the Poe letter, I scarcely know what 
 to do. Don't you know that it is rare and valuable ? 
 But of course you do, and of course that is why you 
 give it to me. Well, I have Poe's best daguerreotype 
 and a famous Poe manuscript, and I need just this 
 letter to go with them and to make my memorial 
 complete. So I am incontinently resolved to keep it." 
 
 Mr. Stedman's reply indicated the peculiar 
 appropriateness of adding this letter to his Poe 
 memorials, and goes far to establish a proba- 
 bility that our mutual friend in the Unseen 
 recognized this fitness. 
 
 One very marked thing in the series of com- 
 munications given by this friend through Mrs. 
 Piper's hand was her own evident and constant 
 anxiety to give tests of her individuality. This 
 was facilitated greatly by the circumstances of 
 the time. Dr. Hodgson gave every morning to 
 a stance with Mrs. Piper, and she fell in the 
 way of coming to him frequently. This enabled 
 her to offer almost innumerable proofs that she 
 — or some super-normal intelligence bearing her 
 characteristics — saw and heard much that went 
 
Psychic Communication, 317 
 
 on pertaining to my own life, — conversations 
 in my room, my reading, and inner experiences 
 that I had not recorded in any outward manner 
 of writing or of conversation » 
 
 It chanced that some months before her death 
 she had been intensely interested in the estab- 
 lishment of cable communication between the 
 United States and Hawaii, and she had urged 
 me, as a press writer, to endeavor to assist in 
 " stirring up " the matter ; and, as a matter of 
 verifiable record, I incorporated her earnest 
 appeal into a letter to the " New Orleans Times- 
 Democrat" sometime in the December or Jan- 
 uary of 1895 or 1896. Sometime after her 
 death she was writing to Dr. Hodgson through 
 Mrs. Piper's hand, — no one else being present, 
 — and evidently by way of giving him a striking 
 test of her identity she wrote : — 
 
 " Ask if she recalls the fact of my wishing her 
 
 to stir up the cable question in the newspapers 
 before I came here " (the " here " referring to the 
 ethereal world). ^' I am sure she must recall this 
 expression, — ' stir up.' " 
 
 When Dr. Hodgson gave to me the communi- 
 cation in which she assured him that I would 
 
318 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 recall the expression, "stir up," I replied by 
 placing the original letter from her in his hands 
 in which occurred this paragraph : — 
 
 " If the people here do not get cable communica- 
 tion with the United States, they will eat each other 
 up. Do stir up the newspapers on this matter." 
 
 An exceedingly characteristic expression of 
 the friend to whom I allude, as all who knew 
 her would agree, was the following, written 
 (through Mrs. Piper's hand) to Dr. Hodgson, 
 in reply to some remark of his : — 
 
 "I tell you, my good friend, I am wide awake, 
 and if there is any spirit in our world Avho really 
 knows what is going on in yours, I do." 
 
 Dr. Channing once said in a sermon : — 
 
 " Let us not listen for a moment to a doctrine so 
 irrational as that our present characters do not follow 
 us into a future world. If we are to live again, let 
 us settle it as a sure fact that we shall carry with us 
 our present minds such as we now make them ; that 
 we shall reap good or ill, according to their improve- 
 ment or corruption, and that every act thus affects 
 character." 
 
Psychic Communication, 319 
 
 This insight of the intuitive nature of William 
 Ellery Channing was continually verified in the 
 numerous and varied experimental investiga- 
 tions made by Dr. Hodgson ; and the assertion 
 of Mr. Myers already recorded, that " death is 
 not a cessation, but a liberation of energy," was 
 constantly sustained. Apparently, the transition 
 to the ethereal plane infinitely increases and 
 quickens the vigor, joy, and enthusiasm of any 
 nature. Especially does every fibre of the moral 
 nature seem strengthened, and the obligations 
 of benevolence and thoughtful aid assume a 
 deeper reality. 
 
 Regarding her life, the drama that absorbed 
 her in this world was upon a wide stage, and 
 this breadth of interests continually manifested 
 itself from the new life. Many years before her 
 death, in one of her books, she had said : — 
 
 *'It seems to me natural, judging by my own 
 feeling of what I should be impelled to do, that 
 spirits should desire to communicate with their 
 friends on earth." 
 
 Apparently this desire continued, and a certain 
 little vein of tenacity regarding her own work 
 
320 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 which characterized her in this world, persisted, 
 as revealed in this sentence written to Dr. Hodg- 
 son, in reference to some test of her own : — 
 
 " For my sake, all of my tests I wish kept sepa- 
 rately. This is a new field of work for me, and I 
 am anxious to keep it as clear as possible and do as 
 much as I can for you." 
 
 On another occasion she assured Dr. Hodgson 
 that she could impress me to do a certain thing 
 which, for some reason or other, I actually did 
 accomplish before knowing that any such asser- 
 tion on her part had been made ; and later, in 
 reference to it, she wrote to Dr. Hodgson : — 
 
 "... I am not taking too much credit upon 
 myself in saying she has carried out the expressed 
 wish, as I told you previously. The test is mine, 
 and I claim it." 
 
 The passion for accuracy that distinguished 
 her in this world was recalled by her reply to a 
 remark of Dr. Hodgson's to the effect that he 
 thought she was only guessing at a certain thing, 
 when, in response, she wrote : — 
 
 "You do not seem to understand me very well, 
 do you % I was a great traveller, and while I knew 
 
Psychic Communication, 321 
 
 perfectly well where my possessions were wheiD I 
 was in the body, it is not to be wondered at that 
 after this change I should be unable to recall every- 
 thing all at once. I think of different things and 
 different matters." 
 
 Again, to Dr. Hodgson, in evident and very 
 characteristic comprehension of his work in psy- 
 chic investigation, she vrrote : — 
 
 " I do not wish to be selfish and take up any 
 one's time ; but I do like so much to come and 
 speak with you, and you know I will always 
 watch for any little test and come in and give 
 it to you whenever the opportunity presents 
 itself." 
 
 "You are first rate at this," Dr. Hodgson 
 replied. 
 
 " I was not fishing — " 
 
 " Nor was I flattering," he rejoined. 
 
 " Yet," she continued, '^ I was only trying to 
 make you understand that if I were able, I 
 would give you these tests." 
 
 " You are happy in your present life ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 "Indeed, I should think I ought to be; I 
 
 never knew what life was, at all, until I came 
 21 
 
322 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 here. It was like climbing up some rocky 
 precipice during my whole mortal existence ; 
 and when I extricated myself from the partially 
 decayed house in which I dwelt, I realized such 
 happiness as no one in the mortal life has ever 
 known." 
 
 " And it keeps on increasing ? " he questioned. 
 
 "Yes, indeed, I assure you no one knows 
 better than I do the delights of this world, and 
 I am only too glad to have come so soon. Now 
 tell — — all this for me. Give her my warmest 
 love and most tender sympathy. Tell her that 
 I have never known her as I do now. . , ." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson found a little difficulty in de- 
 ciphering the last line or two, and mentioning 
 this to her she rejoined : — 
 
 "Yes, it will do very well. I intended say- 
 ing that I understood her love and her devo- 
 tion to me as I never did when in the body." 
 
 Again to myself soon after she wrote : — 
 
 " I am happy, — more so than you can possibly 
 know. Do you feel my presence when I stand be- 
 side you and dictate little messages ? Often when 
 you write out lines, I follow with my dictation and 
 I feel sure that you hear me. Because, Dear, a few 
 
Psychic Communication* 323 
 
 days ago you were writing out some of my own 
 thoughts, as they were expressed on my sheets of 
 paper, held before you. I whispered, ' Do not put 
 those pages in, but look them over a little. ' I saw 
 you rise from the table and go over to the little case 
 of books, take out one, and refer to a volume 
 which I had written years before, and then you 
 went back and at my suggestion rewrote the pages. 
 I also saw you look up steadily for a moment, and 
 as though you were looking me straight in the eye. 
 
 I really think and feel, dear , that you did hear 
 
 me when I said, ' Do not write that, my Dear, but 
 change it, or leave it out altogether/ This was in 
 day, not night, so-called." 
 
 As a matter of fact, this description corre- 
 sponded precisely with an experience of mine one 
 afternoon. In the course of some writing I 
 had risen and gone over to a bookcase to take 
 down a little book she had written on the Bell 
 telephone, when I suddenly felt so conscious 
 of her presence that I found myself contin- 
 ually lookiiig up to see the form that I felt 
 standing by the table; and I had — for what- 
 ever cause it may have been — made several 
 changes in the matter I was writing. Continu- 
 
324 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 ing her transcript of that special occasion, she 
 also wrote : — 
 
 " I saw all this very distinctly. It is through 
 your own spirit that I see it. The astral objects are 
 very vague, but the soul, thought, and the act are 
 distinct." 
 
 At another time, in allusion to some expression 
 regarding flowers she wrote ; — 
 
 " JSTo, not so fast. Do not do this for me, dear 
 
 , because I have plenty of real ones here. I 
 
 only said this as a test for you." 
 
 The expression " I have plenty of real flowers 
 here," reveals how much more significant the 
 ethereal world seems to those who have passed 
 on than it is possible for the present environment 
 to be. 
 
 The present conception of the ethereal world 
 is not more imperfect than is that of the blind 
 of the world in which we live. " I was talking, 
 the other day, with a very intelligent blind man," 
 said a college professor recently. " He was un- 
 able to understand how a whole scene could be 
 taken in at once. .He could distinguish B flat 
 on a violin, he said, but suppose the whole sur- 
 
Psychic Communication. 325 
 
 rounding country was full of violins, all playing 
 different airs? That seemed to him a good 
 analogy for the various things in a landscape. I 
 soon realized that explanation on either side was 
 hopeless." Yet if men as a rule were blind and 
 only the exceptional person could see, then what- 
 ever landscape he should describe to us, what- 
 ever colors he might try to depict, would seem, 
 to the majority, only vain imaginings, and would 
 be largely ascribed to intentional deceit or to 
 unintentional delusion. Now, as the eye and the 
 ear convey to man what the blind and the deaf 
 cannot share, so, as Channing well said, "A 
 new sense, a new eye, might show the spiritual 
 world encompassing us on every side. We need 
 not doubt," he adds, " that the unseen visit our 
 earth and bear a part in our achievements." 
 
 The lessons of history seem to teach that the 
 progress of all ages has been deeply influenced 
 by incursions from the spirit world. To enter 
 into the fuller comprehension of this speculative 
 belief requires increasing familiarity with our 
 own spiritual powers. It is based on the law 
 of correspondence. The relation between the 
 Seen and the Unseen is not only intimate but 
 
326 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 reciprocal, and the soul, whatever its degree, 
 has its extension into such conditions of the 
 ethereal world as correspond with its degree 
 and with such spiritual forces as are allied to 
 its own quality. Spiritual seers of all ages 
 have perceived the truth of these relations. Al- 
 though the popularization of the fact of the 
 ^' double " or the ethereal body as coexistent 
 with, and under certain conditions separable 
 from the physical body, is as modern as the 
 Society for Psychical Research, yet we find 
 Saint Augustine affirming the same truth and 
 teaching that the spiritual and the physical 
 bodies can be separated during the earthly life. 
 The one supreme object of the sojourn on earth 
 is to perfect the faculties of the spiritual body by 
 means of which it will continue to progress. 
 
 As for the establishment of spiritual telepathy 
 between ourselves and those dearest to us in the 
 ethereal world, it rests with us, and not with 
 them. It rests with us to live the life of the 
 spirit and not the life of the senses. " If a man 
 desires to obey his calling as an angel," said 
 Swedenborg, "when thought has shown him 
 the fact of his double existence, he must seek 
 
Psychic Communication. 327 
 
 to nourish the exquisite angelic nature that is 
 within him. If not, his power passes into the 
 service of the external senses. If he nourish 
 the angelic nature, the soul rises above matter 
 and -controls it." 
 
 One of the most convincing of the tests that 
 lend themselves to narration during this series of 
 experiments with Mrs. Piper, was at a stance a 
 few months after the death of Rev. Dr. Liver- 
 more, the husband of the noble and distinguished 
 Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. With the hope that 
 some message might be given for the bereaved 
 wife, I asked my unseen friend if she remem- 
 bered Dr. Livermore in this world. 
 
 " Yes, he is over here now, you know," she 
 wrote instantly. 
 
 " Do you ever see him ? " I continued. 
 
 " Sometimes," she replied ; and then in re- 
 sponse to my request that she should summon 
 him, she wrote, " He is here now." 
 
 Then I begged that he would give a message 
 for Mrs. Livermore that I might convey to her, 
 and, after some expressions of endearment, he 
 added that he was " very much with Mrs. 
 Norton." The name meant nothing to me, and 
 
328 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 it was with intense interest that I awaited Mrs. 
 Livermore's reply to my letter telling her of this 
 message which should decide the question as 
 to whether the name of Mrs. Norton held for 
 her any significance. Mrs. Livermore wrote as 
 follows : — 
 
 Melrose, Dec. 12, 1899. 
 
 Deab : " Mrs. Norton" was one of our dearest 
 
 and most treasared friends, who passed out of earthly 
 life in Arlington, Mass., nearly a dozen years ago. 
 Her husband still lives there, and I go to his eighty- 
 fifth birthday party in a very short time. He is a 
 remarkable man, physically, morally, mentally, spirit- 
 ually. I cannot remember when I first met Mrs. 
 Norton. I was three years old, she a trifle younger, 
 and we were sent to the same " infant school " (they 
 called it then), to be amused, and kept out of mis- 
 chief, to sing and to play. I remember" no other 
 child in that school but " Eliza Abrahams," she was 
 then, — ' a pretty, delicate, timid, loving little thing, 
 — and an affection was enkindled then that lasted 
 through life. My husband knew her, through me, 
 before our marriage, was always happy with her, 
 and it would be like them to gravitate towards one 
 another in the other realm. I have said in the 
 family again and again, " Papa has met Eliza Norton 
 
Psychic Communication. 329 
 
 before this time, I am sure. I shall ask when I 
 have another sitting with a good medium." Her 
 beautiful picture stands in my room, ever before me, 
 as does that of her husband and mine. She was in- 
 expressively lovely, spiritual, and believing about as 
 you do in Spiritualism. You shall see her lovely 
 face when you come here. 
 
 Why, , this is a great test, greater than I can 
 
 make you understand. I am exceedingly pleased that 
 you had the interview with Mrs. Piper that has re- 
 sulted so satisfactorily to me. I am very happy 
 about it. ... 
 
 Yours in love, 
 
 Mary A. Livermore. 
 
 Mrs. Livermore has herself had myriads of 
 convincing proofs of intercourse with friends in 
 the Unseen for a great many years, one of which 
 she has thus related : — 
 
 " I was once hurrying home from a lecture tour, 
 and was on the train near Canandaigua, N. Y. I 
 was pressing my face against the window of the car, 
 when suddenly I heard a voice as plainly as though 
 some one had spoken to me. 
 
 " ' Jump back for your life ! ' 
 
 "I leaped to my feet, and in one bound had 
 
330 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 reached the centre of the middle aisle. I had hardly- 
 reached the spot when there was a terrific crash, and 
 one side of the car was shattered. It seems the train 
 had struck some empty cars that were backed on an 
 open switch. I know now that some one in the land 
 beyond had interested themselves in me and had 
 saved my life." 
 
 As every one vrho has made any investigation 
 in psychic science knows, the tests of identity 
 and personality which are the most startlingly 
 convincing and conclusive are often the least 
 possible to relate. They lie deep in individ- 
 uality ; they are inherent in the very springs 
 of character^ and in subtle and indescribable 
 experiences, and do not lend themselves to nar- 
 ration. One of these cases in point is the fol- 
 lowing that she wrote, in comment upon some 
 matter, when she characteristically said : — 
 
 "I know very well what is right and what is 
 wrong, and I am not one to keep quiet and not to 
 speak my mind." 
 
 It is perhaps the next step in social advance- 
 ment to realize that life is a continuity unbroken 
 by the change we call death. *' Let us not im- 
 
Psychic Communication. 331 
 
 agine/* well said Victor Hugo, " that the useful- 
 ness of the good is finished at death. Then rather 
 does it begin. Death has expanded their powers. 
 We should represent them to our minds as as- 
 cended to a higher rank of existence and admitted 
 to co-operate with far higher communities." 
 
 The apostle tells us that '^the last enemy 
 which shall be destroyed is death." The time 
 has now come to destroy this enemy, and to see 
 in the change merely a step onward in life, — one 
 that does not separate, but rather that unites 
 all those who live in the spirit rather than in the 
 senses. The closest intimacies of this life are 
 cold and distant compared with this companion- 
 ship of spirit with spirit. The perfect joys of 
 sympathetic intercourse are not experienced until 
 man enters on the higher state of existence. To 
 come into an understanding of the nature of the 
 future life is to gain undreamed of strength and 
 courage to press onward in our life here, — 
 renewed courage and power as the scheme of 
 existence is seen in its larger relations and its 
 truer light. How are the dead raised up, and 
 with what body do they come? It shall be 
 given us to know. 
 
THE GATES OF NEW LIFE. 
 
The highest^ truest thought of heaven which man can have is 
 of the full completion of those processes whose beginning he has 
 witnessed here^ their completion into degrees of perfectness as 
 yet inconceivable^ but still are in kind with what he is aware of 
 now. — Phillips Brooks. 
 
THE GATES OF NEW LIFE. 
 
 "It shall be 
 A face like my face that receives thee, a Man like to me 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by forever: a Hand like this 
 
 hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee 1 See the 
 
 Christ stand 1 " 
 
 HERE is in Florence a picture of 
 Botticelli's, — his last work, indeed, — 
 which is privately owned and not known O 
 
 to the general public, representing a woman 
 kneeling before the closed portals of a temple 
 praying to the unknown God within. The pic- 
 ture symbolizes an attitude that has been largely 
 that of the Christian Church. It has sought 
 God, but it has taught that He could be known 
 only by faith, — not by sight. "We cannot 
 know ; we hope and wait," has been, to a great 
 degree, the spiritual attitude. Now, to the 
 teaching and to the recorded experience of 
 Jesus is added, in accumulating and authori- 
 
336 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 tative data, that positive demonstration of the 
 nature of life after deaths which must form the 
 basis of a new theology. Humanity is no longer 
 to plead before an unrealized and an unknown 
 God, but is to know Him through the grow- 
 ing comprehension of His methods. What lies 
 beyond death ? To what conditions does this 
 change introduce us ? Here is a daily, an hourly, 
 experience, and one which every human being 
 sooner or later must meet. It is not in the 
 nature of the increasing intelligence of the scien- 
 tific world that this change should remain a 
 mystery. The Bible is full of its simple, natural 
 revelations of the life in the Unseen. Theology 
 has relegated these experiences to a closed chap- 
 ter, and refused to recognize their persistency. 
 But they have never ceased, and psychic research 
 is now so collecting and sifting the evidence as 
 to offer it with scientific accuracy. Faith is not 
 the less when it is informed by knowledge. The 
 objection that man is not intended by God to 
 understand these spiritual truths is absurd. As 
 well might it be said that man was not intended 
 by God to understand anything of Astronomy, 
 to find out how to weigh the planets, to discover 
 
The Gates of New Life. 337 
 
 their composition, their movements, their interre- 
 lations in space. As a spiritual being, man is 
 potentially an inhabitant of the spiritual realms, 
 here and now, and so far as he lives in the spirit 
 he controls matter. With expanding conscious- 
 ness he rises into constantly purer and loftier 
 conditions with increasing potency over the 
 lower. While on earth man collects facts and 
 derives from them knowledge. Entering into 
 the ethereal realm with this knowledge, he 
 assimilates into qualities all that he has learned 
 by experience, and thus enters on a higher round 
 of progress. 
 
 If the spiritual world that man already knows 
 by faith and by intuition is also demonstrable, 
 this demonstration must rest on the penetration 
 of science into the Unseen universe and the 
 intercourse with those who have passed beyond 
 death. Apparently there is a realm of unseen 
 energy interpenetrating our own which science 
 knows as ether. Its nature and its possibilities 
 are still in the stage of speculative considera- 
 tion. Energy beyond computation is stored in 
 the ether. A body moves in it without friction. 
 Evidently it is the realm through which, or by 
 22 
 
338 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 means of which, the currents of thought are 
 conducted. Of its possibilities of action upon 
 physical properties we gain a hint from Pro- 
 fessor Dolbeare in this passage: — 
 
 " Already a body of evidence which cannot safely 
 be ignored shows that physical phenomena some- 
 times take place when all the ordinary physical 
 antecedents are absent, when bodies move without 
 touch, or electric or magnetic agencies, — movements 
 which are orderly and more or less subject to voli- 
 tion. There are still other evidences that the sub- 
 ject-matter of thought is directly transferable from 
 one mind to another. 
 
 "If these things be true they are of more import- 
 ance to philosophy than the whole body of physical 
 knowledge we now have and are of vast importance 
 to humanity." 
 
 There is a very striking correspondence be- 
 tween the knowledge that science gives us of the 
 ethereal realm (or the ether) and the knowledge 
 that those in the Unseen give us from time to 
 time of their environment. The evidence con- 
 stantly points to the identity of the one with the 
 other. Apparently the physical body lives in 
 the air ; the ethereal body lives in the ether, 
 
The Gates of New Life, 339 
 
 and as man is primarily an ethereal organism 
 clothed upon, for a time, with a physical body, 
 he is capable of entering into the ethereal world 
 while here, and as a matter of fact he often ex- 
 periences this. Hours of inspiration are simply 
 times when one transcends his physical environ- 
 ment and rises into the ethereal realm. That 
 wonderful seer and savant, Nikola Tesla, has re- 
 cently addressed himself to the problem of in- 
 creasing human energy. In a wonderful paper 
 contributed to the " Century Magazine " he pur- 
 sues this question as one both of philosophy and 
 dynamics. He sees humanity with its attendant 
 impelling and resisting forces. How can its 
 energy be increased ? By increasing the impul- 
 sion or decreasing the resistance. He finds the 
 answer to his problem in food, peace, and work. 
 He finds the key to the food question in electricity 
 which gives compounds of nitrogen making the 
 soil productive. Peace will be the result of 
 education and enlightenment, and of inventions 
 that will make war " a mere contest of machines 
 without men and without loss of life." Work, 
 the motive power, increases with energy. Tesla 
 finds that " the conductivity imparted to the 
 
340 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 air by electrical impulses increases with the 
 degree of rarefaction/' and that at very moderate 
 altitudes there is a medium surpassing copper 
 wire in its facilities for a conducting path. He 
 adds : — 
 
 " From that moment when it was observed that, 
 contrary to the established opinion, low and easily 
 accessible strata of the atmosphere are capable of con- 
 ducting electricity, the transmission of electrical 
 energy without wires has become a rational task of 
 the engineer, and one surpassing all others in import- 
 ance. Its practical consummation would mean that 
 energy would be available for the uses of man at any 
 point of the globe, not in small amounts such as 
 might be derived from the ambient medium by 
 suitable machinery, but in quantities virtually 
 unlimited, from waterfalls." 
 
 To achieve the command of this electrical 
 energy would be to transform the entire globe 
 and to make every desert literally blossom as the 
 rose. 
 
 These extensions of the life of affairs into 
 what is practically the spiritual world — for it 
 has been the custom so to designate everything 
 
The Gates of New Life. 341 
 
 beyond the boundaries of the known — immedi- 
 ately illuminate for us the problems of being. 
 That which in the past was the unknown and the 
 " supernatural " is no longer the abode of '^ ghosts 
 and genii," but is included in the familiar terri- 
 tory of daily life because science has extended 
 the horizon boundary. Each successive advance 
 is found to be under law ; and when the law is 
 grasped, the new region is annexed to the natural 
 world, which thus constantly extends its boun- 
 dary line. To contemplate the panorama, even 
 between the age of Franklin and the age of 
 Rbntgen and Marconi, is to gain a typical view. 
 If this advance is the achievement of the nine- 
 teenth century, what may not that of the 
 twentieth and of succeeding centuries offer ? 
 
 This extension of the mechanism and instru- 
 mentalities of life into the unknown is the de- 
 velopment of higher thought as well, and the 
 closer union with the Divine seems inseparable 
 from this larger development of the moral and 
 intellectual faculties. It is the more intimate 
 as well as the more intelligent union with God. 
 Asking for the immediately practical results as 
 affecting conduct, what do we find ? Admitting 
 
342 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 a scientific presumption of open intercourse be- 
 tween the Seen and the Unseen ; admitting that 
 the still more overwhelming mass of evidence 
 from personal testimony during all ages con- 
 stitutes a convincing element, — of what aid is 
 the matter in our average daily life ? Every one 
 has a right to ask this question ; and unless it 
 can be satisfactorily answered, the claims of this 
 philosophy cannot be pressed on the public at- 
 tention. Will a larger conception of the nature 
 of life, of the possibilities of development, of the 
 forces beyond the horizon line of the domain of 
 the senses, help each and all to be better men 
 and women ? For by this arraignment the 
 value of fuller knowledge must stand or fall. 
 
 If one compares the pilgrimage of life to a 
 journey, it is not difficult to realize that the more 
 clearly one sees the end, the better prepared he 
 is to meet the demands on the way and the 
 more sustained he is amid incidental hardships 
 and trials. With no clear idea of the end or 
 aim of a journey the incidents along the way 
 assume a disproportionate importance. The 
 traveller is fatigued, or depressed, or anxious, 
 when if he realized the present and the future 
 
The Gates of New Ufe. 343 
 
 conditions more clearly, he would be sustained, 
 encouraged, confident, or joyful. This analogy 
 is but feeble, however, because in the journey of 
 life man is constantly creating his own conditions 
 with their future results ; whereas on a voyage, 
 or a railway tour, he is but an enforced re- 
 cipient of conditions that prevail. More than 
 all, if man is, by his nature, an inhabitant of 
 both the physical and the spiritual worlds here 
 and now; if it rest with himself to overcome 
 the lower conditions and live more and more 
 in the higher where he will control events rather 
 than be subject to them ; if he may live in such 
 constant telepathic intercourse or spiritual com- 
 munion with those in the Unseen as to receive 
 constant suggestion, instruction, or illumination, 
 and thus live more consciously in the light of 
 God, — is not this possibility of the deepest 
 practical importance in daily life? The con- 
 current testimony of intuition, of science, and 
 of the teachings of the gospels points to its 
 truth. Its desirability will be evident in pro- 
 portion as its higher purposes are unfolded 
 and understood. Its significance lies in the 
 spiritualization of humanity here and now. 
 
344 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 The very air we breathe takes the impress of 
 our thought and contributes to the formation 
 of all outward conditions. The more one grasps 
 the idea of living this life of the spirit, — which 
 is not synonymous with ceremonial religion, but 
 is, instead, the living in perpetual energy and 
 exhilaration of achievement, and in that infinite 
 joyousness that comes from clear vision and 
 good-will to all, — the more he experiences 
 this power to control and to create conditions. 
 "Now are we the sons of God," and by our 
 own divine nature we are endowed with some 
 measure of the infinite power which reveals it- 
 self to us as we recognize it and realize it into 
 daily achievement. 
 
 This potency is the result of the mystic union 
 of the soul with God. It is the experience that 
 religion has recognized as conversion, and there 
 need be no searching for a better name. The 
 Reverend Charles Grandison Finney has de- 
 scribed this supreme hour in his life in these 
 graphic words : " In the busy street and in the 
 light of day there came a vision of Christ that 
 transfixed me and arrested my whole train of 
 thought. I stood motionless: I yielded to the 
 
The Gates of New Life, 345 
 
 summons, and the vision burst upon my soul 
 in resplendent glory." Mr. Finney's biographer 
 says that at this time a positive force like elec- 
 tricity entered and penetrated his whole system. 
 Certainly his beneficent and remarkable life is 
 explained by this initiation. 
 
 Another remarkable instance of this is related 
 by Mrs. Meeker, the wife of Nathan Cook 
 Meeker, of the editorial staff of ''The Tribune" 
 in the days of Horace Greeley, the founder and 
 President of the famous Union Colony of Colo- 
 rado, and the founder of the town named 
 Greeley, after the famous editor. Under Presi- 
 dent Hayes Mr. Meeker was appointed Indian 
 Agent to deal with the Utes, and he died the 
 death of a hero in the great Ute massacre on 
 the spot now marked by the town of Meeker. 
 The Indians carried Mrs. Meeker and her 
 daughter Josephine, a delicate girl of eighteen, 
 captive into the heart of the Rocky Mountains, 
 mounted on ponies and hurried to the South 
 over high passes through frightful canons ten and 
 twelve thousand feet high ; each night beholding 
 the spectacle of a war dance, while the Indians 
 sang their death songs, sharpened their knives, 
 
346 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 and told their captives that their time had come. 
 After twenty-three days of unspeakable horror 
 Mrs. Meeker and her daughter were rescued. 
 But this rescue was initiated, the divine power 
 that cared for them in their agonizing peril was 
 invoked and the mystic communion made by Mrs. 
 Meeker as a child of twelve, when she experi- 
 enced " a deep conversion," and gave her whole 
 life in complete consecration to God. During 
 her captivity she was told to give medicine to 
 an Indian child who was ill. It was a dilemma, 
 for if she refused they would kill her ; and if she 
 gave it and the child died, her life would be 
 the forfeit. Nevertheless, she ministered to the 
 need, and of it, in her own simple and touching 
 words, she said : " Of course the silent prayer 
 for the blessing was asked, and it was answered. 
 I always think the Lord was very near me dur- 
 ing my captivity. I was so strengthened to 
 bear what was put upon me. . . . One night 
 I had a dream in which the troubles of a long 
 journey home were vividly portrayed. But a 
 voice made known to me that I should finally 
 reach Greeley. I felt the truth of this, and it 
 was a comfort to me all the way of my intricate 
 
The Gates of New Life. 347 
 
 journey. I had this dream, or vision, only a 
 few nights before the massacre." 
 
 Herein is a very striking testimony to the 
 wonderful closeness of relations existing between 
 the human and the Divine in the most practical 
 way. ^^He shall give His angels charge con- 
 cerning thee " is no mere phrase of rhetoric. 
 The charge is always given, it is always felt 
 as an invincible shield if the conditions are 
 made through which alone it is possible, — the 
 conditions of perfect consecration and union 
 with God, who works for us by means of His 
 messengers, by means of those of our own be- 
 loved who have gone before into the Unseen. 
 Our own spiritual selves take cognizance of them. 
 Man learns to know that the soul, or his real 
 self, — the directing conscious intelligence em- 
 bodied in its psychic form and made visible and 
 tangible on the physical plane by means of its 
 outward and temporary physical body, — man 
 learns to realize that this real self exists and 
 is endowed with faculties that act independently 
 of the senses. Science is beginning to recognize 
 these faculties. The knowledge of the Rontgen 
 ray reveals the scientific side of psychic sight, 
 
348 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 which, independently of the physical eye, sees 
 through walls and barriers. The knowledge 
 that gravitation in the ether is increased to a 
 speed exceeding that of light reveals how the 
 ethereal body may move so swiftly in its own 
 realm. The demonstration of the telephonic 
 qualities of sound explain the phenomena of 
 clairaudience. Science actually demonstrates 
 how the psychic body can act and perceive 
 at any distance independently of the senses. 
 Death, liberating the spiritual man, restores to 
 him his power of sight, of hearing, of movement, 
 over distances so great as to seem phenomenal 
 viewed from the physical plane. A conscious 
 realization of these powers enables one to use 
 them to an increasing degree before the libera- 
 tion of death ; for the physical body is not 
 altogether a prison-house. It is an organism 
 exquisitely adapted to any possibility of demand 
 upon it, and adjusts itself to the spiritual direc- 
 tion, adapts itself more and more as these de- 
 mands grow more intelligent and positive. The 
 poets have always discerned this truth without 
 offering a hint of its processes. 
 
The Gates of New Life. 349 
 
 " Man is his own star, and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man 
 Commands all life, all influence, all fate." 
 
 These lines express in essence the same truth 
 that psychic investigation and science express 
 through a revelation of the nature of man and 
 an explanation of his powers. Even prophecy, 
 which has been held as so mysterious, is simply 
 spirit-perception. The future is simply the result 
 of the present. It is the product of causes ; the 
 soul may perceive it, and, in fact, does and must 
 perceive it, to just the degree in which it has 
 learned to realize experimentally its own powers. 
 Sir William Crookes recently remarked that 
 past, present, and future might be compared to 
 the landscape through which one was travelling 
 by cars. At the moment he sees only the one 
 point that is opposite his own window ; but if 
 he lean out and gain the larger view, he sees 
 before and behind, and realizes that there is no 
 past or future except for the imperceptible in- 
 stant that a given point of view is seen as he 
 passes. 
 
 The more spiritual minds have always felt 
 he necessity of reconciling science and religion. 
 
350 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Horace Bushiiell, in " Nature and the 
 Supernatural," said : — 
 
 " From the first moment or birth-time of modern 
 science, if we could fix the moment, it has been clear 
 that Christianity" must ultimately come into a grand 
 issue of life and death with it, or with the tendencies 
 embodied in its progress. Not that Christianity has 
 any conflict with the facts of science, or they with it. 
 On the contrary, since both it and nature have their 
 common root and harmony in God, Christianity is 
 the natural foster-mother of science, and science the 
 certain handmaid of Christianity. And both to- 
 gether, when rightly conceived, must constitute one 
 complete system of knowledge. But the difficulty 
 is here : that we see things only in a partial manner, 
 and that the two great modes of thought, or intellectual 
 methods — that of Christianity in the supernatural 
 department of God's plan, and that of science in the 
 natural — are so different that a collision is inevitable 
 and a struggle necessary to the final liquidation of the 
 account between them ; or, what is the same, neces- 
 sary to a proper settlement of the conditions of 
 harmony." 
 
 Dr. Bushnell ardently sought to find " a legiti- 
 mate place for the supernatural in the system of 
 
The Gates of New Life, 351 
 
 God and show it as a necessary part of the 
 divine system itself." 
 
 Reared in the more partial and imperfect con- 
 ceptions of his day, his own mind perceived the 
 grander and larger truth; and while he was 
 unable to grasp and expound it, he never ceased 
 in his effort to give this higher enlightenment. 
 The world has now gone forward, and we realize 
 that what was termed supernatural is merely the 
 super-normal : that natural laws operate on dif- 
 ferent planes, and that the law which permits 
 the psychic sight to recognize objects through 
 thousands of miles of space is just as natural a 
 law of optics as is that which permits the phys- 
 ical eye to recognize an object that is near. The 
 law that governs wireless telegraphy is on the 
 plane which a century, even a half-century ago, 
 would have called the supernatural. How fine 
 was that insight of Dr. Bushnell that de- 
 clared man to be a supernatural being and that 
 the supernatural did not imply a suspension of 
 the laws of nature ! How nearly he grasped the 
 deeper truth, and how great is the debt to such 
 a man, who bridged the gulf between compara- 
 tive ignorance and larger truth I If, like Curtius 
 
352 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of old, he bridged the chasm by throwing himself 
 into it, his resurrection has been certain and 
 glorious. 
 
 The practical advantage of a true understand- 
 ing of man's spiritual nature lies in this clear 
 comprehension that it gives to him of his rela- 
 tions to the various planes — each dominated by 
 its own laws — that form his successive environ- 
 ments and his understanding that he is never 
 restricted to any one of these planes save by the 
 limitation of his degree of development. The 
 greater his development, the greater his facility 
 to act upon many planes. As a matter of actual 
 fact, this has always been true in the history of 
 the world. The planes upon wliich the thinker, 
 the seer, the poet, and the prophet dwell are 
 many ; those on which the ignorant or the vi- 
 cious dwell are restricted to the lowest and the 
 most dense plane of matter, but the day has now 
 dawned when man shall grasp this truth in de- 
 tail and with conscious intelligence and positive 
 purpose. 
 
 Again, a knowledge of the wonderful organ- 
 ism of this interpenetration of the physical and 
 psychical body, and the communion that exists 
 
The Gates of New Life, 353 
 
 between those both in and out of the physical 
 body, will offer the most determining moral aid. 
 The old theological tenet of the Evil One has its 
 prototype in spiritual truth. This Unseen world 
 around us into which all pass at death is peopled 
 by the good and the bad, — by the more and by 
 the less developed. One argument against psy- 
 chic communication has been that man thus 
 opened the door to evil influences. The objec- 
 tion is one of great truth and serious impor- 
 tance. Man does open the door to evil spirits, 
 if he becomes psychically trained and developed, 
 unless he so order his moral life that there is no 
 affinity with the evil, no room for the unworthy. 
 Yet is not this objection true even on the social 
 side of our life here ? It rests with one's self to 
 choose his associates from the noble, the lofty, 
 rather than from the base and the low. When 
 the apostle enjoins us to pray without ceasing, 
 he gives the most practical counsel possible to 
 conceive. To pray does not necessarily imply 
 the outward posture of reverence, which in its 
 proper place does conduce to communion with 
 the Divine ; but walking on the street, in the 
 midst of business transactions, in the market- 
 
 23 
 
354 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 place as in the sanctuary, may one lift up his 
 thoughts to God and ask His divine aid and 
 care and direction, and thus call about him 
 those purer and loftier friends in the Unseen 
 whose delight is " to do the will " of God ; to co- 
 operate in the one supreme work of the redemp- 
 tion of man, of his development into the happi- 
 ness and the holiness of spiritual life. If chil- 
 dren could be taught that yielding to faults and 
 sins, as those of selfishness, of ill-temper; of 
 greed that ignores the rights of others, and 
 that, carried to excess, becomes dishonesty ; of 
 recklessness of statement that, carried to ex- 
 cess, becomes falsehood ; if parents and teachers 
 would make plain to childhood and to youth 
 that these faults which, if not checked, develop 
 into sins, open the door to evil influences that 
 absolutely enter into a certain possession and 
 domination of their bodily organism, — what a 
 moral revolution this universal teaching would 
 create ! To sink into sin is to allow the phys- 
 ical body at last to become a mere shell tenanted 
 at will by the vicious, the corrupt, the degraded, 
 and this it is to lose one's soul. The old phrase 
 has an infinite depth of meaning. Indeed, a 
 
The Gates of New Life, 355 
 
 closer study of what we call the old theology 
 leads us not so much to discard it, as to read 
 into it the true and deep meaning which it con- 
 tinually symbolized. It is full of the most 
 wonderful spiritual significance which the larger 
 development of science and of thought enables 
 man to interpret in higher and more directly 
 applicable meanings. 
 
 To regard the mere unknown as synonymous 
 with the spiritual world is a vague and mislead- 
 ing generalization. The immediate life after 
 death is being revealed to us. The first inter- 
 mediate state in the ethereal world is not far 
 removed from the life here. It is a life of con- 
 ditions, and so is this. It is a life lived under 
 higher potencies of law, but those are beginning 
 to be recognized and utilized in the present state 
 
 Canon Wilberforce recently preached an im- 
 pressive discourse from the two texts, — " Dives 
 lifted up his eyes in torment/' and "God is 
 love." These two texts, said Canon Wilberforce, 
 might at first seem incompatible, but, on the 
 contrary, they are mutually supporting. Dives 
 lifted up his eyes in torment because God is love. 
 Because when a man has lived the life of selfish- 
 
356 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 ness and of materiality, God's love gives him 
 a great remedial school, a spiritual hospital, 
 where great forces are at work to purify his 
 soul. The preacher went on to assert that man 
 is '^surrounded, enwrapped, ensphered " by God's 
 love. He spoke scathingly of the unspeakable 
 falsity of holding that God would punish any 
 man eternally. *' Such a doctrine would make 
 God a failure," he said, and added that such a 
 horrible misinterpretation of the Scriptures was 
 responsible for great wrong and wickedness. " A 
 misdirected theology has taught the world how to 
 swear," he said. But so long as sin lasts, so long 
 must punishment last. It is the remedial power. 
 The Canon spoke earnestly of the continuity of 
 character. The event of death has no miraculous 
 power to change. As a man leaves this world, 
 so does he enter the next. But he comes then 
 into a fuller awakening. He sees where he has 
 erred ; he comes into the larger intuitive grasp 
 of realities. The sermon was one of the utmost 
 power and fervor and of the highest spirituality. 
 Canon Wilberforce is preaching the gospel of 
 Christ in its highest and noblest application to 
 daily life. He sees life in its wholeness, death 
 
The Gates of New Life. 357 
 
 as merely an event in it, and he teaches the 
 truth that we are surrounded by spiritual forces, 
 companioned by spiritual friends. 
 
 The gates of new life are opening to all hu- 
 manity. The vista reveals the path of more 
 earnest endeavor, of a nobler and more signifi- 
 cant quality of life, of a larger sympathy and 
 love, and of joy heretofore undreamed of by man. 
 It is not by dropping the present occupation or 
 evading duty, but by seeing in this occupation 
 its opportunity for radiating the atmosphere of 
 earnest purpose and of generous good-will ; of 
 realizing that if one stands at the loom, behind 
 the counter, laying bricks, or operating a machine, 
 he is yet in God's world ; he is an inhabitant 
 of the spiritual realm ; he may attract to himself 
 the highest companionship to which he is able 
 to aspire ; he may realize that seeming drudgery 
 is but the momentary scenery along the way, 
 and that just in proportion as he creates for 
 himself a higher spiritual life, the temporal and 
 visible will manifest it. 
 
 The discussion as to whether communication 
 may exist between those in the Seen and in the 
 Unseen has concerned itself too largely with but 
 
358 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 one detail of the philosophy. The real question 
 is as to the true nature of man^ — his powers, his 
 possibilities of development, and his evolutionary 
 progress. It is a question also of realizing the 
 truth which the Christian world professes to 
 believe and establishing this truth in more po- 
 tent and direct relations to daily living. Theol- 
 ogy, in its manifold systems and dogmas, has 
 interposed itself between man and God, yet 
 through the ages it has constantly progressed 
 toward more simple and diviner truth. Almost 
 every century has had its great reformer in re- 
 ligious teaching, and both by revolution and 
 evolution the world has gone forward. Hu- 
 manity is coming to realize that the need is to 
 be "saved" to-day, not in some vague and far- 
 off eternity, that noio is the accepted time, and 
 that one may well make haste to love^ make 
 haste to be kind, considerate, and generous. 
 The divine life and man's relations to it, or 
 rather man's place in it, the divine nature, and 
 man's relations to it, are the most practical 
 questions of the hour. They involve all other 
 questions. They predetermine all other rela- 
 tions. Without some degree of conviction on 
 
The Gates of New Life. 359 
 
 these matters there is no real basis to life ; all 
 is like shifting sand. The true nature of man's 
 being, his true place in the universe, these are 
 immediate matters of concern. All else can 
 wait ; all our buying and selling, our trade and 
 traffic, our pleasures and our penalties, our 
 hopes and our denials. And it is just on this 
 threshold that the world waits to-day. 
 
 Can these questions be answered ? Is it 
 possible that man may comprehend the true 
 nature of his own being and his true relations 
 to the Divine? 
 
 Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Hunger, an eloquent 
 and noble preacher, touched on this theme in 
 a notable discourse preached in Boston recently, 
 — a discourse that, like all preached by this elo- 
 quent divine and noble leader, was one of great 
 value. Still, regarding the desirability of man's 
 gaining a truer conception of his present re- 
 lations to the Unseen, Dr. Hunger seemed to 
 be sceptical. His argument was that if men do 
 not fully comprehend the earthly, how can they 
 expect to have any comprehension of the heav- 
 enly ? " It would be," he said, ^^ like trying to 
 calculate an eclipse before one has mastered 
 
360 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 arithmetic." He argued that while we are still 
 on earth we must confine our attention to the 
 present environment ; that we must study and 
 live by moral principles, of course, and culti- 
 vate every possible privilege of religious study ; 
 but that any speculative thought regarding the 
 nature of the future life is idle. This, at least, 
 seemed the fair inference from the discourse, 
 which was in no wise lacking in that noble 
 and helpful power that characterizes Dr. Hunger. 
 Still, as no religious teacher, however great and 
 good he may be, is necessarily infallible in all 
 his views, it may not be amiss to examine these, 
 and to ask where is the line to be drawn between 
 the earthly and the heavenly ? Where do the 
 interests of the one end and the other begin ? 
 Is the youth forbidden to think of the nature of 
 manhood, — of its larger relations, responsibilities, 
 and privileges? On the contrary, does not his 
 college life gain in strength of purpose, and does 
 not his acquirement more closely relate itself to 
 realities, if he holds some intelligent conception 
 of the place and the power of manhood ? Again, 
 does not all mortal life gain illumination from a 
 conception of the immortal ? If at the end of a 
 
The Gates of New Life. 361 
 
 prescribed period of years, we are to experience 
 an entire change of being and circumstances, of 
 which it is now impossible for us to form any 
 conception, would not this certainly dwarf and 
 discourage all our present efforts ? If an increas- 
 ingly intelligent conception can be gained of the 
 life to come, is it not of the most momentous 
 importance to the life that now is ? 
 
 The dawn of the twentieth century finds the 
 world in a new relation to the divine laws that 
 govern the universe, and in a closer receptivity 
 to divine truth than was ever before experienced. 
 The " supernatural " of the past is the natural 
 of to-day ; the miracle of a preceding age is the 
 simple occurrence of the next one, because the 
 laws on which its action is based are understood. 
 Mr. Stead has recently made a comparison that 
 strikingly illustrates the conditions of that tele- 
 pathic communication which takes place between 
 individuals dwelling in this world and between 
 those who are in the Unseen world with those 
 here. Imagine, says Mr. Stead, a horde of bar- 
 barians coming into possession of a modern 
 city, with its manifold telegraph wires, its tele- 
 phonic tubes and apparatus, all of whose uses 
 
362 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 and significance were entirely unknown to the 
 invaders. The delicate and complicated appara- 
 tus would be battered down, destroyed, regarded 
 as worthless ; but if by chance some one of these 
 barbarians should speak through a telephonic 
 tube, and be heard by another at a distance, 
 who stood at the receiver, that one significant use 
 of the apparatus, that one success, would prove 
 its possibilities and suggest its real use and worth. 
 Mr. Stead offers this as an illustration of the 
 present status of communicating with those in 
 the Unseen, or by thought transference at 
 this plane of being. The successful instances 
 occur, one hardly knows how. A multitude of 
 unsuccessful attempts and confused efforts are 
 continually experienced. The analogy is sug- 
 gestive but not wholly adequate, as the present 
 stage of experimental research into psychic laws 
 are directed with an intelligence which can 
 hardly be compared to purely barbaric ignorance. 
 Yet the analogy would hold almost true if 
 applied to the conditions of a half-century ago, 
 when the first manifestations of some unknown 
 force flashed upon the world and puzzled all in- 
 quirers. Baffled and ignorant as are the experi- 
 
The Gates of New Life, 363 
 
 meiits of the present day, there is yet seen a very 
 definite advance and certain ground gained dur- 
 ing this period of time, that is the foundation 
 for all future advancement. Man has only en- 
 tered upon his conquest of the new realm, but 
 he is standing intelligently on its threshold, and 
 is prosecuting his search into its laws with ra- 
 tional zeal and constantly increasing knowledge. 
 Between the Seen and the Unseen forces 
 science has now established three remarkable 
 links : that of the Rontgen ray, by means of 
 which man sees through solid substances, that 
 of wireless telegraphy and of the telectroscope, 
 — the great new invention of the day which was 
 one of the signal attractions of the great exposi- 
 tion in Paris in the summer of 1900. By means 
 of the telectroscope, man distinctly sees what is 
 passing hundreds of miles away. Combining 
 the two powers of the long-distance telephone 
 and the telectroscope, man finds that, even here 
 and now, there is nothing hidden that shall not 
 be revealed. These three great discoveries — for 
 they are all insights into existing laws of nature, 
 combined with the knowledge as to the manner 
 in which these laws may be utilized, rather than 
 
364 The Spiritual Signijiccmce. 
 
 inventions — these three great discoveries will, 
 during the coming century, entirely revolutionize 
 the conditions of life. They will create as great 
 changes in the future as the steam engine, the 
 telegraph and the ocean cable, and electricity as 
 a motor, and as the means of illumination have 
 created in the past. The degree of com_munica- 
 tion is always the test of the degree of advance- 
 ment in civilization. The long-distance telephone 
 has been in use less than twenty years, and al- 
 most within a decade has been the invention and 
 development of the audiphone and the grapho- 
 phone. The latest development of the telephone 
 is now the instrument which records the message 
 as it comes if no one is present to take it. This 
 has been fully tested already, nor is its working 
 any more marvellous to-day than was that of the 
 telephone a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 This resume indicates something of the con- 
 quest of man over unseen forces of nature. The 
 degree of enlightenment which the advanced 
 nations of the world have now reached calls for 
 this swift, this instantaneous means of commu- 
 nication in the twofold degree of hearing and 
 sight which the telectroscope offers. What 
 
The Gates of New Life. 365 
 
 would not have been the gain to England during 
 her war in Africa, if the telectroscope were a 
 sufficiently accomplished fact to enable the 
 government instantly to see and hear what was 
 taking place there. How this would have facili- 
 tated every action ! How quickly would it have 
 changed and controlled the tide of events ! 
 
 Is it not, then, evident that humanity is ab- 
 solutely advancing into the real, spiritual world ; 
 that man is acquiring the control and the in- 
 telligent direction of those hitherto unknown 
 forces which have been regarded as mysterious, 
 which have been called supernatural, which 
 have been relegated as entirely belonging to an 
 unseen universe, only to be explored by man 
 after death had released him from the physical 
 world. Truly ^^ The end of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury leaves man face to face with God. . . . The 
 spiritual universe is fast giving up its secrets 
 hidden to all, save a few, since the world 
 began." The same conditions which, heretofore, 
 man has entered upon only after the change 
 called death, are becoming our conditions now 
 and here. Wireless telegraphy and the instant 
 revelations of the telectroscope practically make 
 
366 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 possible the conditions of clairaudience and 
 clairvoyance. The powers heretofore regarded 
 with incredulity, or with awe; powers whose 
 existence were either denied, or, if believed in, 
 were regarded as almost supernatural, — are now 
 about to be rendered scientifically practicable, 
 and well within fche next quarter of a century 
 they will be among the practical, daily ex- 
 periences of life, as are now the telegraph, the 
 ocean cable, and the telephone. The end of the 
 nineteenth century leaves man face to face with 
 God in the sense of entering, as he never has 
 before, into the conception and the grasp of the 
 divine laws and of the unseen forces of the 
 universe. 
 
 Sir William Crookes stated in a scientific ad- 
 dress recently that " It has been computed that 
 in a single foot of the ether which fills all space 
 there are locked up ten thousand foot-tons of 
 energy which has not yet been brought to 
 notice." Now here is a vast storehouse of in- 
 finite force ; it is at the service of him who shall 
 learn how to use it. At present its resources 
 are as unknown as were those of electricity 
 when Franklin first struck a spark of electricity 
 
The Gates of Neio Life. 367 
 
 from the key when he sent up his kite. There 
 is in the ocean a boundless store of electricity. 
 While our ocean steamers are propelled by the 
 cargoes of coal they lay in, which at a fearful 
 cost of human energy is fed day and night to 
 the remorseless engine, the very water over 
 which the ship is sailing offers her freely an in- 
 finitely greater force of motive power, did she 
 only know how to harness it to her use. That 
 this will be done is only a question of time. 
 
 All the phenomena of electricity and chemistry 
 are subordinated to certain conditions. Man, 
 made in the divine image, can create conditions. 
 Thought is a still more potent force than elec- 
 tricity, and can control and use electricity just as 
 soon as it discovers the way. Finding the way, it 
 can create the means. 
 
 The recent advance in the price of coal caused 
 consternation to English consumers. In a mul- 
 titude of ways it affected both domestic and 
 foreign industries. There has also been a cry of 
 alarm raised by scientists during several years 
 past because they could foresee the exhaustion 
 of the coal stored in the earth. What then ? 
 Science meets this truth with the affirmation 
 
368 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 that in a single foot of the ether ten thousand 
 foot-tons of energy, hitherto unnoticed, are 
 locked up. Into the blessedness of the old 
 phrase, the " Kingdom of God," new and wider 
 meanings are being read. It has come to stand 
 to us, not merely, not perhaps even mostly, for 
 the specific work of the church and organized 
 religion ; it is rather the evolutionary develop- 
 ment of this sacred and vital centre, extending 
 its power and its influence out into all forms and 
 phases of life. " The Kingdom of God " must 
 mean better social and economic conditions, 
 larger and better educational facilities, a purer 
 and more significant literature, enlarging scien- 
 tific research, generous and gracious personal 
 intercourse, a capacity for a sincerity and truth 
 in friendship, the ability to be glad in the glad- 
 ness and to rejoice in the success of others ; it 
 must, indeed, mean everything that is included 
 in the law of love. 
 
 "The knowledge of God lies behind everything, 
 behind all knowledge, all skill, all life. That is the 
 sum of the whole matter. The knowledge of God ! 
 And then there comes the great truth, which all re- 
 ligions have dimly felt, but which Christianity has 
 
The Gates of New Life. 369 
 
 made the very watchword of its life, the truth that 
 it is only by the soul that God is really known ; only 
 by the experiences of the soul, only by penitence for 
 sin, only by patient struggle after holiness, only by 
 trust, by hope, by love, does God make himself known 
 to man." 
 
 The knowledge so greatly portrayed in this 
 passage from Bishop Phillips Brooks — this 
 sublimest and most significant achievement of 
 life — is, by a paradox, the one most freely 
 open to every human being, — " the knowledge 
 of God." What is that knowledge ? Certainly 
 it is not the mere acquired information of intel- 
 lectual research and study ; it is not merely 
 familiarity with theological law, or with the 
 entire data of ethics, or even with the Bible 
 itself. It may include all these and be the better 
 for the inclusion. It may lack all these and still 
 possess the one all-essential element, — the one 
 element as accessible as it is indispensable, — 
 that of the experimental knowledge of God by 
 living the life of His teachings. " He that doeth 
 the will, — He shall know of the doctrine." Re- 
 ligion is a life and not a theory, and the more 
 24 
 
370 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 deeply and persistently one lives the life of the 
 spirit, the more truly does he know God. 
 
 Science establishes her conviction on demon- 
 strable evidence ; and while it is true in the 
 highest sense that spiritual truths are spiritually 
 discerned, and that man may possess a spiritual 
 nature that does not record itself on the scales of 
 avoirdupois, yet there is a class of evidence as 
 demonstrable as a mathematical problem, and 
 as inevitable in its revelations as the working 
 of moral law. This class of evidence may be 
 divided into two varieties, — the one as experi- 
 mental with psychics (mediums) ; the other as 
 experimental in one's own experience in the rela- 
 tion between his inner and his outer life ; be- 
 tween his thoughts and prayers, on the one 
 hand, and outer events and circumstances, on the 
 other. When, over a long period of years, this 
 relation establishes itself with an unerring and 
 invariable correspondence ; when the mental 
 questions asked of a friend in the Unseen are 
 invariable answered ; w^hen it is found that over 
 months and years this conversation in thought 
 produces precisely the same results as a conver- 
 sation in words; when, indeed, these results in- 
 
The Gates of New Life. 371 
 
 finitely transcend those of conversation viva voce, 
 — then, it must be admitted, there is a chain of 
 presumptive evidence far stronger than any 
 derived from mere momentary phenomena. 
 
 "The time has come," said Bishop Potter 
 recently, "when the Church and its teachings 
 must vindicate themselves by something more 
 than speech hardened into dogmatic terms. In 
 our age, and in a world that reads and compares 
 and inquires because it thinks^ authority must 
 vindicate itself by its appeal to those judges of 
 all truth which are the image of the Divine 
 in man, — the spiritual intuition, the conscience, 
 and the reason." 
 
 " The world inquires because it thinks" In 
 that assertion Bishop Potter touches the keynote 
 of the age. And the inquiry is to be answered. 
 It is to be answered by the scientific demonstra- 
 tion of immortality and of the nature of the future 
 life. When one has established beyond doubt 
 the identity of a friend in the Unseen, he is just 
 as much entitled to believe that which the friend 
 asserts to be true, as he would were his friend 
 in this world. If a man describes to us his 
 home and his general course of life as lived in 
 
372 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 a foreign city, we do not question his accuracy 
 of statement. The same principle is coming 
 to be recognized as applicable to an attitude 
 toward communications from those in the life 
 beyond. 
 
 The knowledge of God includes all this range 
 of spiritual inquiry. Its initial condition is the 
 pure heart, the noble and generous purpose, the 
 passionate eagerness for the good ; this spiritual 
 vitality that vivifies the entire world of motive 
 and aim and aspiration, and places one in touch 
 with those finer and more intense forces that 
 govern the experiences on the higher plane. It 
 is the knowledge which makes the present hour 
 rich, and that illuminates it with the light that 
 comes from experimental realization of the in- 
 fluence and companionships of the Unseen 
 World. 
 
 That there exist every grade of invisible in- 
 telligences in the vast range between humanity 
 and divinity is a truth which scientific research 
 is beginning to demonstrate. We live and move 
 and have our being in an atmosphere of vital 
 force. The very air is alive. The very air is 
 permeated with intelligence with which we can 
 
The Gates of New Life, 373 
 
 come into conscious relation. These forces of 
 the air are the servants of all who learn how to 
 control them. Emerson said : " When a god 
 wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and 
 shoot out winged feet to carry him." In this 
 sentence the great seer — whose transcendant 
 power of divination and insight we are only be- 
 ginning adequately to appreciate — condensed a 
 truth that might be expanded into a volume with 
 philosophic or scientific explanation. Spiritual 
 power is the god within, and when this power 
 wills to accomplish any specific result, all the 
 forces of earth and air are its servants and its 
 ministers. 
 
 Prof. William James of Harvard University, 
 who is justly claimed in two hemispheres to be 
 the greatest living psychologist, has given in his 
 little book called " Human Immortality " a con- 
 tribution to the literature of progress which is 
 of inestimable value. For as a matter of intelli- 
 gent conviction, it is well to understand the 
 arguments held by psycho-physiologists who 
 have denied the possibility of the survival of the 
 conscious man after death. Professor James 
 meets the assertion of this faction that 
 
374 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 '' Thought is a function of the brain " with its 
 logical sequence that, if this be true, thought 
 must cease when the brain dies, and says : — 
 
 "When the physiologist who thinks that his 
 science cuts off all hope of immortality pronounces 
 the phrase, * Thought is a function of the brain,' he 
 thinks of the matter just as he thinks when he says : 
 * Steam is a function of the tea-kettle,' ^ Light is a 
 function of the electric circuit/ ' Power is the func- 
 tion of the moving waterfall.' In these latter cases 
 the several material objects have the function of in- 
 wardly creating or engendering their effects, and their 
 function must be called productive function. Just so, 
 he thinks, it must be with the brain. 
 
 " But in the world of physical nature, productive 
 function of this sort is not the only kind of function 
 with which we are familiar. We have also releasing 
 or permissive function; and we have transmissive 
 function. . . . The keys of an organ have only a 
 transmissive function. They open successively the 
 various pipes and let the wind in the air-chest escape 
 in various ways. The voices of the various pipes are 
 constituted by the columns of air trembling as they 
 emerge. But the air is not engendered in the organ. 
 
The Gates of New Life. 375 
 
 , . . My thesis now is this : that when we tliink 
 of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we 
 are not required to think of productive function only ; 
 we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmis- 
 sive function. And this the ordinary psycho-physi- 
 ologist leaves out of his account." 
 
 Here is a strictly scientific answer to a strictly 
 scientific statement. That the brain is con- 
 structed to transmit thought rather than to en- 
 gender it, is a theory which all physical research 
 and knowledge equally well attest, while the pre- 
 sumption of intuitive perception of spiritual 
 truths, even if the positive evidence of psychical 
 research is excluded, is in its favor. It is a 
 most important scientific affirmation. 
 
 The literature of biography holds no more 
 remarkable testimony to the daily, practical suc- 
 cess of spiritual power than is illustrated in the 
 life and work of Mr. Gladstone. It is not only 
 that the divine power is " a very present aid in 
 time of trouble ; " this very present aid is 
 equally essential in time of prosperity. In 
 fact, it is possible to come so into accord and 
 harmonious receptivity wdth this divine strength 
 that joy and successful achievement will be 
 
376 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 the daily experience, rather than trouble and 
 sorrow. To be receptive to this tide of ex- 
 hilaration is not a mere matter of passive de- 
 sire. It implies the highest intellectual and 
 spiritual activity; and it is just here that the 
 great lesson is found in the life of Mr. Glad- 
 stone. 
 
 The present day is a reaction from formalism. 
 In the protest against a mere ceremonial reli- 
 gion there is a possible danger of losing the spir- 
 itual aid which is often given by means of these 
 very ceremonies and rituals when entered into 
 sincerely. Certain ceremonial observances are 
 the sign and seal of all the finer social life. 
 One does not enter the home of his most familiar 
 friend without due observance of respectful 
 ceremony. The more intimate the friend, the 
 more scrupulously delicate, indeed, will one be, 
 for, as Gail Hamilton well said, ^' While one 
 must draw on his own love to neutralize the 
 faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on 
 his friend's love to neutralize his own." Are 
 not social relations a type of the divine rela- 
 tions? Friendship demands delicate observ- 
 ances. It requires leisurely communion for its 
 
The Gates of New Life. ^77 
 
 perfection. How far more does the intercourse 
 of the soul with the Divine Power demand cere- 
 monial observances which are not artificial or 
 external, but which are the appointed means 
 by which the soul detaches itself from the phys- 
 ical world, and lifts itself to the spiritual world ! 
 The Unseen manifests itself through the Seen. 
 Intelligence, aspiration, knowledge, power, love, 
 — all that makes up the unseen principle 
 within; all the infinite creative force that con- 
 stitutes the soul, the immortal being, manifests 
 itself through various forms of visible organism. 
 It is this divine energy which communicates 
 itself through religious observances, — as spe- 
 cial periods of devotion and contemplative as- 
 piration and concentration on divine energy. 
 Not that aspiration toward the Divine is, by any 
 means, limited to formal periods; it may and 
 it should form the perpetual undercurrent of 
 conscious life. Never is there an hour, a mo- 
 ment, even, when the heart may not lift itself 
 to God ; may not receive of His infinite po- 
 tency of energy. Yet to have certain regular 
 hours of devotion is the most marvellous in- 
 vieroration. 
 
378 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 It was in this unfailing devotion to the 
 sources of spiritual refreshment that the life 
 of Mr. Gladstone was supremely great. For over 
 sixty years he and Mrs. Gladstone never missed 
 the morning devotions of their parish church at 
 Hawarden when they were in residence there. 
 What a remarkable fact in the life of a man who 
 is universally acknowledged to have been the 
 greatest statesman of this century ; a man over- 
 whelmed with public cares and the most signifi- 
 cant interests ; a man who lived the complicated 
 life of a great political leader, a shaper of na- 
 tional destiny, a scholar, a writer, a man of wide 
 and charming social life ; yet in all this mul- 
 titudinous activity he set apart each day certain 
 special periods for his religious devotion, which 
 were no more crowded out by the storm and 
 stress of parliamentary life than were the ap- 
 pointed hours for his speeches in the House 
 crowded out or changed by other demands. 
 The secret of his ninety years of lofty and pur- 
 poseful life is found in this fact. He lived the 
 life of the spirit, using the body as the instru- 
 ment of action. He perpetually related his 
 nature to the divine nature ; held himself recep- 
 
The Gates of New Life. 379 
 
 tive to the flow of the supreme energy, and 
 thus was enabled to live a more than fourfold 
 life. The voluntary life exhausts this supply of 
 ethereal energy; the involuntary life receives 
 and renews it. The sole object of existence on 
 earth is to achieve spiritual freedom. To this 
 end all that affects the body as an instrument 
 must be subordinate ; the choice of food, air, 
 exercise, and, above all, and including all, the 
 potency of thought and purpose. To hold the 
 ruling purpose of life in perpetual receptivity to 
 this fl^ow of ethereal energy is to achieve the 
 highest conditions for the true success of life ; 
 those which lie in the service of humanity and 
 the elevation of the race. 
 
 For if man prays for perfection, he must give 
 himself for the good of others. It is the law 
 and the prophets. The field is the world. 
 Take, for instance, the complicated and many- 
 keyed life open to any one in a large city. There 
 is no social life without its social problems. The 
 ordinary "society" life, par excellence, is a tre- 
 mendous and most potent mechanism for good 
 or evil. The unforeseen meetings and groupings 
 are freighted with significance. There can be 
 
380 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 no calls, no receptions, no dinners, no club meet- 
 ings, no human intercourse of any nature, from 
 the most informal to the most ceremonial, that 
 is not just as potent in its privileges and its 
 opportunities for help or hindrance as are our 
 specific religious and devotional gatherings. 
 There is no personal touch without its personal 
 power. There is no personal mingling, no con- 
 ceivable possibility of any personal meeting, 
 however unforeseen and informal, without this 
 intercommunication of influence. 
 
 In George Eliot's wonderful drama of human 
 life, as scene after scene unfolds in her novel 
 entitled '^ Middlemarch," this potency of one life 
 upon another in the simple mingling and meet- 
 ing of the various people who make up the town 
 is revealed in a most graphic and impressive way. 
 The presence of one noble nature amid all these 
 varying individualities is the saving power. If 
 Dorothea had not spoken to Dr. Lydgate as she 
 did, when she asked him to tell her all the 
 curiously complicated story whose events had 
 entangled him ; if Dorothea had not gone to 
 Rosamond on that mornhig and revealed to her 
 a higher and purer plane of life, and made 
 
The Gates of Neiv Life. 381 
 
 clear to her the underlying truth, — if these 
 things had not been, the general town life in 
 Middlemarch would have been less worthy than 
 it was, and the individual with whose life the 
 story has to do would have failed in a far 
 greater degree to achieve anything of value in 
 life. 
 
 The soul has divine powers; and as these 
 powers develop and assert their innate potency, 
 man is less and less at the mercy of chance com- 
 binations of events. He learns to rule wisely 
 the course of his onward progress. He lives on 
 into a more real world. Within one night or 
 one morning the individual who has found the 
 clue to the labyrinth of his own inner forces 
 may dissolve and dispel all his immediate con- 
 ditions, and create wholly new combinations. 
 '^ There is a power in to-day to recreate the 
 beautiful yesterday," or to create one far more 
 beautiful. 
 
 Holding always the mental image of all ma- 
 terial conditions as a means to an end, one may 
 create the successful conditions. Whatever he 
 desires unselfishly, for the good of his work, 
 to aid in the unfoldment of his powers and the 
 
382 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 fulfilment of their design, that shall he draw to 
 himself. Through this divine potency shall there 
 open for him a life so exalted in its opportunities, 
 so potent in its privileges, as to create for him, 
 practically, a new heaven and a new earth. 
 Will and thought are living forces that germi- 
 nate and grow into achievement. Emerson dis- 
 cerned the truth that " the soul of man is not 
 an organ, but animates and exercises all the 
 organs ; is not a function, like the power of 
 memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses 
 these as hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a 
 light; is not the intellect or the will, but the 
 master of the intellect and the will ; is the back- 
 ground of our being in which they lie. An 
 immensity not possessed, and that cannot be 
 possessed." 
 
 To Emerson the robe in which the soul is 
 clothed is the web of events ; and while he did 
 not distinctly formulate much that has come to 
 be latter-day thought and absolute knowledge 
 regarding the relations of man to the phenomenal 
 universe, the interior perception of deep truth 
 was constantly with him and constantly finding 
 expression. He saw that the spiritual man, the 
 
The Gates of New Life. 383 
 
 true self, was clothed in successive bodies, as 
 a series of garments, each one related to a 
 certain definite plane of life, as the physical 
 body is related to the terrestrial world, and that 
 these garments were of a nature to enable the 
 spiritual man to come into relations with the 
 plane of life to which each corresponded, thus 
 gaining the knowledge of that region and gather- 
 ing from it experience. Having exhausted these 
 resources, it passes on to a higher condition. 
 Thus the soul acquires its experiences and de- 
 velops its faculties into powers. 
 
 All the faculties that make up the conscious 
 man, in the ordinary sense, can be so identified 
 with the highest power of the soul as to enable 
 one to dwell constantly on this immortal plane, 
 where there is significance, beauty, joy, and ex- 
 altation unknown to the lower states. To at- 
 tain this knowledge of his own nature is man's 
 highest privilege. 
 
 These scientific discoveries regarding the 
 ether show that this more subtle and rarefied 
 air holds within it potencies of whose nature 
 we are only beginning to comprehend. It is 
 the storage of a tremendous energy ; it is mag- 
 
384 The Spiritual Significance, 
 
 netic with intelligence ; it has the power of re- 
 cording and holding impressions ; it has the 
 properties through which and bj means of which 
 these can be communicated and distributed. 
 This etheric atmosphere seems undoubtedly to 
 correspond to the needs of an etheric world, 
 or a world whose inhabitants are in the next 
 state of being above our own; and this plane 
 is apparently the normal one ; the life whose 
 significance and reality are far greater than in 
 the conditions here. 
 
 Evidently a definite change leads from the 
 ethereal to the spiritual realm, and from the 
 spiritual to the celestial, as the change of death 
 leads from the physical to the ethereal, or the 
 next immediate state of man. The great sorrow 
 that has surrounded death ; the consciousness 
 of loss with which it has been invested, — will all 
 be changed with the general diffusion of knowl- 
 edge as to its real character. It is simply the 
 withdrawal of the etheric double from the denser 
 body. The etheric double is a facsimile of the 
 physical body, and is the vehicle, so to speak, 
 or the sheath of the soul, with all its organs and 
 powers, just as the physical body has been. 
 
The Gates of New Life. 385 
 
 This etheric double withdraws each night during 
 sleep. The phenomenon of sleep is very similar 
 to that of death, save that the connection is re- 
 tained between the etheric and the physical 
 form. When this connection is severed, then 
 it becomes death, and it is then that man enters 
 on his more significant life. Kant notes that 
 while the death of the body may be the end of 
 the sensational use of the brain, it is " only the be- 
 ginning of the intellectual use. The body would 
 thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but 
 merely a condition restrictive thereof, and al- 
 though essential to a sensuous and animal con- 
 sciousness, it may be regarded as an impeder 
 of our pure spiritual life," he adds. 
 
 To hold the clear conception that the real self 
 is only slightly and temporarily identified with 
 the physical body is to gain the basis of more 
 intelligent and more worthy living. It shows 
 the true relations between man and God, and 
 man's true place in the cosmos as an inhabitant 
 of the spiritual universe. Then does he assure 
 his right to the sovereignty of his own nature ; 
 then does he realize that all present intellectual 
 and spiritual activities are but rudimentary hints 
 25 
 
386 The Spiritual Significance. 
 
 of their later development. Into that life of spir- 
 itual significance we may enter now and here 
 to the full degree in which we recognize it, and 
 to achieve this plane is to enter within the Gates 
 of New Life. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, Rev. Dr. Lymau, 33, 
 34. 
 
 Abrahams, Eliza. See Norton. 
 
 Africa, 163. 
 
 Alaslva, 163. 
 
 Alcott, Amos Bronson, 15. 
 
 Algerian, 163. 
 
 America, 2.5, 79, 183. 
 
 Aristotle, 176. 
 
 Arlberg, the, 163. 
 
 Arlington (Mass.), 328. 
 
 Asia, 163. 
 
 August, 315. 
 
 Austria, 16, 25. 
 
 Avignon, 44. 
 
 B. 
 
 Balzac, Houore de, 70, 188. 
 
 Behmen, Jacob, 12. 
 
 Bell, Dr. Alexander Graham, 
 
 313; telephone of, 314. 
 Berlier, Jean, 163. 
 Besant, Annie, 19 ; theories 
 
 regarding destiny of, 102 ; 
 
 235. 
 Binet, Satane (pseud, of Fran- 
 
 cisque Sarcey), 25. 
 Bonheur, Rosa, 16, 307. 
 Boston, 150. 
 
 Botticelli, Alessandro, 335. 
 
 Brener, 25. 
 
 Briggs, Rev. Dr. Charles, 295. 
 
 British Channel, the, 163. 
 
 Brooklyn, 195. 
 
 Brooks, Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips, 
 15, 16, 22, 34, 58, 62 ; zeal 
 for call to life, 78; 87, 172 ; 
 clue to life of, 254; views 
 of religion of, 270; convic- 
 tions regarding God, 369. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
 lines from, 13, 86 ; 143, 287, 
 289. 
 
 , Oscar, Professor, 246. 
 
 , Robert, 15. 290, 314. 
 
 , the Brownings, 16. 
 
 Buddha, 239. 
 
 Bushnell, Rev. Dr. Horace, 34, 
 200 ; compares Christianity 
 and Science, 350; 351. 
 
 Butler, Mrs. (biographer of 
 Katheriue of Siena), 41. 
 
 Cahagnet, 240. 
 Caird, Principal, 54, 
 Calais, 164. 
 California, 273. 
 Calvin, John. 34. 
 Cambritlge, University of, 246. 
 
388 
 
 Index. 
 
 Campbell, Professor, 168, 169. 
 
 Cauandaigua, 329. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 130. 
 
 Cathedral, the, of Siena, 37. 
 
 Catholic Church, the, 34, 176. 
 
 Chanuing, Rev. Dr. William 
 Ellery, 34 ; poem ou, by 
 Lowell, 308 ; views on death, 
 318, 319; 325. 
 
 Charbonnel, Victor, 53. 
 
 Chicago, 23. 
 
 Christ, the ideal, 30; follow- 
 ing of, 31 ; fundamental 
 idea of, 54 ; 55 ; our life in, 
 113; 139; 185; the risen, 
 219 ; 309. 
 
 Christian, the, 104 ; church of, 
 185, 253; Christian, the, 
 259; faith of, 301. 
 
 Christianity, 199. 
 
 Church, the Christian, 299. 
 
 Colorado, 345. 
 
 Columbia, College of, 274. 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 79, 
 170, 239. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 249. 
 
 Conniugton, the ghost, 246. 
 
 Contrada d'Oca, 37, 43. 
 
 Copernicus, 239. 
 
 Cosmic Consciousness, 188, 
 189. 
 
 Crookes, Sir William, 24 ; 
 postulates unknown regions, 
 80; 175; 181; 264; 274; 
 views of past, present, and 
 future, 349 ; estimates 
 energy in the ether, 369. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dante, 250. 
 
 Darwin, Dr. Charles, 35. 
 ]^avy, Sir Humphry, 205. 
 December, 317. 
 
 Delsarte, Fran9ois Alexandre, 
 145. 
 
 Desertis, Dr. V. C, 264. 
 
 Divine Communion, the, 125. 
 
 Divine energy, the, 95, 119. 
 
 Divine life, the, 105. 
 
 Divine, the, man's relation to, 
 48. 
 
 Divine Power, the, 272, 297. 
 
 Divine Progress, 296. 
 
 Divine Spirit, the, 260. 
 
 Divine, the soul's relation to, 
 104. 
 
 Divine Universe, the, 200. 
 
 Doepler, 169. 
 
 Dolbcar, Professor Amos Em- 
 erson, views of the ether, 
 206, 208, 210, 211 ; evidence 
 of psychic phenomena, 338. 
 
 Domenican, order of, 43. 
 
 Domenico, Saint, Church of, 
 37, 43. 
 
 Donald, Rev. Dr. E. Winches- 
 ter, 147, 148, 
 
 Dorothea (character in " Mid- 
 dlemarch"), 380. 
 
 Dover, 164. 
 
 Drummond, Dr. Henry, 174, 
 231, 232, 233, 236, 26^2, 285. 
 
 E. 
 
 Edison, Thomas A., 78, 149. 
 
 Eliot, Dr. Charles, president 
 of Harvard, 15. 
 
 , George (pseud, of Marian 
 
 Evans Cross), 62, 64, 288, 
 380. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 15, 
 22, 33, 45, 63, 64, 86, 105, 
 108, 111, 119, 123, 124, 152, 
 157, 170, 188, 193, 230, 382. 
 
 England, 164, 246. 
 
 Epiiesians, the, 89. 
 
Index, 
 
 389 
 
 Episcopal, the church, 279. 
 Eternity, 27. 
 Europe, 264. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faculte de Medecine, 240. 
 
 Faith, 253. 
 
 Fallows, Rt. Rev. Samuel, 23. 
 
 Farrar, Dean, 250. 
 
 Fichte, Johaun Gottlieb, 262. 
 
 Field, Cyrus, 79. 
 
 Field, Kate, 15, 314. 
 
 Finney, Rev. Dr. Charles 
 
 Grandison, 344, 345. 
 Fiske, Dr. John, 207. 
 Florence, 36, 37, 44, 62, 64, 
 
 335. 
 France, 163, 164, 241, 307. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 239, 341, 
 
 366. 
 French, the, 45, 240. 
 Fuller, Margaret, Countess 
 
 d'Ossoli, 15. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galileo, 2.39. 
 
 Galvani, Luigi, 239. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 15, 
 78. 
 
 Gates, Dr. Elmer, 140, 180. 
 
 Gibier, Dr. Paul, 266. 
 
 Gladstone, Catherine, 378. 
 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 15, 
 16; convictions of, regard- 
 ing psychic research, 175; 
 characterization of work of 
 psychic research of, 274 ; 
 375, 376 ; Christian life of, 
 378. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 175. 
 
 Greeley, town in (Colorado), 
 345/346. 
 
 Gregory XI., 44. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hades, 27. 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, 283. 
 
 Hamilton, Gail (pseud, of Mary 
 Abigail Dodge), 376. 
 
 Hamilton, Mt., 169. 
 
 Plarris, Dr. William T., 16, 
 
 Harvard University, 15. 
 
 Harvey, William, 239. 
 
 Hawaii, 317. 
 
 Hayes, Rutherford B., 345. 
 
 Heaven, made of daily experi- 
 ences, 27; 239. 
 
 Herron, Dr. George B., 204. 
 
 Hindoo, the religion, 104. 
 
 Hippolite-Rivail, Monsieur 
 Leon, 227. 
 
 Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 175, 
 264, 274 ; view of Mrs. Piper, 
 278; 305, 316, 317; 318; 
 319; 320, 321, 322. 
 
 Holy Trinity, 195. 
 
 Home Rule, 16. 
 
 Homer, 16. 
 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 15. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 15, 91, 331. 
 
 Hume, David, 144, 264. 
 
 Hyslop, Professor, 238, 274. 
 
 I. 
 
 Dr. 
 
 " Immortality, Human," 
 William James on, 373. 
 
 Imperator (spirit-control of 
 Mrs. Piper), 253, 275, 279, 
 281, 282, 303. 
 
 Incarnation, the, 54. 
 
 India, 163. 
 
 Indianapolis, 313. 
 
 Infinite energy, the, 193. 
 
 Interstellar ether, 214. 
 
 Isle of Wight, 314. 
 
 Italy, 16, 44. 
 
390 
 
 Index. 
 
 J. 
 
 James, Dr. William, 175, 264, 
 274, 275 ; opinion of, r^-gard- 
 in,2: Mrs. Piper, 278 ; 373. 
 
 Janet, Paul, 25. 
 
 January, 317. 
 
 Jesus, the Christ, 17, 54, 56, 
 61, 83; 85, 131 ; teachings 
 of, 134; 219, 220, 239, 251, 
 259. 
 
 Jews, the, 34. 
 
 Joule, James Prescott, 208. 
 
 Judaism, 54. 
 
 Judgment, the, 239. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, Tmmanuel, 263, 285. 
 
 Katherine of Siena, 35, 37, 
 40, 41, 42, 43,44, 388. 
 
 Keeler, Professor in Lick Ob- 
 servatory, 213. 
 
 Keeley, idea of perpetual mo- 
 tion of, 112. 
 
 Kossuth, Ludvvig, 16. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lalla Maghnia, 163. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 246, 247. 
 
 Le Conte, Dr. Joseph, views of 
 
 human organism, 268. 
 Lick, the telescope, 168. 
 Life, Gates of New, 3 86. 
 Light, lecture on, 306. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 15. 
 Livermore, Rev. Dr. Daniel P., 
 
 327. 
 , Mary, nee Ashton, 15, 
 
 170,327; letter of , 328,329, 
 Lodge, Professor Oliver, 175, 
 
 214, 264, 274. 
 London. 300, 313. 314. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wads- 
 worth, 257. 
 
 Louis, 244. 
 
 Lowell Institute, the, 70, 150. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, lines 
 of, on Channing, 308. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 15 ; ascends 
 Sancta Scala, 87 ; 144, 239. 
 
 Lydgate, Dr. (character in 
 " Middlemarch "), 380. 
 
 Lytleton, Rev. Canon, 308. 
 
 M. 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 109, 
 166. 
 
 Mahomet, 239. 
 
 Marconi, 78, 149, 167, 328, 
 341. 
 
 " Matter, Ether, and Motion," 
 205. 
 
 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 15, 16. 
 
 McConnell, Rev. Dr. S. O., 
 195. 
 
 McKenzie, Rev. Dr. Alexan- 
 der, 150. 
 
 Meeker, Josephine, 345. 
 
 , Nathan Cook, 345. 
 
 , Mrs. Nathan Cook, re- 
 markable experience of, 345; 
 noble words of, on spiritual 
 life, 346, 347. 
 
 " Meiue Liebe Ich," 249. 
 
 Memorial Department to Kate 
 Field, 315. 
 
 " Middlemarch," 380, 388. 
 
 Millet, Jean Pran^ois, 16. 
 
 Mont Cenis, 1 63. 
 
 Moors, the, 163. 
 
 Moreland, Bishop, 273, 
 
 Mormon, the, 294. 
 
 Morocco, 163. 
 
 JMosaic, destruction of, 106. 
 
 Moses Rev. Staiuton, 279, 280. 
 
Index. 
 
 391 
 
 Monssol, 243. 
 
 Moiitin, Dr., 240, 243, 244. 
 
 Muiiger, Kev. Dr. Theodore, 
 
 359, 360. 
 Mvers, ])r. Erederic W. H., 
 
 2.5, 175, 237, 264, 266, 267, 
 
 271, 319. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nan.sen, Dr. Fridjok, great re- 
 searches of, 78. 
 
 Navy, the U. S., 175. 
 
 Newbold, Professor, 273. 
 
 Newton, Isaac, 239. 
 
 , Rev. Dr. Heber, 273. 
 
 New York, 91, 301, 314, 329. 
 
 Niagara Falls, utilizing cur- 
 rent of, 91. 
 
 Norton, Eliza Abrahams, 327, 
 328. 
 
 Observatory, the Lick, 168, 
 
 213. 
 Old Testament, the, 134. 
 Oriental ethics, 18: philosophy 
 
 of, 66. ^ ^ ^ 
 
 Osborne House, 314. 
 Over-Soul, the, 188. 
 Oxford, University of, 246. 
 
 P. 
 
 Pacific, the, 292. 
 Paderewski, Ignace, 47. 
 Palazzo Pubblico, 37. 
 Paradise, life of, 30. 
 Paris, 240 ; exposition of, 177, 
 
 227. 
 Poirce, Professor Benjamin, 
 
 defines man, 277. 
 Pelham, George, pseud., 275. 
 
 Pilate, Pontius, 87. 
 
 Piper, Mrs. Leonora, 274, 275 ; 
 organism of, as telephonic 
 transmitter, 276; 277, 278, 
 279, 281, 283, 290, 291, 292, 
 294, 300, 301, 304, 305, 306, 
 309, 312, 313,314, 316, 317, 
 318 ; great test of, for Mrs. 
 Livermore, 377. 
 
 Phillips, Adelaide, 307. 
 
 Philosophy, 253. 
 
 "Phinuit, Dr.," spirit-control 
 of Mrs. Piper, 275. 
 
 Planchette, 293. 
 
 Plato, 25, 32. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 315, 316. 
 
 Pole Star, the, 168. 
 
 Potet, Baron de, 240. 
 
 Potter, Rt. Kev. Henrv C, 
 371. 
 
 Present, the accepted time, 27. 
 
 Protestant, the belief, 196. 
 
 Psalms, 191. 
 
 Psychic Research, Society of, 
 25, 137, 263, 276, 298, 305. 
 
 Public Library, the Boston, 
 315. 
 
 Putnam, Herbert, 315. 
 
 Puysegurism, 242, 245. 
 
 Pythagoras, 45. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Queen, the. Her Majesty Vic- 
 toria, 314. 
 
 Quincy, President of Harvard, 
 45. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rector (spirit-control of Mrs. 
 
 Piper), 275. 
 Resurrection, the. 239. 
 Reynolds, Col. William, 314. 
 Ricliet, 25. 
 
392 
 
 Index. 
 
 Rochas, Col. de, 277. 
 Kocky Mountains, 345. 
 Rome, 87, 300. 
 Rontgen, the ray, 56, 177, 179, 
 
 214, 341, 363. 
 Rosamond (character in" Mid- 
 
 dlemarch"), 380. 
 Royal Society, 208. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sabatier, 54. 
 
 Saint Augustine, 163. 
 
 Saint Paul, church of, 23 ; 89 ; 
 wonderful words of, 94 ; 99, 
 192, 213, 219, 228, 277, 299. 
 
 Saint Thomas, 219. 
 
 Sancta Scala, Luther's ascent 
 of, 87. 
 
 Savonarola, 62, 64. 
 
 Science, discovers manifesta- 
 tion of spirit in matter, 206. 
 
 Scientists, British Association 
 of, 24, 
 
 See, Prof. T. J. J., 70. 
 
 Seen, the plane of, 81 ; in re- 
 lation to unseen, 131, 325. 
 
 Sidgwick, Professor, 175, 264. 
 
 Siena, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44. 
 
 Simplon, the, 163. 
 
 Socrates, 239, 248. 
 
 Sodom, apples of, 75, 144. 
 
 Soul, the, 264. 
 
 Spain, 163. 
 
 Spiritualism, 137, 245, 253. 
 
 Spiritual significance, the su- 
 preme meaning of life, 14. 
 
 " Spirit-Teachings," 279. 
 
 Stead, William, 361, 362. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 
 315, 316. 
 
 Stephenson, George, 239. 
 
 Stone, Lucy, 15, 78. 
 
 Strauss, David Friedrich, 144. 
 
 Supreme Court, the, 110. 
 
 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 124, 
 
 197. 
 Symonds, John Addington, 38, 
 
 39, 43. 
 
 Tangiers, 183. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 15, 220, 248. 
 
 Tesla, Nikola, 78, 149, 167, 
 
 215; views on problem of 
 
 human energy, 339. 
 Thompson, Sir William, 300. 
 Times, Catholic, the, 298. 
 Times-Democrat, the, 317. 
 Trinity Church (Boston), 295. 
 Tunis, 27. 
 Tuscany, 36. 
 Twentieth Century, the, 16. 
 
 U. 
 
 Union Colony of Colorado, 
 345. 
 
 United States, 209, 317. 
 
 Universe, the divine forces in, 
 150. 
 
 University, Harvard, 175; of 
 Pennsylvania, 273. 
 
 Unseen, aid of friends in, 59 ; 
 close relation of life to, 139 ; 
 communication with, 131; 
 explored by psychic science, 
 227 ; unseen companions in, 
 143 ; influences from, 61 ; 
 life in, 306; loves in, 99, 
 man's relation to, 27 ; open 
 communication with, 40 ; 
 verities in, 79, 80. 
 
 Utopia, 91. 
 
 Vedder, Elihu, 315. 
 Vision, goes before achieve- 
 ment, 201. 
 
Index. 
 
 393 
 
 W. 
 
 Wallace, Dr. Alfred Russel, 
 estimates value of evideuce 
 of an unseen world, 148; 
 167; investigation of, 264; 
 regards psychical research as 
 in harmony with science, 272. 
 
 Washington, 140. 
 
 Watt, James, 237. 
 
 Wesley, John, 15, 34, 239. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 131, 134. 
 
 Wilberforce, Very Rev. Basil, 
 Canon of Westminster, 94 ; 
 preaches on the unseen 
 world, 131 ; 132 ; extract 
 from sermon of, 135 ; 139 ; 
 184; 185; 255, 355; dis- 
 cusses death, 356. 
 
 , Ut. Hev. William, Bishop 
 
 of Oxford, 247, 248. 
 
 Wilderness, the, manna in, 80. 
 Word, the divine, 299. 
 Workers, the, 218. 
 World Beautiful, the (third 
 
 series), 312. 
 Wyckoff, Walter, 218. 
 
 X-rays, 215. 
 
 X. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yerkes, the telescope of, 168. 
 Young, Charles Augustus,239 
 
 Zeus, 25. 
 
 Zollner, Friedrich, 264. 
 
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