THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 Julius Doerner, Chicago 
 Purchased, 1918. 
 
 © 2.1 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/spiritualbodyessOOearl 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 LIGHT LEADING UNTO LIGHT: 
 
 A series of Sonnets and Poems. 
 
 London : Burns and Oates, 1875. Price 5s. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 “ In his new collection of sonnets and poems Mr. Earle treats almost exclusively of 
 metaphysical and religious subjects, which he handles with a simplicity and directness 
 of style not often found even in the best prose. This is a great merit on the part of a 
 poet who, like Mr. Earle, makes not the slightest sacrifice of sound to sense, and 
 
 whose verses are as full of music as of meaning The poems are characterized by 
 
 a sympathy for noble aspirations of every kind.” — Pall Mall Gazette, Sept. 7, 1875. 
 
 “One of the most charming volumes of poetry that we have come across for many 
 
 , a day Mr. Earle has succeeded in accomplishing this result [sonnet writing] with 
 
 a degree of perfection that is very rare We cannot praise him too highly. He 
 
 possesses a thorough insight into those grand divine mysteries which everywhere 
 surround us, and is keenly alive to the spiritual nature of man. Some of the poems 
 
 are beautiful in the extreme The author is a firm believer in the doctrine that 
 
 spirit constitutes the only real and substantial existence, and that matter, so far as 
 it is anything, is a form of mind. From the dedication of the book to Dr. Newman, 
 and from some of the poems contained in the volume, we should judge the author to 
 be a Roman Catholic, but there is so genuine a spirit of liberality and love breathed 
 out on every page, that we are sure the volume will prove highly acceptable to all 
 Christians to whatever denomination they may belong.” — The Spiritual Magazine, 
 Oct., 1875. 
 
 “A writer who gives himself so seriously to cultivate that very diffi cult form of 
 poetry, the sonnet, with so much attention to rule, and so much general success, is 
 sure to be one who loves his art and deserves more appreciation than he will com- 
 monly get This is the line of poetry Mr. Earle has cultivated, certainly with 
 
 very great success ; and if we may venture to say so, he appears to us to improve as 
 time goes on, and to have become a master in his art. There are some really first-rate 
 sonnets in this volume, and not a few of high excellence.. Mr. Earle’s series of son- 
 
 nets is probably meant in the main to unfold a chain of philosophical musings, of 
 
 which the connection will become manifest to the studious reader as he proceeds 
 
 We must find room for at least two more of these beautiful sonnets Some of the 
 
 other poems in the volume are written with great freedom, and have a true ring about 
 them.” — The Month, October, 1875. 
 
 “ This work is the production of a man of taste, refinement, and culture To a 
 
 highly instructed mind, cast in a particular mould, such poetry must convey at once 
 pleasure and enlightenment. It has an aroma of the penetrating theosophy and of 
 
 the persuasive piety of Keble, to whose school the author obviously belongs The 
 
 writer conceives that our natural, or mortal, body contains, enshrouds, is ‘clothed 
 upon ’ with a spiritual body, and that the former will moulder in the grave, its dust 
 being resolved into new combinations, while the latter will rise and ascend into 
 heaven endowed with immortality. The expectation of the originator of this theory 
 is that it may remove the difficulties and objections urged against the re-assembling 
 
 and resurrection of the atoms constituting the human body The attempt is 
 
 worthy of all praise.... It should be specially noted that the author’s treatment of 
 
2 
 
 the solemn inquiry with which he deals is most reverent, suggestive, and ingenious, 
 and that his pages deserve the consideration of those who have taste to admire or 
 curiosity to prosecute so sublime and so perplexing a question.” — Dumfries and Gal- 
 loway Standard. 
 
 “ The writer of ‘ Light leading unto Light,’ who is already familiarly known to that 
 section of the public who read poetry as the author of many sonnets, thoughtful, full 
 of chaste imaginings and eloquent expression, again elects that form of poetic compo- 
 sition to convey his ideas and his fancies to the outside world. Some of them are re- 
 prints from Temple Bar, and thus taking rank with average magazine literature, are 
 
 raised above the ordinary level We quote in extmso one of Mr. Earle’s sonnets, 
 
 in the conviction that it will plead his cause better than any critical praise 
 
 The force and feeling of this reflective sonnet will be recognized by the readers— and 
 we hope there may be many — of ‘ Light leading unto Light.’ ” — The Morning Post, 
 Sept. 7, 1875. 
 
 “Mr. Earle displays scholarly conciseness and clearness, and the light and sweet- 
 ness proper to a true poet. The sonnets are especially remarkable as exhibiting at 
 once a mastery over language, a unity of purpose, and a rigid observance of the 
 stringent rules of this difficult kind of composition. Some of these poems are not 
 only thoughtful but profound, and touching upon subjects such as the Resurrection 
 and the Spiritual Body, which we must reserve for a more critical notice.” — W est- 
 minster Gazette, Sept. 15. 
 
 “ Mr. Earle has undoubtedly a facility in writing sonnets The present sonnets 
 
 are in advance, we consider, of those we first saw from Mr. Earle’s pen His 
 
 model seems to be Wordsworth Were there nothing for criticism but what may 
 
 be called poetic subtleties — such as the German notion of an “ ether body,” developed 
 during life and hatched at death, for our intermediate state of being — we should have 
 no quarrel with Mr. Earle The author’s excellent intention is to refute mate- 
 rialism The great bulk of the sonnets, together with the remaining poems, are 
 
 very pleasant reading, and cannot fail to do good.” — Catholic World (New York). 
 
 : “ Many of these have already appeared singly in different periodicals, but each here 
 takes its place as one of a regular series of religious, moral, or philosophical poems. 
 They are instinct with a very devotional spirit, and are well worthy of the serious 
 attention of thoughtful and imaginative minds, to whom weighty reflections are not 
 less acceptable because they are clothed in chastened and correct verse. We need 
 scarcely say that the sonnets are all constructed on the most classical types.” — 
 Tablet, Aug. 28, 1875. 
 
 “ In the composition of sonnets the writer appears to possess a peculiar natural 
 faculty, improved by culture and the study of the best models in that description of 
 writing It seems to be the constant aim of the writer to marry science to theo- 
 logy by expanding the latter instead of seeking to dwarf the former.. As an illus- 
 
 tration of his courage in this respect, we would refer to the repeated affirmation in 
 sonnet after sonnet of the doctrine of the resurrection of the spiritual instead of the 
 natural body.”— Human Nature, November, 1875. 
 

 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 <Jitt 3Sssatj m Ifrase and l^erse. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CHARLES EARLE, B.A. 
 
 jwtonb f Dition. 
 
 “ What are the laws of nature ? To me, perhaps, the rising of one 
 from the dead were no violation of these laws, but a confirmation ; were 
 some far deeper law, now first penetrated into, and by spiritual force, 
 even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its material 
 force.” — Sartor Eesartus, iii. 8. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 J. W. KOLCKMANN, 2, LANGHAM PLACE. 
 
t 
 
 ERRATA, 
 
 Page 67, line 6, for “ communing ” read “ communion 
 Page 73, line 19, for “ that you are fashioned” read i( that you 
 are fashioned so” 
 
 Copies of the “ Sjnritual Body ” can be obtained from the 
 Author, 82, Ladbroke Grove Road, W. Price 3s. post free, 
 
 \ 
 
I 3 3 3 O^cse 
 
 JE 7^^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The belief in the immortality of the soul is closely 
 bound up with that of the Spiritual body ; for it is 
 impossible — to the writer at least it appears im- 
 possible — to believe in the separate existence of 
 the soul without a form and an organism. For 
 what does soul imply ? Thoughts and feelings, 
 trains of thought, states of feeling. And how can 
 these trains of thought and states of feeling be 
 maintained in existence, be carried on, modified, 
 deepened, exalted, refined, expanded, without a 
 mechanism of some kind analogous to that which 
 we now enjoy ? Hence we find that all writers, in- 
 spired or uninspired, the moment they begin to 
 speak of the separated spirit adopt involuntarily 
 language which implies form and organism. The 
 soul can no more exist after death than it could 
 before death without a medium through which it 
 may receive and communicate impressions. There 
 is not a more baseless vision of the imagination 
 than a created spirit without body, without any- 
 
 46781.0 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vi 
 
 thing to sever it from the rest of the universe and 
 give it individuality and personality. If we accept 
 the immortality of the soul, we are logically bound 
 to accept also the immortality of the body under 
 altered conditions. The very name of spirit in- 
 cludes the idea of body, for what is the pneuma 
 which we breathe and on which all the phenomena 
 of life, animal and vegetable, depend ? Is it not 
 a body, though an invisible one ? Is it not as 
 much a body as the hardest rock ? Does it not 
 constitute the chief part of our nourishment and 
 of the food we eat exclusive of the air we inhale ? 
 Let us not be the slaves of words without ideas. 
 If our pneuma is to survive death, it can do so in 
 no other way than that which the Scripture points 
 out — by retaining its pneumatic, or spiritual, body. 
 And let those who are inclined to censure or ridi- 
 cule this view of the subject remember that what- 
 ever weapon strikes the spiritual body stabs also 
 the immortality of the soul. If we dote and dream 
 in expecting the one, we dote and dream no less in 
 looking for the other. How can the communion 
 of saints be realized if we discredit the spiritual 
 body ? What relations can we have with a spirit 
 who is nowhere ? And of what avail would it be to 
 invoke those who cannot hear, and have no organism 
 by which to receive impressions from without ? 
 The moment you localise a spirit you endow that 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 spirit with a spiritual body. Place implies form : 
 whatever occupies the one is possessed of the other. 
 We shall find ourselves after death, as before, in a 
 locality. We need no miracle for the change. Our 
 resurrection will not be miraculous in the ordinary 
 sense any more than our birth was, but, on tlie con- 
 trary, perfectly natural, simple, and easy. The 
 great iron gate will open before us, angel-led, of its 
 own accord. We shall pass, and not for the first 
 time, from death unto life, and though the change 
 will be wonderful, it will not be more wonderful 
 than preceding steps which we have taken in the 
 march of existence. We have a type of it in our 
 awaking at dawn, and this figure is the more exact 
 when we remember that we do not awake and rise 
 in the same body as that in which we lay down. It 
 is the same in one sense but not in another. It is 
 the same by continuity, but it is not the same by 
 absolute physical identity. Every part of it has 
 undergone a change. 
 
 The researches of modern science have latterly 
 forced the doctrine of the Spiritual Body more and 
 more on the attention of all who believe in the re- 
 surrection ; and it is to these in general, by what- 
 ever name they may be called, that I venture to 
 address the following remarks. The impossibility 
 of the resurrection of the natural body at the last 
 day according to popular notions is apparent when 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 we consider that few men in comparison with the 
 entire human race will then be in their graves. 
 Many of our species have never been buried in the 
 earth ; many lie n the depths of the sea ; many 
 have been burnt, many devoured by wild beasts and 
 cannibals. All the dead after a short space of time 
 become not merely dust but vapour. They enter into 
 other forms, either with or without chemical decom- 
 position, and become the element of other living crea- 
 tures, plants, animals, and men. The dead are the 
 life of the living. We inhale the dead. They flow 
 in our veins ; they help to form the texture of our 
 bodies and our brain-cells. They could not be 
 reclaimed for individuals at the last day without 
 taking from numberless bodies of which they have 
 formed part. Their condition has become atmo- 
 spheric. They are the property of all. They have 
 no atomic integrity, and never can be reconstituted 
 in their natural conditions. W e must therefore put 
 aside their remains altogether as having part in 
 the resurrection to life at Christ’s coming. It is 
 not to be thought of that millions should then be 
 laying claim to the very same particles of matter. 
 The resurrection of the body, except under the con- 
 ditions to be pointed out, is not a truth, but a 
 ghastly and gibbering skeleton of one. 
 
 I am. here speaking of the vast majority of man- 
 kind, not of those few who will be in the sepulchres 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 when our Lord shall come again. Of these nothing 
 is predicated in this place, though I shall have 
 something to say about them by-and-by. 
 
 The common idea of the resurrection is attended 
 with another difficulty. It seems to take for 
 granted that from the time of death to the judg- 
 ment day the soul will exist apart in an incorporeal, 
 unorganized, condition. But this solution of con- 
 tinuity in the connexion of soul and body during 
 a period which may, for all we know, last many 
 hundreds of thousands of years, is disquieting to 
 contemplate and difficult to believe. It cannot be 
 made to harmonize with Scripture without doing vio- 
 lence to a large number of texts; and it suggests in the 
 strongest manner th e necessity of seeking for some 
 more probable solution of the problem ofour after life. 
 
 We have not far to seek : the inspired Apostle 
 Paul himself reveals the mystery. He assures us 
 that there is even now a natural body and a spiritual 
 body, and he refers us to the seed cast into the 
 ground as the lively image of death and the resur- 
 rection. But in the seed there are two parts, and 
 of these one dies in order to supply nourishment to 
 the other. The tiny germ that exists in every seed 
 swells with the moisture of the ground, and the 
 perisperm, or cotyledon, which surrounds it, is but 
 a storehouse of nourishment to enable it to grow, 
 till having sent its root downwards and its plumule 
 
 b 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 upwards, it can draw its support from the soil and 
 the atmosphere. But to accomplish this the peri- 
 sperm must die, for it cannot pass into the tissues 
 of the plant until it has been reduced to a soluble 
 and then a liquid state.* In one of the parts, there- 
 fore, the seed dies, in the other it lives. It is thus 
 with man. His natural body perishes, and when 
 it lies cold on the bed of death — when it has itself 
 become a grave — the vital germ — the spiritual body 
 — rises out of it and passes into a sphere of existence 
 suited to its antecedents. Our Lord Himself used 
 the same simile in reference to His own resurrection 
 when He said : Verily, verily, I say unto you, un- 
 less the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, 
 itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth 
 forth much fruit (St. John, xii. 24). And this it is 
 which makes the Apostle's meaning clear when he 
 declared emphatically, in answer to the captious 
 objector : “ Senseless man, that which thou sowest 
 is not quickened except it die first, and that which 
 thou sowest, thou sowest not thatbody that shall be, 
 but bare grain, as of wheat or of some other grain ; 
 but God giveth it a body as He hath willed (that 
 is, according to a natural law), and to every seed his 
 own body” (I. Cor. xv. 36 — 38). No two spiritual 
 bodies will be exactly alike : each will preserve the 
 individuality which marked the natural body, and 
 * Primaeval Man Unveiled , pp. 301 — 2. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 distinguished it from all its fellows. In the resur- 
 rection of the dead, the natural body is sown in cor- 
 ruption and the spiritual body is raised in incorrup- 
 tion. It is sown in dishonour, it is, not it shall be, 
 raised in glory : it is sown in weakness, it is raised 
 in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised 
 a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there 
 is a spiritual body (I. Cor. xv. 42 — 44). The Apostle 
 employs the present tense, for if the spirit-body 
 were not in us now, at least in its inchoate or embryo 
 condition, the present and the future body — the 
 mortal and the resurrection body — could never be 
 identical. The links which unite them would be 
 dissolved by death and corruption, and nothing 
 could restore them. From this argument there is 
 no escape. 
 
 Perhaps it will be objected that if the doctrine 
 here advocated were so plainly revealed in Scripture, 
 Christians in general would not so long have re- 
 mained in ignorance of it. But it will be evident 
 on reflection that such an inference would be unwar- 
 ranted. Time is necessary to develop many things 
 contained in the primary deposit of the faith, and 
 we can no more conclude anything against the spirit- 
 body because for centuries the faithful have under- 
 stood it differently, than we could with justice have 
 rejectedtheCopernican system of astronomy because 
 it was opposed to the ordinary interpretation of 
 
 b — 2 
 
Xll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the Bible at the time when it was taught by the 
 illustrious Tuscan. 
 
 In his second epistle to the Corinthians, St.Taul 
 reverts to the subject on which he had dwelt so elo- 
 quently in the first. “We know,” he says, “that if our 
 earthly house of this tabernacle (our natural body) 
 be dissolved, we have a building of God (a spiritual 
 body), a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens. For in this (natural body) we groan, 
 earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation 
 that is from heaven (our spiritual body) : if so be 
 that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 
 For we also that are in this tabernacle (the natural 
 body) do groan, being burthened: because we would 
 not be unclothed but clothed upon, that what is mortal 
 (the natural body) may be swallowed up by life (the 
 spiritual body) : therefore,” he adds, “we are always 
 confident, and have a good will rather to be absent 
 from the (natural) body, and to be present with the 
 Lord (in our spiritual body) : for we must all appear 
 before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one 
 may receive in the (spiritual) body according to 
 the things he has done whether good or evil 
 (II. Cor. v. 1 — 10). 
 
 Thus far, then, our way is clear. St. Paul affirms 
 the present existence in us of the spiritual body, 
 which will clothe the spirit at the moment of death, 
 and he refers us to the seed sown as a representa- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Xlll 
 
 tion of what will happen to us in that momentous 
 crisis. But elsewhere he refers to something be- 
 sides of far greater importance as illustrating the 
 doctrine of the resurrection. He tells us that as 
 we have been planted together with Christ in the 
 likeness of His death, we shall be also in the like- 
 ness of His resurrection. We are bound therefore 
 to accept Christ’s rising from the dead as the type 
 of our own, and to examine the Divine records con- 
 cerning it with the utmost reverence and care. He 
 came to be the Redeemer not only of the soul but 
 of the body likewise, and though He paid the com- 
 mon penalty of death, He did not suffer death to 
 triumph for one moment over His bodily existence. 
 No sooner had He given up the ghost than the 
 spirit-body was set free from its mortal surround- 
 ings and passed into the unseen world. In it He 
 visited the spirits in prison ; in it He welcomed the 
 penitent to His side in Paradise. But we who are 
 of His mystical body shall in all things be made 
 like unto Him who is our brother and the first be- 
 gotten from the dead. Our spirit-bodies when 
 liberated from the bondage of corruption, will pass 
 straightway wheresoever He wills, and find not 
 merely a state but a place also in which to realise 
 a more intense existence. 
 
 And here let me observe that the spirit-body of 
 the saints, as of the Lord, preserves the continuity 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of the body which theology requires. The natural 
 body is the “ terminus a quo” of the resurrection, 
 and as the body in which Christ walked with the 
 disciples to Emaus, stood with them on the shore of 
 the lake of Galilee, led them out to the Mount of 
 Olives and rose in their sight to heaven, was the 
 same as that in which He sat by Jacob’s well, insti- 
 tuted the Eucharist and suffered on the cross, so 
 will the resurrection body, which will invest us at 
 the moment of death, be the same with that which 
 we now tenant — ^fche same, that is, and not the 
 same ; the same in substance but not in conditions ; 
 the same in one point of view but not the same in 
 another ; the same with a difference. It is only in 
 this way that the words of the Fourth Lateran 
 Council can be understood: “ Qui omnes(tam reprobi 
 quam electi) cum suis propriis corporibus resurgent, 
 quse nunc gestant.” And here I would quote from 
 a letter by a clerical friend who writes : “ Perrone 
 says that we Catholics agree in holding that we 
 shall rise with a body physically identical with that 
 which we had in life, “ adeo ut omnes idem physice 
 corpus resumpturi simus quod per mortem amisi- 
 mus”; but then he grants that for this it is not 
 necessary that the future body should be composed 
 of all and each of the particles of matter which com- 
 pose the present body ; but it is enough if it is com- 
 posed of the essential parts, i.e. such as distinguished 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 XV 
 
 the body of one man from that of another.” The 
 spiritual body being evolved in life from the natural 
 body, must in a certain sense be materially identical 
 with it, and it will carry away from it abundantly 
 sufficient to establish that identity. 
 
 The body of Christ, then, after His resurrection 
 must be taken as the type of that of each of His 
 redeemed. Our sinful bodies will be made like 
 unto His glorious body, according to that mighty 
 working whereby He is able to subdue all things 
 unto Himself. His spiritual body was subject to 
 laws — that is, sequences — wholly different from 
 those which his natural body had obeyed. But He 
 was still in the form of man. He retained all the 
 dignity and sweetness He had during His earthly 
 life. He resembled His former self. His disciples 
 recognised Him, though some doubted. He was full 
 of mystery. To some he appeared to be a spirit, yet 
 was He sometimes strangely materialised and spoke 
 as in the days of His flesh. He appeared or dis- 
 appeared at will ; He passed like the wind through 
 closed doors ; He bore in His sacred person the 
 marks of His passion ; He ate of fish and honey ; 
 He rose upon the air and ascended out of sight into 
 heaven. In all these respects the spirit-body evolved 
 within us now, and to be developed more completely 
 when we die, will resemble His, or may resemble 
 it if circumstances require. 
 
XVI 
 
 V 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 And has Christ never appeared among men since 
 He rose to heaven ? Did He not appear to Saul 
 of Tarsus in his glorified humanity and convert him 
 by that effulgent vision ? Have none of the saints 
 ever caught a glimpse of His spiritual body, and 
 are all traditions of His appearing to them visibly 
 to be set aside as the figments of disordered fancy 
 or designing fraud ? Is no testimony to be credited 
 unless it conforms to man’s ordinary experience ? 
 
 It is the doctrine of the spiritual body alone that 
 makes the eucharistic presence credible. It alone 
 meets every captious objection and satisfies all 
 sincere inquirers. Christ’s spiritual body — His 
 flesh and blood — are present in the elements of 
 bread and wine according to law — the law of 
 spiritual bodies. Matter is no impediment to its 
 presence. It becomes through faith and prayer the 
 substance of the elements or species. Indeed it 
 may be doubted whether anything but God has, 
 scientifically speaking, a substantial existence. There 
 are no ultimate particles, atoms or molecules, into 
 which matter can be resolved. Atoms are infinitely 
 divisible, and in tracing matter up to its primary 
 constituents we arrive at last at force. Is force 
 then self-existent ? To hold this would be pan- 
 theism. Force is of God. Thus, in popular lan- 
 guage, and without using precise theological terms, 
 I would say, nothing but God really is. The truth 
 of this doctrine will no doubt become more mani- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XVII 
 
 fest to us in the future life than it is now. Force 
 will rule in the sphere of spiritual bodies more visibly, 
 though not more really, than in our world of grosser 
 matter. Moreover, to return to my point, Christ’s 
 spiritual body has the property of illimitable exten- 
 sion, and therefore becomes in relation to us, ubi- 
 quitous. It is present on every altar at the same 
 time and in every host without suffering division, 
 and without ever being consumed. When we com- 
 municate we bear witness to His resurrection, and 
 receive a pledge of our own. We accept the ador- 
 able, and worship His spiritual body, which com- 
 mingles with ours, thus making us members of His 
 body, of his flesh and of His bones. 
 
 When the Christian mind looks about for types 
 of the resurrection body, after it has reflected on 
 that of Christ, its instincts lead it to consider that 
 of His spotless mother. The immense majority of 
 Christendom believe, and ever have believed, her 
 body to have been assumed into heaven to sit beside 
 Her Son in His glory and to be the queen of saints. 
 Yet no one of common observation supposed that 
 the body of the Virgin Mary was translated to 
 heaven in its natural condition. If it was rescued 
 from the tomb and carried by the angels to a worthier 
 throne even than the bosom of Abraham, it was first 
 spiritualised, and thus made another type and pledge 
 of what every member of Christ’s mystical body will 
 
XV111 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 be in the end. Her assumption was also a trans- 
 figuration, and her body, which had not returned 
 to corruption, underwent that change to which the 
 spouse of Christ is constantly looking forward in 
 faith and hope. 
 
 In writing to the Thessalonians* St Paul en- 
 deavoured to console them for the loss of their 
 friends and brethren by death, and the argument 
 which he mainly employed was very naturally this 
 
 that they are not really dead — that they have but 
 fallen asleep— that they have awoke from the 
 slumber of death and are living with God safe in 
 His keeping and waiting for the day when they 
 shall return to earth, when Christ himself shall 
 bring them in his train, and when they shall meet 
 in the air those who will be alive and remain until 
 the Lord’s coming, will be changed into the like- 
 ness of their Lord, and be capable of levitation in 
 their new spiritual frames. Thus the spiritual bodies 
 of departed saints and the spiritual bodies of saints 
 who have never passed through the gates of death 
 will meet together and be for ever with the Lord. 
 Death is not necessary in order to change the 
 natural into the spirit-body, the power of God can 
 effect that change in a moment, and will effect it 
 according to His promise when He shall appear 
 again. The presence of Christ alone would suffice, 
 
 * I. Thess. iv. 13 — 17. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XIX 
 
 if He pleased, to drive off the denser matter into the 
 more subtle and spiritual. What a convention will 
 that be when the Lord, our incarnate God, shall 
 come and all His saints with him ! We have seen 
 museums and aquariums where the treasures of the 
 deep are preserved — where zoophites and submarine 
 plants rival in beauty and variety the flowers of the 
 parterre ; we have seen conservatories full of orchids 
 with their butterfly-like blossoms, ferns and tropical 
 plants of wonderful luxuriance ; we have visited zoo- 
 logical gardens and other collections of birds from 
 foreign climes, and have marvelled at the splendour 
 of their plumage, and the varied dyes of their infi- 
 nitely varied plumes. W ell, these sea-plants, these 
 tropical flowers, with all the flowery wealth of fields 
 and heaths and plots and groves, these birds of para- ' 
 dise with silky down and glossy necks, if they filled 
 a continent, would be but a faint symbol of the 
 variety of loveliness, the order, the brilliancy of 
 those spiritual bodies which will compose the 
 assembly of the just in the New Jerusalem and on 
 the slopes of the heavenly Zion. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance that we should 
 listen with devout attention to every word which 
 our Saviour has uttered respecting the unseen 
 world, if we would form any definite opinion about 
 the spiritual body. Now it is certain that His 
 words, as recorded in the Gospels, give no counte- 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 nance to the idea of pure incorporeal spirits, but 
 on the contrary, depict to our minds all the habi- 
 tants of untrodden spheres as possessed of material 
 attributes — as having organisms of a subtler de- 
 scription than those of earth, yet no less visible and 
 serviceable for the purpose of individualising spirits 
 of diverse orders. Of this the parable of JDives and 
 Lazarus is a striking example. It exhibits the de- 
 parted in their twofold life — a life of spirit and a 
 life of form. We may here remark also that in this 
 parable our Lord speaks of returning from the dead 
 as a rising from the dead, and that the word rising 
 in this and other places of Scripture ought not to 
 be pressed too hard, as though it pointed of necessity 
 to an exit from graves or other depths of the earth. 
 According to Scripture phraseology, the dead who 
 will come again with Christ at his second advent will 
 rise from the dead, though their natural bodies will 
 long before that period have become an undistinguish- 
 able portion of the elements. The ghost of Samuel 
 appeared to Saul to rise out of the earth, though 
 in fact it returned only from Hades in a shadowy 
 “ form.” It was wrapped round with raiment, and 
 wore the semblance of its earthly shape. There is 
 no reason why we should suppose it to have been 
 a trick of the witch of Endor. Witches and wizards 
 often had real power, and that person must be 
 credulous — I use the word advertently — who be- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXI 
 
 lieves all stories of wizardry and all apparitions, 
 ancient as well as modern, to have been impostures. 
 The Scriptures give no intimation of the appearance 
 of Samuel on earth after his death being anything 
 less than a reality ; and to those who believe in the 
 spiritual body nothing can seem more probable and, 
 I might almost say, natural. 
 
 Modern science has brought to light many bodies 
 of extreme subtlety and many subtle properties in- 
 herent in them. It has led the minds of men on to- 
 wards the borders of spirit-land, and taught them 
 that much which used to be called supernatural is 
 natural — that much which used to be called spiritual 
 is material, because matter is infinitely varied in its 
 degrees of density and fineness. We have now no 
 difficulty in believing on scientific grounds that the 
 air around us may be tenanted by intelligent spirits 
 in robes of finest matter, invisible to us under ordi- 
 nary circumstances, yet not of necessity either in- 
 visible, inaudible or intangible. The Apocalypse 
 overflows with evidence of this variety of spirit- 
 matter existence in the unseen world. The disciple 
 whom Jesus loved seems to assume it as not needing 
 proof, as a thing admitted by all believers in the 
 Lord’s resurrection and ascension, that the spirits 
 of the departed have numberless material attributes 
 and inhabit a 'place of beatitude. 
 
 The growth of the spiritual body within us and the 
 
XXII 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 materials out of which it is wrought, are among 
 
 O 7 o 
 
 the deepest mysteries of our being. There can be 
 little doubt that it is elaborated by the joint action 
 of the mind and body, and that its seat is in that 
 nerve fluid, or ether, which envelopes the nerves, 
 and by whose help the motion of their molecules 
 communicates sensations and transmits the man- 
 dates of the will. This nerve-ether has been regarded 
 as the vital force. It extends beyond the surface of 
 the body and encompasses each one of us with an 
 envelope of nerve atmosphere, varying in depth and 
 intensity in different individuals. As time advances 
 we may be able to speak with greater precision of 
 the growth of the spiritual body and of its proper- 
 ties during life, but it is sufficient for the present 
 to know that we possess it, that it enables us to see, 
 to hear, to speak, or to be spoken to, and that it is 
 permanently affected by our moral and mental con- 
 duct — that it is our second man — the undeveloped 
 plan of our future frame — the germ of an immortal 
 plant, as Bonnetti taught a hundred years ago.* 
 Nor need these statements startle any one who re- 
 flects on the many extraordinary occult faculties 
 which we undoubtedly possess. When Moses came 
 down from Mount Sinai his face shone so that he 
 needed to put a veil on his face. When Stephen 
 addressed the council in Jerusalem his face was 
 
 *Ricerclie filosofiche su le prove del Christianesimo. Venezia. 1771. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XX111 
 
 bright as that of an angel. When Christ was trans- 
 figured on Mount Tabor His spiritual body from 
 within shone forth in its native might and splendour, 
 overpowering the dimness of the flesh which He 
 had assumed for us men and for our salvation. 
 Elias was borne aloft in the air ; Ezechiel was lifted 
 up by the spirit and brought in the vision of God 
 to J erusalem ; Philip was caught away by the spirit 
 and found in a distant spot ; many of the saints have 
 been rendered ecstatic and raised from earth when en- 
 gaged in earnest prayer, while somnambulism, trance, 
 clairvoyance, mesmerism, bilocation and animal mag- 
 netism, clearly prove that we have faculties which 
 are not ordinary but which might become so if it 
 were God’s will and for our advantage that they 
 should be commonly experienced. Whatever has 
 been once might be again any number of times. 
 We conclude, therefore from analogy, and even 
 without the aid of Scripture, that, having many 
 latent powers, it is neither impossible nor improb- 
 able that we may have a body within us which at 
 death will burst its shell and expand into fair pro- 
 portions. The butterfly is the type, not of the soul 
 merely, but of the soul -body, which will emerge 
 from its chrysalid state into a higher life and a 
 more beautiful sphere. 
 
 Non v’ accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi 
 
 Nati a formar l’angelica farfallaT* 
 
 * Dante, II Purgatorio , canto x. 
 
XXIV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Thus too an inner impulse rends the veil of 
 the old husk of the dragon fly, clear plates of 
 sapphire mail cover him entirely ; his wings grow 
 like gauze, and, wet with dew, he flies through 
 crofts and pastures like a living flash of light. * 
 Dr. Newman makes the soul of Gerontius say after 
 death : — 
 
 “ I am not dead 
 
 But in the body still ; for I possess 
 A sort of confidence, which clings to me 
 That each particular organ holds its place 
 As heretofore, combining with the rest 
 Into one symmetry, that wraps me round, 
 And makes me man, and surely I could move, 
 Did I but will it, every part of me.” 
 
 The manner in which we are accustomed to speak 
 of the departed and of the invisible world is calcu- 
 lated to deceive and render us very unpractical in 
 our spiritual life. We constantly use terms which 
 imply distance and absence ; and though there is a 
 sense in which these expressions are true, there is 
 a sense also in which they are false. The spirits 
 of the departed are nearer to us than they ever were 
 while in the flesh — nearer to us than the air we 
 breathe. To communicate with them by word of 
 mouth, by invocation and by prayer, is no supersti- 
 
 Tennyson, The Two Voices. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXV 
 
 tion, but faith, and is pregnant with consolatory and 
 beneficial results. Even supposing the ether which 
 surrounds the stars and planets to be their peculiar 
 sphere, they are, nevertheless, or can be when they 
 will, indescribably near to us in consequence of 
 the rapid, thought-directed movements of their 
 spiritual bodies. 
 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the body 
 naturally inclined Christians in the early ages to 
 repudiate the Pagan custom of burning the dead 
 and to bury them reverently in the earth, preser- 
 ving them as long as possible from decay. But now 
 that the most serious forms of Paganism are over- 
 thrown, now that it is known and felt on all hands 
 that burning or burying is indifferent as regards 
 the ultimate destiny of the natural body, there 
 seems to be no occasion whatever for making it a 
 religious question. 
 
 L “ Tabesne cadavera solvat 
 An rogus, baud refert.” # 
 
 The discussion is simply one of social impor- 
 tance, and nothing can be more inept than to 
 advocate the practice of burying on the ground 
 of its being connected with the maintenance of 
 the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. 
 Even one of the most strenuous opponents of 
 cremation says : a I do not mean that it may 
 * Lucan, Pharsalia, viii, 809. 
 
 c 
 
XXY1 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 not very properly be resorted to under exceptional 
 circumstances. As, for instance, in time of war or 
 pestilence, when the large number of decaying 
 corpses, or the deadly infection which they contain, 
 renders their preservation dangerous to the public 
 health.”* If cremation were practised among 
 Christians, it would be accompanied by the rites 
 of the church. It is not desirable, in any case, to 
 maintain true doctrine by repeating false state- 
 ments. The populace have long been deluded by 
 the idea that the remains of Christians will rest in 
 the grave till the judgment day, and this indeed 
 is positively affirmed on tombstones and mural tab- 
 lets in every church and churchyard, Catholic or 
 Protestant, throughout the kingdom. Yet nothing 
 can be more manifestly untrue, and now that all 
 educated persons know it to be false, they ought 
 not to re-assert it themselves or be parties to the 
 erection of such mendacious monuments by others. 
 
 “The very generations of the dead 
 Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomV’f . 
 
 “ Our organized bodies,” as Bishop Butler says 
 in his Analogy, \ are no more ourselves, or part of 
 ourselves, than any other matter around us.” The 
 natural body is m a constant state of decay and re- 
 novation, and it is not, nor ever will be, by it that 
 
 # Rev. R. F. Clark, Month, May, 1875. + Byron. 
 
 J Chap I. p. 26. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXV11 
 
 our identity is maintained. The mind and its spirit- 
 frame now preserve our identity, and will preserve 
 it through the crisis of death, the intermediate 
 state, and the coming of the Lord to judge both 
 quick and dead. We are not starting aside from 
 the sure word of prophecy, but rather striving to 
 conform our ideas to its inspired predictions. We 
 submit implicitly to the authority of Scripture and 
 to the Church, who is that Scripture’s appointed 
 keeper and unerring exponent, while we openly 
 rebel against hoary and regnant falsehood. In con- 
 formity with this safe and salutary principle, let us 
 remember that though there is a sense in which we 
 look for a general resurrection yet future, there is 
 a sense also in which that resurrection has already 
 commenced and is perpetually going on. As at 
 every minute in some part or other of the world a 
 child is born into light, so at every minute is some 
 spirit rising from the grave -womb of the natural 
 body into a real and soul-matter existence in a world 
 unseen though near at hand. Christ is even now 
 the resurrection and the life. The hour cometh 
 and now is that the dead hear the voice of the Son 
 of God inviting them to the inner courts of His 
 temple to minister before Him in the material robes 
 of a spiritual priesthood.* It was when the 
 
 * See Light leading unto Light , p. 183 — 5, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 
 79, 83, 94, 95, 154. 
 
 c— 2 
 
XXY111 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Messiah had overcome the sharpness of death that 
 He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
 
 There are many who think — and the belief is 
 ancient — that the departed spirit hovers for awhile 
 with interest and affection over its earthly remains 
 — that it separates from the body more readily in one 
 person than in another — that it watches over the 
 funeral rites — that it is not unconcerned in the 
 honours paid to the lifeless corpse — that it sympa 
 thises in some degree with it when outraged, and 
 that the affinity by which it was drawn to it is not 
 wholly at an end so long as any of its molecules 
 cohere. This idea seems to be confirmed by the fact, 
 which none who accept the Scriptures as their guide 
 can dispute, that some natural bodies have been 
 restored to life — that Lazarus burst his grave- 
 clothes — that Elias raised the widow’s son — that 
 Eliseus’ staff restored life to the child of the Suna- 
 mite mother — that Tabitha and Eutychus were 
 brought back from the dead by Paul, and that when 
 Christ died many bodies of the saints which slept 
 arose and went into the holy City and appeared 
 unto many. All these resurrections seem to point 
 to that rising of the dead which will take place 
 when Christ shall come again. Those who at that 
 time really rest in the tomb or the depths of the sea, 
 those who have not been thoroughly resolved into 
 gases, passed through countless chemical changes, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 and fed the generations of the living, may be ex- 
 pected then to close in some mysterious manner, as 
 yet wholly impenetrable to our imagination, with 
 the spirit-bodies descending from on high — to un- 
 dergo in . a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the 
 change indicated by the prophets of the New Testa- 
 ment — to fulfil to the letter the words of inspira- 
 tion, and realise in a vast multitude the few types 
 of resurrection of the natural body which it has 
 pleased God to exhibit to mankind. It is only 
 those who have made this subject their special study 
 who will be able to place themselves exactly in my 
 point of view, and I must expect to be misunder- 
 stood and misinterpreted by many persons who are 
 not otherwise unfriendly. Nevertheless, I think the 
 distinction here drawn is sufficiently clear between 
 the dead who will be in their graves at Christ’s 
 coming and the dead who will have undergone 
 every kind of change and have formed consti- 
 tuent parts of other bodies. 
 
 The spiritual body being a perfect resemblance 
 and reproduction, under altered conditions, of the 
 natural body, it might be expected that it should re- 
 tain the material impressions in which memory is 
 supposed to consist. Successive acts of conscious- 
 ness leave indelible traces within us. Every thought 
 that rises in our minds is accomplished by some 
 molecular motions and displacements in the brain, 
 
XXX 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and parts of these are in some manner stored up in 
 the brain-cells so as to produce what may be called 
 our physical memory. Other parts of these subtle 
 motions are communicated — we may believe — to 
 the spiritual or unseen body, and are stored up 
 there, forming a memory which may be utilised 
 when that body is set free by death and better able 
 to exercise its functions. It will thus retain its 
 hold on the past and serve the grand purpose of 
 maintaining a continuous intelligent existence.* 
 It is memory above all things which constitutes 
 our identity with our former selves when we have 
 passed from youth to age — for not one of the ma- 
 terial fibres which we then had any longer exists 
 within us — and it is memory, in like manner, which 
 will in great part form the identity between the in- 
 dividual in his after life and the individual during 
 his probation on earth. Thus the doctrine of the 
 spirit-body is closely connected with the ethics of 
 mankind. W e are writing daily our thoughts and 
 deeds on imperishable tablets. We shall be wit- 
 nesses hereafter for or against ourselves. Out of 
 our own mouths shall we be judged. We shall carry 
 with us through the gates of death our condemna- 
 tion or acquittal. When the petals of the mind 
 close in sleep evening after evening, the leaves are 
 
 * The Unseen Universe ; or, Physical Speculations on a Future 
 State, p. 159. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 inscribed with the events of the day ; and there is 
 in man a fearfully vivid power of reviving past im- 
 pressions and memories which we imagined were 
 dead for ever. Memory, like Will, must have an 
 organ, or it is a cipher. We shall carry with us 
 into eternity the elements of our own bliss or woe. 
 Heaven, hell and purgatory spring out of the nature 
 of things. They are indeed present as well as future. 
 They begin in time. We are all even now in one 
 or the other of these states. In the spiritual body 
 the condition of the soul will only become more de- 
 fined, more intense. Remorse, despair, impeni- 
 tence, a disturbed conscience and the loss a of the 
 light of God’s countenance — these are hell ; and no 
 figures of speech, no outward symbols of material 
 torment, can exaggerate the idea of suffering which 
 such conditions necessarily imply. Nor is the no- 
 tion of material pain in the next world to be ex- 
 cluded, for the spirit-body in which we shall be 
 clothed, will be far more susceptible of pain and 
 pleasure than the body we now inhabit. The suf- 
 ferings, however, of the world unseen will be 
 spiritual in the main, and the conclusions of our 
 physical reasoning should be limited to their proper 
 sphere. Nor ought we to think of the triple division 
 of the future state of souls as so marked and abso- 
 lute as to admit of no degree in each compartment. 
 They are convenient expressions for theology to 
 
XXX11 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 employ, and they express solemn substantial truths. 
 Yet no one who reflects can doubt that the variety 
 of condition in the world of spirits will be greater 
 than in the world of men. Every shade of know- 
 ledge and of ignorance, of virtue and of vice, of 
 happiness and of misery, will be found in that illimi- 
 table country whither we tend. The spiritual body 
 also will, by its extreme subtlety and perfect sub- 
 jection to the rule of thought, have means of ex- 
 hibiting varieties of feeling such as at present we 
 can but faintly imagine. Spirits will also, no doubt, 
 have the faculty of weaving in an instant, out of the 
 universal fluid of which all things are made, gar- 
 ments suited to the sphere they intend to visit, and 
 to execute the purpose on which they may be bent. 
 
 I am following in this essay with more or less 
 exactness the course of my poem ; at least of the 
 earlier part of it ; and I do so because, though 
 verse, when it is worth anything, condenses thought 
 and gives it precision and effect, it simplifies ideas 
 to some minds only and not to all. As some persons 
 are colour-blind, so some are poetry-deaf, and that 
 which would be intelligible to them in prose be- 
 comes unintelligible or distasteful when conveyed 
 in the language of poetry. But my aim is to be 
 clearly understood, and I therefore omit no means 
 of attaining that end. The resurrection, as it is 
 generally taught, is ecpially opposed to reason, to 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXXlU 
 
 science and to Scripture. While we are constantly 
 assured in the Bible that the dead will rise, we are 
 never once told that the natural body will rise again 
 without an entire change of condition, but are, on 
 the contrary, reminded in the most emphatic manner 
 that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of 
 God, neither can corruption inherit incorruption. 
 “The time,” says Locke, “ that man is in this world, 
 affixed to this earth, is his being sown, and not when 
 being dead he is put in the grave, as is evident from 
 St. Paul’s own words : for dead things are not sown; 
 seeds are sown, being alive, and die not till after 
 they are sown.” This is but another way of saying 
 what I have frequently insisted on, — that the seed 
 which is to rise is sown at the moment of death, 
 and germinates immediately, the plant being the 
 spiritual body. 
 
 There is a passage in St. Luke* on the subject of 
 the resurrection, in which a word that is, in the 
 Douay and the Anglican version, rendered in the 
 future, would more properly have been translated in 
 the past. It would then stand thus: “ The children 
 of this world marry and are given in marriage, but 
 they that have been accounted worthy [ KaraZiuOtvTtg] 
 of that world [or, to obtain that world] and the re- 
 surrection from the dead, neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage ; neither can they die any more : 
 
 35-36. 
 
xxxiv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 for they are equal to the angels and are the children 
 of God, being the children of the resurrection.” 
 The needless introduction of the future tense into 
 this passage embarrasses the meaning and dimi- 
 nishes the force of our Lord’s argument, which is 
 to show that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the patri- 
 archs are not dead but live unto God — live to Him 
 like angels, clothed in angelic or spiritual forms. 
 This was the view taken of the resurrection by the 
 pious and valiant Judas Machabeus. The voices 
 of the prophets were ringing in his ears ; he had 
 been educated in the traditions of the Jewish 
 Church, and he was taught by the Spirit of Christ. 
 He made offerings and prayers for his companions 
 in arms who had fallen fighting for their country, 
 in order that they might be loosened from any sin 
 still cleaving to their souls. It was not a future 
 only but a present good which he sought for them, 
 and his ideas respecting their state ought to be in- 
 terpreted in accordance with the words of Christ 
 Himself regarding the condition of souls after 
 death. But our Lord, as we see in the history or 
 parable of Dives and Lazarus, attributes to such 
 souls corporeity in a certain sense, visibility, agency 
 and suffering. It is in vain to attempt to bring 
 Christianity down from its high level and accommo- 
 date it to mere human experience. It must be 
 taken with all its ‘ supernaturalism/ for iu that it 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 begins and ends. Spiritual things are the sub- 
 stances of which things material are but the shadows. 
 The religion of Christ, apart from what Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold calls its Aberglaube, would not be worth con- 
 tending for. 
 
 The Scriptures contain numerous hints on the 
 subject of angelic bodies which may guide us to con- 
 clusions respecting the spiritual bodies of those who 
 once lived on earth. But I need not enlarge on 
 this point, because all readers of the Bible are fa- 
 miliar with the attributes of angels and need only be 
 reminded that these attributes should — mutatis mu- 
 tandis — be transferred to the spiritual body. The 
 universal fluid, out of which all things have been 
 wrought, is the substance out of which the angelic 
 forms are made, and as the appearances they have 
 assumed in communing with men are so various and 
 mutable, we may believe that they have the power 
 of extemporising bodies suitable to any purpose re- 
 quired. By a supreme creative effort of the will, 
 they can in an instant collect the scattered particles 
 of the atmosphere into such shapes as they choose, 
 and what is here said of them applies also to the 
 spirits of the departed. 
 
 Before closing these introductory remarks, I 
 think it will be better to avoid all misconception 
 by summing up what I have said on the subject 
 in propositions as concise as I can frame. 
 
XXXVI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 1. We do not sow in the earth the body that 
 will rise from the dead. — 1 Cor. xv. 37. 
 
 2. The natural body is sown, but it is the spiritual 
 body that rises. — I. Cor. xv. 44. 
 
 3. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom 
 of God except under altered conditions. 
 
 4. There is even now in each of us a natural 
 and a spiritual body, which last will rise from the 
 grave of the natural body, like a germ from its 
 perisperm, at the moment of death, and will pre- 
 serve the identity of the former body under altered 
 conditions. — I. Cor. xv. 37, 38, 44. 
 
 5. Those who have already thus risen will come 
 with Christ in their spirit-bodies and meet “ in the 
 air,” those who will be alive and remain unto His 
 second advent ; and these last will be changed, as 
 if by death, without dying, into the like spiritual 
 form. — I. Thess. iv. 14 — 17. This is the rising 
 again of all men with their bodies of which the 
 Athanasian creed speaks. 
 
 This belief is opposed to the common ideas of 
 the resurrection in two respects. 
 
 1. It rejects the notion of the spirits of the de- 
 parted being altogether incorporeal. 
 
 2. It rejects the notion of the natural body being 
 preserved till the last day except in an atmospheric 
 condition, since we all know that it does not remain 
 long in the grave, that it is soon vaporised and 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXXV11 
 
 forms part of the nutriment of plants, animals, men, 
 women and children, generation after generation ; 
 and that it could not be reclaimed for one indi- 
 vidual without taking from the bodies of innumer- 
 able others. We must not allow our physical 
 reasoning to subject to the conditions of nature the 
 body which has passed beyond them and has be- 
 come a spirit-body. Nothing, however, is here 
 predicated of those bodies — few indeed compared 
 with the whole human race — which will be in 
 their graves when Christ shall come again. 
 
 There appears to be in many quarters a dread of 
 allowing a discussion of this nature to come before 
 the public. But such a fear is only an indication 
 of the interest which the subject possesses, and the 
 inquiry it is certain to excite. It equally concerns 
 all classes of Christians, and deals with those 
 mysteries of our being which have always been 
 man’s deepest and fondest study. To obstruct it 
 for a moment is only to increase its vitality in the 
 end. If it threatens to modify our ideas of the 
 resurrection, it promises to do so without unsettling 
 one of the foundations of the Christian faith. It 
 promises even more — to remove with pious hand 
 from the Christian programme an expectation which 
 science rejects as impossible and absurd, and thus 
 to conciliate the allegiance and love of many who 
 have been recently more and more alienated from 
 
XXXV111 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 it. Some opposition must be expected in bringing 
 forward this question prominently ; but if it comes 
 from any captious opponent, and particularly if he 
 wears the priestly garb, I would say in words that 
 admit of an easy application : Est mihi tecum pro 
 aris et focis certamen, et pro deorum templis atque 
 delubris, proque urbis muris, quos vos, pontifices, 
 sanctos esse dicitis, diligentiusque urbem religione, 
 quam ipsis mcenibus cingitis : quae deseri k me, dum 
 quidem spirare potero, nefas judico.* In all that 
 I have written I have endeavoured to develop what 
 seems to me to be the true and, in a right sense, 
 liberal philosophy of the Catholic religion. That 
 the deposit of the faith admits of development is a 
 recognised principle, and it is obvious that the 
 Scriptures contain mines of truth which have as 
 yet been imperfectly explored. As in the sixty- 
 three elementary bodies which chemistry has dis- 
 covered there are possible combinations that have 
 not yet been formed, so in the Bible there are pas- 
 sages — allusions, hints, coincidences, prophecies, 
 types — which will hereafter enter, as it were, into 
 new combinations, and, by the aid of fuller ex- 
 perience, so illustrate and explain each other as to 
 exhibit truths previously unknown. 
 
 The doctrine of the spiritual body, however, is 
 nothing new. It was taught and believed long 
 # Cic. de Nat. Dewum , III. 40. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 ago in Sweden and Germany, and has latterly been 
 revived in many countries of Europe and in the 
 United States. It is held by many clergymen and 
 private individuals, scattered in various Christian 
 communities ; several Catholic priests, among my 
 own friends, have avowed to me their belief in it ; 
 and it is sometimes faintly alluded to in books pro- 
 fessedly orthodox ; but it is here, so far as I know, 
 for the first time rescued from extraneous surround- 
 ings and set in the framework of ancient dogma. 
 A few articles on the subject written by me recently 
 in a Catholic periodical have excited some interest, 
 and seemed likely at one time to lead to a public con- 
 troversy. An ecclesiastic standing high in general 
 estimation proposed to translate my propositions 
 into Latin, and submit them to the Sacred Congre- 
 gation at Home, — a proceeding to which, of course, 
 I could have no objection, provided it were done 
 by suitable hands and at a proper season. But I 
 desire in the first instance to see the question 
 thoroughly canvassed in that intelligent and dis- 
 passionate manner which is becoming more common 
 among us. When the idea of the spiritual body 
 was first suggested to me, it broke on my mind 
 like a flash of heavenly light, and now that I have 
 brooded over it for years, it seems to me the true 
 and only solution of many Scriptural, theological 
 and scientific difficulties. It displaces no stone in 
 
xl 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the edifice of Christian doctrine, but gives unity 
 and consistency to the entire building. It breaks 
 through the doors closed against it, and stands in 
 the midst of other doctrines, as Christ in His 
 spiritual body stood in the midst of His dis- 
 ciples, saying, “ Peace be unto you.” It is 
 not to be supposed that it should meet with im- 
 mediate acceptance. It will have to encounter 
 doubt, indifference, ridicule and rude opposition. 
 The most vigorous tests will be applied to it, and 
 destructives will no doubt often rejoice prema- 
 turely over its extinction. But I feel sure that 
 it will gradually commend itself to one mind 
 after another among those who are versed in the 
 Scriptures, and who weigh cautiously the spiritual 
 phenomena of past and present times. The pri- 
 vate judgment which is brought to bear on it will, 
 for reasons already stated, be lawfully exercised, 
 and nothing but good can follow the discussion, 
 if it be carried on fairly and temperately, with an 
 earnest desire of arriving at just conclusions. 
 
 With this preface I now beg leave to intro- 
 duce the reader to my poem, in which the 
 ideas I wish to communicate are expressed more 
 completely and at the same time more concisely 
 than they would be in prose. 
 
 J. C. E. 
 
 82, Ladbroke Grove Road , W. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 I. Immortal Form. 
 
 Immortal life implies immortal form, 
 
 Else could we never hope to find a place 
 
 Of peace and reparation after storm, 
 
 Nor see the world’s Redeemer face to face. 
 
 Whatever promises of life He gave — 
 
 Of life beyond this vestibule — imply 
 
 That none of those He came to seek and save 
 In body or in soul can ever die. 
 
 No, not one instant will He suffer Death 
 To triumph o’er the work of His own hands. 
 
 The natural body draws its last, last breath, — 
 Lo, in its place the spirit-body stands ! 
 
 II. Christ’s Spirit-Body. 
 
 Where did Thy Spirit-Body, Jesu, go, 
 
 When they had laid Thee in Thy stony tomb 
 
 Did it not solace other shapes of woe, 
 
 And shine away expectant prisoners’ gloom ? 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Did it not range through fields of light unseen, 
 And welcome there the thief, who on the cross 
 
 Had prayed Thee to remember him — had been 
 Companion of Thy torture, shame and loss ? 
 
 And are we not in all things like to Thee, 
 
 Our Brother and the First-born from the dead ? 
 
 Shall not our spirit-bodies likewise flee 
 
 Straight where Thou wiliest from the dying bed ? 
 
 III. Christ’s Spirit-Body the Type of Ours. 
 
 The laws of human bodies still remain 
 Occult in part, but as experience grows 
 
 Their powers develop. What was dark is plain, 
 And that which science only guessed, she knows. 
 
 But how much less than little can we know 
 Of those strange spirit-bodies, which divide 
 
 Departed souls from all around them, so 
 That each by each may be identified. 
 
 Yet in the record of Thy spotless days 
 Before and after death, O Master dear, 
 
 The studious eye detects no fitful blaze 
 
 Of truth, but starry lights on lights appear. 
 
 Thy risen Body points to various laws ; 
 
 Thy risen Body as a type we take 
 
 Till death-sleep round our life the curtain draws — 
 Till in Thy likeness satisfied we wake. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 3 
 
 IV. Christ’s Spirit-Body Recognisable. 
 
 Whatever beauty in His person glowed, 
 Whatever dignity of form and grace 
 
 Of gesture, when the Man of Sorrow's trode 
 
 On thorns with purpose fixed from place to place, 
 
 That beauty, majesty, and sweetness shone 
 Forth from His face when He appeared again, 
 
 Set free from death, alike in look and tone, 
 
 Yet something more than man, with fellow men. 
 
 How often in their hearts the question rose, 
 
 “ Is this indeed the Jesus whom we knew ? 
 
 Are these His wonder-working hands ? Are those 
 The lips whose accents list’ning myriads drew ? 
 
 Is that the bosom on which John reclined ? 
 
 Are those the eyes that over Salem wept ? 
 
 Is this the voice that hushed the howling wind, 
 And made the billows sleep as He had slept ? 
 
 It is our Cross-enthroned, our risen, Lord — 
 
 The form familiar yet divinely changed — 
 
 Transfigured on a higher mount, adored, 
 
 Yet from His brethren in nowise estranged. 
 
 But, oh ! how widely different laws preside 
 
 O’er all the movements of His wondrous frame 
 
 Oh, into what a mystic life He died, 
 
 And altered that He might be still the same F 
 
 1—2 
 
4 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 V. Christ’s Spirit-Body Mysterious. 
 
 He burst at will on His disciples’ gaze, 
 
 And when He would He vanished out of sight. 
 
 And often eyes were holden, lest the blaze 
 Of too much deity should blind with light. 
 
 He passed through closed doors like viewless wind ; 
 He bore the scars and wounds of cross and nail; 
 
 He ate the fish and honey like His kind, 
 
 And from the shore observed the fisher’s sail ; 
 
 He spread His mantle on the liquid air. 
 
 And slowly rose into His regal rest ; 
 
 And many problems hard to solve are there 
 With Him deep hidden in His awful breast. 
 
 For who can follow those mysterious ways, 
 
 Or His unearthly steps reduce to rule ? 
 
 A body like to His alone can raise 
 
 Our minds to grasp them in a higher school. 
 
 VI. Christ’s Spirit-Body : its Various Modes 
 aimd Aspects. 
 
 The fellow travellers of Saint Paul beheld 
 Christ’s Body panoplied in blistering light : 
 
 He only heard the voice. His hate was quelled. 
 His soul converted by the vision’s might. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 5 
 
 And since the hour when Saul of Tarsus saw 
 And heard Emmanuel on the Syrian way, 
 
 How many saints have bowed their heads with awe 
 Before Him manifested clear as day. 
 
 Are all the histories of ardent love 
 
 And penitence sincere to which he deigned 
 
 A sunbeam of His presence from above — 
 
 Are all, all, legends, falsehoods, visions feigned ? 
 
 Has He not, then, reserved in His own hands 
 The times and seasons when He will appear, 
 
 Impose on suppliants His beloved commands, 
 
 Or with Himself revealed their anguish cheer ? 
 
 Shall he who made the widowed Church His wife 
 In person never take immediate part 
 
 In all that most concerns her inner life, 
 
 And never bare again His sacred heart ? 
 
 Is faith so feeble that it cannot trust 
 To any witness less than saint inspired ? 
 
 As if Christ’s presence in the Body must 
 Be limited by laws of sense required. 
 
 VII. St. Teresa’s Visions of the Glorified Body. 
 
 Why doubt Teresa any more than Paul 
 Saw Him Who is the same to-day as then, 
 
 And knows not any lapse of time at all 
 Save as a weak device of mortal men ? 
 
6 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 W ere all the visions of her silent cell 
 Delusions of a crazed and sickly brain ? 
 
 Or did her gaze in fear and rapture dwell 
 Upon the very Lamb that had been slain ? 
 
 I see not why we should reject her tale, 
 
 Or doubt she saw the Body that extends 
 
 Far as He wills its substance should avail 
 To bring about His gracious, glorious ends. 
 
 Clear water running o’er a crystal bed, 
 
 And smitten by a sunbeam, would be dim 
 
 Compared with that soft brightness which He shed 
 That perfect quietude of light in Him. 
 
 Yet not with eyes of flesh did she behold 
 The face and hands so beautiful, the form 
 
 More bright than diamonds or burnished gold, 
 More fair than rainbows o’er a cataract’s storm, 
 
 More lucid than the beryl, onyx, pearl, 
 
 Or stalactite dependent in a cave 
 
 Wherein the dark blue whispering waters curl, 
 
 Or coral branching ’neath the sea-green wave. 
 
 No, not to eyes of sense did He declare 
 
 His majesty and splendour. ’Twas her soul 
 
 That saw Him unimaginably fair, 
 
 And from a fraction feebly guessed the whole. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 7 
 
 And with Him ofttimes she reviewed His saints 
 In glittering phalanx or on golden thrones 
 Such as the favoured seer of Patmos paints, — 
 Their foreheads garlanded with costly stones. 
 
 Y ou doubt ; you smile ; you scoff. Y et this and more, 
 I think should in all reason be confess’d, 
 
 Is now and will be and had been before 
 
 Within the experience of some human breast. 
 
 VIII. Christ’s Spirit-Body in the Eucharist. 
 
 The Spiritual Body of the Lord 
 Upon the altar offered, and indeed 
 Present in substance, eaten and adored — 
 
 This is our base of worship and of creed. 
 
 That Body would suffice to be the food 
 
 Of worlds as frequent as the stars of heaven, 
 And bring to all the virtue of the Pood 
 If fallen, ransomed freely and forgiven. 
 
 That Body is not bound by laws of space, 
 
 But permeates fleeter far than waves of light 
 All grosser forms that intercept its grace, 
 
 And seem to question its transcendent right. 
 
 It underlies the mystic bread and wine 
 
 Which have no real substance of their own, 
 
 And makes them vehicles of life divine 
 To members of His body, flesh and bone. 
 
8 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 That Body therefore upon bended knee 
 
 We worship as the Christ, who is its breath, 
 
 Who raised it by almighty power, that we 
 May in like wise elude the grasp of death. 
 
 We eat the blessed eucharistic bread, 
 
 And, eating, of the Lord Himself partake, 
 
 And deep within where soul and body wed 
 Our perfect mystical communion make. 
 
 IX. Sine Labe Concepta. 
 
 No language ever can exhaust the praise 
 Of the dear mother of the Incarnate Word ; 
 
 No worthy witness of her virtuous ways 
 From mortal messenger was ever heard. 
 
 Alone upon a pure and virginal height, 
 
 The one exception to her fallen race, 
 
 And robed from first to last in hidden light, 
 She lived a life of unresisted grace. 
 
 She was the nest in which the Heavenly Dove 
 Brooded and brooded, till the hour arrived 
 
 When in her frame an embryo from above, 
 
 At once her Son and her Creator, thrived. 
 
 No pearl in the Pacific deep so pure 
 
 And spotless as her young and tender heart, 
 
 Which evil rife around her could allure, 
 
 But ne’er to it one stain of sin impart. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 9 
 
 Her body from all taint ancestral free 
 Was ever as an angel’s fresh and sweet ; 
 
 Nor God himself by other modes could see 
 How He should make the chosen vessel meet 
 
 For that stupendous purpose He designed — 
 How otherwise a temple could be built 
 
 Fit for the promised High Priest of mankind, 
 Fit for the Lamb whose blood was to be spilt. 
 
 X. The Assumption. 
 
 O Mary, spotless in thy life and death, 
 
 Did Thy dear son desert thee in the grave ? 
 
 Did He who drew from thee His mortal breath 
 Stretch out no arm thy pallid corpse to save 
 
 From foul corruption ? Flower of Eden, flower 
 O’er which the trailing serpent never crept, 
 
 Did He not stoop from heaven in that hour 
 The progress of decay to intercept 
 
 And pluck thee, withering in the dust, to bloom 
 Beside Him in the Eden of His love, 
 
 The Saron rose, the lily of the tomb, 
 
 Transplanted to the banks and streams above 
 
 To flourish there in sur-abounding grace, 
 
 The fragrant blossom of those cloudless skies, 
 
 The queen of angels in that happy place, 
 
 The crowning ornament of Paradise ? 
 
10 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 O Mary, mother,. from this vale of tears 
 We lift our longing, trustful eyes to thee. 
 
 Thy body throned and spiritualised appears 
 The type and pledge of what we hope to be. 
 
 XI. “We shall be changed.” 
 
 That which He did for Mary, Christ will do 
 To all when He Himself shall re-appear — 
 
 To all who love Him with fond hearts and true, 
 And hail His glorious advent without fear. 
 
 We shall not in that moment all be changed 
 Though all shall rise again. * The saints of yore, 
 
 The generations which the earth have ranged, 
 And perished, will have proved their change before. 
 
 Firm as a rock Christ’s gracious promise stands, 
 That He will bring again the saints that slept 
 
 The sleep of peace, and woke in higher lands 
 Of neither feeling, thought, nor sense bereft, — 
 
 That He will bring them in those forms of light, 
 Those spirit-bodies seen by many a seer, 
 
 To swell His march of triumph and unite 
 
 Their radiant hosts with saints expectant here, — 
 
 That they, who to His coming yet remain 
 Alive on earth, shall in a moment feel 
 
 His spiritualising power divine constrain 
 Their being into something new, and steal 
 
 * 1. Corinth, xv. 51. Douay version. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 11 
 
 Through every pulse and fibre, till the life, 
 Magnetic and ethereal, conquers all 
 The elements of matter-breeding strife 
 And pain incessant, and shall disenthral 
 
 And spiritualise the body wrought of clay, 
 
 And make it meet to range untrodden spheres, 
 Inform it with the light of endless day, 
 
 And chase away all trace of earthly tears. 
 
 XII. Meeting the Lord in the Air. 
 
 O grand convention in the glowing air ! 
 
 O rapturous meeting in the clouds what time 
 The Lord of life will gather round Him there 
 The holy ones of every age and clime ! 
 
 O varied bliss of interstellar space, 
 
 Of ether by ethereal beings kept 
 As pleasure grounds about the courts of grace, 
 By wings of ever-watchful angels swept ! 
 
 Come, Jesu, quickly come. Thy saints desire 
 Thy presence to revive their drooping powers. 
 Come, bathe them in Thy Spirit’s solvent fire, 
 And give them rest in amaranthine bowers. 
 
 XIII. The Departed not Mere Spirits. 
 
 ’Tis true the coming of the Lord draws nigh, 
 
 Yet who can tell when He will come again — 
 So many thousand years have glided by 
 
 Since toiled upon this earth the race of men ? 
 
12 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Think you that many hundred thousand years 
 Will slide away while faithful souls must wait 
 Incompetent of action in those spheres 
 Where all are with activity elate ? 
 
 That they will slumber in a vacant dream 
 As isolated essences ; defy 
 All definition, scrutiny, and seem 
 Negations blank of personality ; 
 
 Unseen by any ; seeing, feeling none ; 
 
 More unsubstantial than the viewless air ; 
 Disorganized ; disfranchised ; nude ; undone ; 
 Spirits of spiritual matter bare ? 
 
 Imagination strange, uncouth, unwise ; 
 
 Unworthy of a compound child of clay ; 
 Unknown to Scripture ; alien to the skies ! 
 
 Not spirits merely, spirit-bodies they. 
 
 XIY. An Organism Indispensable. 
 
 There was a pontiff once who held and taught 
 That till the rising at the Lord’s return 
 The souls into the heavenly city brought 
 Would for His beatific vision yearn. 
 
 But ere the sleep of death his eyes had sealed 
 He cast the error from him, and confess’d 
 Departed saints will see the Lord revealed, 
 
 And with that vision be supremely blest. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 13 
 
 For how should naked spirits gaze on form ? 
 
 How, sightless, see the glory of their King ? 
 
 How feel, unless a vital pulse be warm, 
 
 Or be aware of any outward thing ? 
 
 XY. Christ’s Witness as to the Spirit-Body, 
 
 The Son of God, who down from Heaven came 
 And oped to earth the secrets of the air, 
 
 He above all knew how to sort and name 
 The earth-born spirits emigrating there. 
 
 But if we pass with Him behind the veil. 
 
 While here and there a flickering beam He throws 
 
 O’er tracts immense where tortured sufferers wail. 
 Or captives sigh or conquerors repose, 
 
 We soon shall learn if that ulterior state 
 Be simply one of silent abstract thought, 
 
 Or if the shades that pass the shuddering gate 
 Of death are clothed indeed in garments wrought 
 
 Of subtler matter than our doctors ween, 
 
 And tissues woven in far different looms 
 
 From those which serve to prank this mortal scene 
 With raiment broidered for the mouldering tombs. 
 
 We soon shall learn, for He will not deceive 
 Nor on His prophets and apostles shed 
 
 A spirit of delusion. We believe 
 As truth eternal every word He said. 
 
14 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 XVI. Lazarus and Dives. 
 
 Come, then, and listen to Messiah’s voice 
 
 While of the world beyond the world he speaks:* 
 
 He tells of Lazarus — lazar of His choice, 
 
 And Dives’ dreadful secret open breaks. 
 
 The beggar dies, and angels swoop on wings 
 Expanded, bearing him to Abram’s breast, 
 
 And he is comforted with heaven’s “good things,” 
 And Dives in remorseful fires distress’d. 
 
 “ Oh ! Father Abram, send him to my home,” 
 
 He cries, “ Oh send him to my brethren five, 
 
 Lest they into this place of torment come, 
 
 Let him rise from the dead to them alive.” 
 
 Here all is sight and motion. Here return 
 F rom Hades is a rising from the dead ; 
 
 And here recondite lessons we may learn 
 
 About the state of those who hence have sped. 
 
 We see them gifted with a twofold life, 
 
 A life of spirit and a life of form : 
 
 They move, they speak, in brotherhood or in strife ; 
 They rest in peace or toss in penal storm. 
 
 XVII. The Apparition of Samuel to Saul. 
 
 There was a witch in Endor ; gods she saw 
 Ascending out of earth before the King, 
 
 And Saul, who feared not thus to break the Law, 
 Nor held familiar sprite a cursed thing, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 15 
 
 Asked, “ What is Samuel’s form ? 9 and she replied, 
 “ Oh, King, an old man cometh up ; he wears 
 A mantle ; he is even at thy side ; 
 
 Thou knowest well the face and shape he bears.” 
 
 And Saul perceived Samuel and adored, 
 
 And bowed him low unto the ground, and heard 
 Reproach from that anointed prophet poured 
 Upon his head, and shuddered at each word. 
 
 And can you read that history and doubt 
 
 That dead men may return to earth; that they 
 Have forms, and are with raiment wrapt about ; 
 And wear the semblance of their previous clay ; 
 
 That they appear to rise who come again 
 
 From realms unseen, commissioned from on hiodi 
 To fortify the staggering faith of men 
 
 And prove the world of spirits very nigh ? 
 
 If Testaments both Old and New combine 
 To teach the corporal adjuncts of the dead, 
 
 Are you not subject to the word divine ? 
 
 Must you not credit what your Lord has said ? 
 
 XVIII. The Scale of Matter Graduated. 
 
 As from the lowest polyp up to man 
 In graduated scales the creatures rise, 
 
 So in the universal cosmic plan 
 
 Ascending scales of matter fill the skies. 
 
1 G 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 From grossest offal trampled in the sod 
 Up to the fine and keen seraphic flames 
 That glance around the central thrones of God, 
 And tune their tongues of fire to shrill acclaims. 
 
 All-Father, in Thy works no gap is found. 
 
 With measured step thou marchest on Thy way 
 Creative, making all things holy ground, 
 
 And bidding all Thy footprints clear display. 
 
 XIX. The Apocalypse. 
 
 He who reclined upon His Saviour’s breast, 
 
 What time the Paschal feast before them spread, 
 Was favoured even more than all the rest 
 With visions of the future and the dead — 
 
 With visions that were verities divine, 
 
 For in the truthful Spirit they were seen, 
 
 And when recorded He o’er every line 
 Presided lest untruth should intervene. 
 
 And though from very brightness they were dark 
 At times to John himself, and though we still 
 Pevere them as the manna in the ark 
 
 Laid up and hid, they must themselves fulfil. 
 
 One thing, however, in the scroll is plain, — 
 
 Though through the courts and palaces on high, 
 The cities where victorious athletes reign, 
 
 The Edens where the summers never die, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 1 
 
 The prophet ranged, — though life of every kind 
 In worlds yet unexplored was, to his eyes 
 Clairvoyant, pictured, and upon his mind 
 Imprinted with the types of paradise, — 
 
 He never writes as if the heaven and hell 
 He saw were figures merely, fancies, tropes, 
 Unreal objects acting like a spell 
 
 And cheating with false shapes fond Christian 
 hopes ; 
 
 He never speaks as if the saints in white 
 Were merely spirits having nought to do 
 With space and time, but living lights in light, 
 Incorporate and spiritual too. 
 
 XX. The Vision Materialistic in Part. 
 
 The golden girdle and the feet like brass, 
 
 Fine brass as in a furnace burning, and 
 The sound of many waters ; seas of glass ; 
 Fivers of crystal watering all the land ; 
 
 Armies upon white horses ; linen fine 
 
 And white and clean, with elders ; crowns of 
 gold; 
 
 Vials of odours full ; ambrosial wine, 
 
 And palms, and raiment dazzling to behold ; 
 
 And pipes and dulcet harps of divers tones ; 
 
 And hymns and jubilee in jasper halls ; 
 
 And sapphires, amethysts and precious stones 
 . Of price untold, and lofty twelve-gate walls ; 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 And tents and mountains high, and golden 
 streets, — 
 
 Do these not indicate substantial form, 
 
 A place no less than state, where virtue meets 
 Reward in life with breath and colour warm ? 
 
 XXI. “ God giyeth it a Body as He will.” 
 
 But how do spirits weave that texture rare 
 In which they float upon the ether waves, 
 Glide in and out of our inferior air 
 
 And flash at will through darkest dens and 
 caves ? 
 
 Go, ask the blossom whence it caught its bloom : 
 
 The flower will send you back to ask the seed ; 
 And there alone you find the pregnant womb 
 From which such beautiful results proceed. 
 
 You are yourself the germ, the egg, the plan 
 Yet undeveloped of your future frame : 
 
 You have within you deep a second man, 
 
 And you will be another yet the same. 
 
 They tell us that a hidden psychic force — 
 
 A fluid atmosphere around the nerves — 
 Transmits the will along their sinuous course, 
 And every vital energy subserves. 
 
 And there, if we mistake not, is the seat 
 
 Of that imponderous growth in which, we trust, 
 The pulse of our magnetic life will beat 
 When this frail tenement resolves in dust. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 19 
 
 Oh flower immortal, grow within us, grow 
 
 And ere long put forth stalk and stem and bloom 
 More flame-like than the crocus from the snow, 
 More fragrant than the violet from the tomb ! 
 
 XXII. Occult Bodily Faculties. 
 
 When Moses down the Sinai mountain came, 
 
 And brought the engraven tables of the Law, 
 His countenance so shone with lambent flame 
 The people shrank with mingled fear and awe. 
 
 When Stephen “full of faith and power” addressed 
 The council, all who gazed upon, his face, 
 
 And saw its spiritual light confessed 
 Him like to one of the angelic race. 
 
 And when the Lord upon Mount Tabor showed 
 His glory forth, His face and robes were turned 
 Into a blaze of majesty, and glowed 
 
 With somewhat of the God that in Him burned. 
 
 How oft the Spirit of the Lord has caught 
 The saints of the Old Testament and New, 
 Borne them aloft, and, swift as light or thought, 
 Transported them far out of human view. 
 
 Elias, Philip and Ezechiel, held 
 
 In angel hands, were wafted through the air, 
 
 By power supreme, by ardent zeal, impelled, 
 
 By faith unwavering and the might of prayer. 
 
 2—2 
 
20 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The walks in sleep, the fasts of forty days 
 And more, as annals of our time record, 
 
 Magnetic effluence, and prayers that raise 
 
 F rom earth the kneeling suppliants of the Lord, , 
 
 And trance and vision, second sight and dream, 
 And flights in air, evasions angel-led, 
 
 And natural acts that supernatural seem, 
 
 And apparitions of the mindful dead, — 
 
 All prove how many latent powers reside 
 In mortal bodies, and inspire the hope 
 
 That ours will be expanded and supplied 
 
 With strength to break the bonds with which 
 they cope. 
 
 XXIII. “ Clothed upon with our Habitation 
 
 THAT IS FROM HEAVEN.” 
 
 For we who in this tabernacle groan, 
 
 “ Groan, being burthened,” not that we would 
 throw 
 
 Aside our clothing, but be clothed upon 
 
 With mantles whiter than sun-smitten snow. 
 
 For if our fragile earthen house should fall, 
 Collapsing in the dust from whence it rose, 
 
 “We have , we know, a building” over all 
 The ruin, and our nakedness has clothes. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 21 
 
 Can any words make plainer what is meant — 
 Plainer alike to simple folk and sage ? 
 
 The Scriptures read with faith intelligent 
 Reveal the spirit-form in every page. 
 
 XXIV. The Butterfly. 
 
 The shell is broken — ’tis the chrysalid’s grave, 
 The cradle of the butterfly, whose wings 
 
 Are soon unfolded and alert to brave 
 
 The breeze and dart into all nectared things. 
 
 How beautiful with countless tiny scales, 
 
 That look like down upon the wings outspread, 
 
 She ranges o’er the meads, and trips and sails 
 To every saccharine cup of blue and red ! 
 
 How gorgeous are those dyes : no Eastern king 
 Ablaze with jewels can be half as bright. 
 
 A life of sunshine ; an unwearied wing ; 
 
 An everlasting banquet of delight ! 
 
 0 butterfly, sweet symbol of the soul— 
 
 A Christian emblem due to Grecian art — 
 
 Thy meaning is not yet known as a whole, 
 
 For purblind men have learnt it but in part. 
 
 Fair Psyche of the scented clover croft, 
 
 Thou art the spirit-body’s loveliest type ; 
 
 A chrysalid yesterday, to-day aloft 
 
 Thou soarest for refined enjoyment ripe. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 A lower grade of life was late thine own ; 
 
 And all the grace of thine enamelled wings 
 
 In embryo lay grovelling and unblown 
 Within the caterpillar’s creeping rings. 
 
 XXV. Are the Departed Near? 
 
 And is thy new home very far away, 
 
 Departed spirit of my brother dear ? 
 
 And didst thou travel rapid as a ray 
 
 Of light to some yet undiscovered sphere, 
 
 There to complete repentance or begin 
 Perennial jubilee ? I cannot dream 
 
 Thou art so distant from this world of sin 
 As many of my fellow-thinkers deem. 
 
 I rather hold thee to be very nigh — 
 
 Nigh as the circumambient vital air — 
 
 That thou canst listen to the secret sigh 
 
 And mingle sympathising prayer with prayer. 
 
 For what have spirits freed to do with space, 
 
 In any sense familiar to our thought ? 
 
 The denizen of Hades knows no place 
 
 Whose bounds in anyscienge school are taught. 
 
 The spheres of ether lie beneath, around, 
 
 The planets and the stars of denser mould, 
 
 And there thy recent habitat is found, 
 
 And there thy faculties occult unfold. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 23 
 
 And thou, O earth, who rollest on thy way 
 Around the central magnet-orb of fire, 
 
 Thou peoplest ether with the souls that stay 
 Still near us, yet to height on height aspire. 
 
 XXVI. Cremation. 
 
 But in the natural body other germs 
 
 Of life lie hidden. Millions wait the hour 
 Of putrefaction to come forth as worms 
 
 And subject beauty to their loathsome power. 
 
 And breed a cloud of pestilential air, 
 
 And decompose and into gases solve 
 The form and features once so fresh and fair, 
 
 And in a ghastly muck their pride involve. 
 
 Hence some have deem’d it best to burn the dead, 
 To lay them reverently upon the pile, 
 
 With chanted prayers and hymns, or masses said, 
 Or words of hope and comfort preached the while ; 
 
 Then gather up their ashes, and inurn 
 
 In gold or porcelain vase their precious dust 
 As heir-looms which the wild winds will not spurn 
 Nor worm will gnaw, nor moth corrupt, nor 
 rust. 
 
24 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 XXVII. The Dead become the Food of the 
 Living. 
 
 But howsoe’er these bodies may decay, 
 
 Tossed in the sea or calcined in the flame, 
 
 Buried or made of birds and beasts the prey, 
 Th’ inevitable end must be the same. 
 
 Their gases, azote, carbon, will combine 
 
 With other substances, with flowers and grass, 
 
 With fire and water, fish and fowl and kine, 
 And countless generations as they pass. 
 
 The dead become the food of living men ; 
 
 Our blood from them in part derives its hue ; 
 
 We bite their dust, inhale their oxygen, 
 
 And are their debtors in each nerve and thew. 
 
 And when the world has reached its fiery end, 
 The relics of each one of Adam’s race 
 
 Will have belonged to numbers that transcend 
 All calculation. Therefore let us face 
 
 The problem frankly, and avow belief 
 In resurrection at the hour of death, 
 
 And at th’ appearing of our Shepherd Chief, 
 The rise and change of all who then have 
 breath. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 25 
 
 XXVIII. Life a Continual Resurrection. 
 
 For even in this life our tissues change, 
 
 And we are always rising from decay, 
 
 And every moment makes a fluxion strange, 
 And we are not as we were yesterday. 
 
 Identity is in the ruling mind, 
 
 Not in the shifting particles which pass 
 Into the bosom of the viewless wind : 
 
 And in a literal sense all flesh is grass. 
 
 Identity is in the sovereign mind, 
 
 And in the perisprite that hems it round, 
 When coils material within coils unwind, 
 
 Dissolve their ties and rot beneath the ground. 
 
 Within the compass of a garden walk 
 A hundred resurrections you may find — 
 
 A hundred seeds that shoot into a stalk, 
 
 And leave the husky perisperm behind. 
 
 XXIX. “The Pillar and Ground of the 
 Truth.” 
 
 Do we, then, launch upon a puny stage 
 
 A new and monstrous spectre of the brain, 
 
 In hopes that many in a restless age 
 
 Will bid it welcome in the church’s train ? 
 
26 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Nay, rather to the Bridegroom and the Bride 
 Infallible we will continue leal : 
 
 Without them we have no trustworthy guide, 
 Without them can no pure emotion feel. 
 
 They are to us truth’s everlasting home ; 
 
 Around us everywhere their beacons stand ; 
 Though science-led or fancy -lured we roam, 
 
 We dare not pass beyond their Holy Land. 
 
 Within their limits we have questions raised, 
 Not in rebellion ’gainst their sovereign sway, 
 But that thereby they rather may be praised, 
 And from the tomb a stone be rolled away. 
 
 The creed that from the church of Christ we learn 
 That at His coming all shall rise again — 
 
 We would not lead one wavering mind to spurn, 
 But hold as held the Apostolic men. 
 
 Yet underneath that creed another lies : 
 
 And they who read the Scripture scroll aright 
 Discover in it divers mysteries 
 
 Which dazzle first and then improve the sight. 
 
 XXX. “ The Hour Cometh and Now Is.” 
 
 Christ is the resurrection and the life : 
 
 The hour is coming and now is, when they 
 Who slumber sweetly after moral strife 
 
 Shall hear His voice, “ Arise and come away, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 27 
 
 “ My love, my dove, my sister and my spouse, 
 
 Soul of my soul with perisprite surrounding ; 
 Winter is past and on the mountain brows 
 Ethereal spring in rapture is abounding. 
 
 “ Songs of the turtle-doves that build their nests 
 In clefts and eaves of my celestial mansion 
 Eloat o’er the flowers that ope their fragrant breasts 
 And image forth thy being’s wide expansion. 
 
 “ The luscious fig-tree of the orchards there 
 
 With green and juicy fruits for thee are swelling, 
 And clusters of the tendrill’d vine prepare 
 
 A fruitful bower around thy peaceful dwelling. 
 
 “The hills of frankincense, the mounts of myrrh, 
 The beds of spice in softest light are glowing; 
 The north wind and the south the garden stir, 
 And living waters through the meads are flowing, 
 
 “ There all things seen are types of things more 
 deep, 
 
 And meet to satisfy thine inmost yearning, 
 There all the reapers sow, all sow^ers reap. 
 
 All learn who teach, and all who teach are 
 learning. 
 
 “ The world where thou wast taught to love My 
 name, 
 
 Still dear to thee, is out of memory sliding, 
 
 But here, with brethren who before thee came, 
 Thy joys will be progressive and abiding. 
 
28 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 “ Awake, arise into thy perfect rest ; 
 
 The spirit-body has no need of slumber ; 
 
 Duties of high import await the blest, 
 
 And offices of mercy without number. 
 
 “ Awake, arise ; the angel choirs anew 
 
 Attune their harps to welcome thine appearing 
 
 And saints, who in thy natural body knew 
 And loved thee, to thy perisprite are nearing. 
 
 “ The promised land is spread before thee there 
 In distance beyond distance ever growing, 
 
 And God alone can give thee power to bear 
 The bliss intense in ether tracts o’erflowing.” 
 
 XXXI. The Soul Hovering Round the Corpse. 
 
 There are who think the spirit floats awhile 
 Around the body cherished in decay, 
 
 As if to catch its last complacent smile 
 And watch it fondly on its funeral way. 
 
 E’en as a mother, wife, or sister stands 
 
 And scatters flowers on a fresh-opened grave, 
 
 Or clasps in sacred grief her suppliant hands, 
 
 And weeps o’er what she has no power to save. 
 
 We cannot tell how long the chain may last 
 That ties the spirit to the crumbling mould : 
 
 Affinity so delicate is past 
 
 Our scrutiny. For ages it may hold, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 29 
 
 And long as molecules cohere they may 
 
 Be spirit-watched, through some attraction’s 
 might, 
 
 And only after slow and last decay 
 Be separated from the spirit quite. 
 
 F or natural bodies certainly have stept — 
 
 As they must own who hold the Scriptures true — 
 Back to the light, have eaten, drank and slept, 
 And lived not one life only here, but two. 
 
 XXXII. Resurrection of some Natural 
 Bodies. 
 
 Four days had Lazarus, the beloved, lain 
 In the cold rock when Jesu’s voice awoke 
 The sleeping body, and it breathed again, 
 
 And from the winding-bands and napkin broke. 
 
 Elias prayed for the widow’s son, 
 
 And stretched himself three times upon the 
 dead : — 
 
 Elias’ faith the glorious prize has won, 
 
 And on a Gentile mother grace is shed. 
 
 Eliseus’ staff had failed to bring to life 
 The child the Sunamitess mother lost, 
 
 But from his flesh with magnetism rife 
 
 A quickening virtue thawed the mortal frost. 
 
30 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 
 
 Tabitha thus, and Eutychus were brought 
 Back from the dead by Paul, of God inspired 
 To prove by miracle the faith he taught, 
 
 And use therein the natural means required. 
 
 And many bodies of the saints that slept, 
 
 When Jesu had the gloomy frontier cleared, 
 Forth from the sepulchre and cerements stept, 
 And in the Holy City re-appeared. 
 
 XXXIII. A Tentative Task. 
 
 So was it with the saints not yet returned 
 To dust and vapour. They had not formed 
 parts 
 
 Of other bodies long entombed and urn’d ; 
 
 They had not throbbed in others’ brains and 
 hearts. 
 
 They were not then as they will be who give 
 Their ashes to the earth, the air, the sea, 
 
 Who form the gases by which others live, 
 
 Wave in the plume and flourish in the tree. 
 
 If such as these can ever be reclaimed 
 And individualised, our reason must 
 Of all its wise conclusions be ashamed, 
 
 And bow its haughty head and bite the dust. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 31 
 
 We dare not set a limit to Thy might 
 
 Heaven-Father, nor define what Thou canst do. 
 
 What Thou hast really said — that must be right : 
 What Thou didst really mean — that must be 
 true. 
 
 We do not dogmatise, do not pretend 
 
 To know the things that are from man concealed ; 
 
 Our task is tentative ; we do but send 
 Exploring bands of thought into the field, 
 
 And musing on the promise Thou hast given, 
 
 To send Thy son again to claim His throne — 
 
 To take this tract outlying into heaven, 
 
 And make the undivided earth His own, 
 
 We think the trumpet notes of His advance 
 Will in the regions of the dead be heard, 
 
 The sepulchre will feel His lightning glance, 
 
 The many sleeping bodies will be stirr’d, 
 
 And tenants of the tomb — though few they be 
 When set against the races solved in air — 
 
 Attracted by some secret sympathy 
 
 With spirits from on high returning there, 
 
 May in some mode mysterious fulfil 
 
 The things in Holy Writ predicted, and, 
 
 Made subject each to a transforming will, 
 
 Restored before the great Restorer stand. 
 
32 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 XXXIV. A Censor’s Voice. 
 
 “ You are a layman — what have you to do 
 
 With points of dogma ? You would scatter 
 doubts 
 
 O’er what our people always held as true : 
 
 You shift, and none can tell your whereabouts. 
 
 “ You compromise ; you stutter in your talk, 
 
 As one who is not of himself assured : 
 
 You smell of schism — heresy — you stalk 
 With an assurance not to be endured. 
 
 “ With every form of error you coquet ; 
 
 (You are not rich, nor have you made a name;) 
 We offer tests at which you seem to fret, 
 
 While still you boast your creed and ours the 
 same. 
 
 “ You liberalise and rationalise and turn 
 The Scriptures with a Zwingli-Bucer hand, 
 
 (I think you are of those who ought to burn,) 
 And what you mean I cannot understand. 
 
 “ ’Tis a farrago of such paltry fluff 
 A breath of criticism might disperse, 
 
 Indeed, I may as well say plainly, stuff 
 That is not even worthy of my curse.” 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 33 
 
 XXXY. Beply. 
 
 “ Good censor ; every creature has its use : 
 
 I take your bluff rebuke as kindly meant ; 
 Albeit when you load me with abuse 
 
 I think your pious zeal somewhat misspent. 
 
 “ I am as faithful to the Church as you, 
 
 Though perhaps upon a slightly different plane. 
 The loadstone judges every needle true 
 That points to it across the rolling main. 
 
 “ As in the Scriptures so in Council, creed, 
 
 And formula prescribed by Christ’s dear wife, 
 They must sometimes discriminate who read ; 
 
 The letter kills, the spirit giveth life. 
 
 “ Perhaps the theory I here propose, 
 
 If theory indeed it be, may keep 
 The feet of some within the safe enclose, 
 
 Who now are all-but plunging down the steep. 
 
 XXXYI. The Soul-Body Preserves our 
 Identity. 
 
 We have two lives before us — two at least — 
 
 It may be many more : death is but change. 
 
 By lives successive bliss may be increased ; 
 
 And higher wisdom comes with wider range. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 But what preserves identity when we 
 
 Drop in the turf the outer husk and shell, 
 
 When in another home the spirit, free 
 
 From earth’s entanglement, begins to dwell ? 
 
 What is it but the Spirit-body deep 
 
 Within us forming from the hour of birth — 
 
 Our second self, which waking or asleep 
 
 Received impressions from its kindred earth, — 
 
 Impressions in the memory retained 
 
 And borne undamaged through the floods of death, 
 Impressions in the soul so deeply grained 
 That they will regulate our future breath, — 
 
 Will make the world unseen to us a heaven, 
 
 A place of penal, purifying flame, 
 
 Or torture us with sins still unforgiven 
 
 And wreak the nemesis of wrath and shame ? 
 
 XXXVII. Variety of Conditions in the next 
 World. 
 
 Yet in that triplex world without a bound 
 It may be every shade of joy and grief. 
 
 Of ignorance and knowledge will be found, 
 
 Of good and ill, of faith and misbelief. 
 
 The Spirit- Body, like this gross machine. 
 
 May be the instrument of weal or woe, 
 
 May sweep endiademed across the scene 
 Or sink despairing in the gulfs below. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 35 
 
 We all are building daily that abode 
 
 In which the deathless principle shall dwell, 
 Lightening or adding to our future load — 
 
 The architects of our own heaven or hell. 
 
 This makes existence serious — makes it grave 
 Beyond compute. Whatever passions burn 
 Within us wildly, and the heart deprave, 
 
 Produce a dread reaction in return 
 
 Prom that interior body which transmits 
 
 The ruling thought through all the subject frame, 
 And often carries hence from criminal fits 
 A mark indelible by tears or flame. 
 
 XXXVIII. Protean Spirit-Bodies. 
 
 The Spirit-Bodies which are shapes of light 
 Diffuse themselves, like stars, on all around, 
 Irradiate at will reluctant night 
 
 And pierce through fire and water, air and ground. 
 
 And, rooted in their central being fast, 
 
 In several spots may at one time appear, 
 
 And thought and presence in a moment cast 
 Upon a point in some far distant sphere, 
 
 Dispensing with the laws that regulate 
 
 What we call matter, though in fact they are, 
 Compared with higher spirits, dense in weight 
 And substance as a rock or iron bar. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The evil spirits which the Lord cast out 
 
 Had frames that could with human frames 
 combine, 
 
 Demoniac slaves in torment drag’ about, 
 
 And, entering, madden even hsrds of swine. 
 
 XXXIX. Change of Envelope. 
 
 Who can, indeed, run up and down the scale 
 Of matter ? Who can see or feel beyond 
 
 His tiny circle ? Sense and language fail 
 When any natures break their natural bond. 
 
 Hence spirits don some half-material robe 
 Wrought from the universal fluid round 
 
 Each swiftly-racing sun-attracted globe 
 
 In which they would for some brief while be 
 found, — 
 
 Be and appear by turns, appear and be, 
 
 And yet without deceit rest always true — 
 
 True to some high ideal for which we 
 
 Yearn vaguely, hoping for experience, too. 
 
 When we at last shall slough this spotted skin 
 And spread the wings that long enfolded lay, 
 
 Rise, moth-like, into ether, and begin 
 To run the same curriculum as they, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 37 
 
 And study marvels which, however, rise 
 No whit above the wonders at our feet — 
 
 The simplest elements we can agnise, 
 
 The compounds that in fixed proportions meet. 
 
 XL. “The Body of this Death.’’ 
 
 But what concerns far more the life within 
 Is this, to know that when we pass away 
 
 An instrument awaits us fine and thin, 
 
 Which will the motions of the mind obey, 
 
 True as the harp-strings to a master-hand, 
 Without resistance, sluggishness or jar, 
 
 As any fainting zephyr soft and bland, 
 
 Yet keen and trenchant as a scimitar. 
 
 O prospect blessed to the writhing nerves 
 And tissues that seem only made for pain — 
 
 The body that from healthful purpose swerves 
 And sums up action in a tortured brain. 
 
 O prospect blessed for the passion-slave 
 Who would, but cannot, from the body flee, 
 
 Invokes temptation which he should not brave, 
 Succumbs and cries, “Ah, who shall set me free ?” 
 
 Come, pure and pliant body of the blest, 
 
 Make moral harmony on dulcet strings ; 
 
 Be to my soul a couch of perfect rest ; 
 
 Be to my soul a pair of soaring wings ! 
 
38 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 XLI. The Captious Question of the Sadducees. 
 
 “Whose wife shall she be then when all arise — 
 She who was unto seven brethren wed?” 
 
 A captious question ; yet the Lord replies 
 In words that light the charnels of the dead. 
 
 “ You think you know, but do not really know 
 The Scriptures and the glorious power of God : 
 
 The plant to be is not the plant you sow ; 
 
 The grain itself will perish in the sod. 
 
 “ But from the rotting seed a deathless germ 
 Will rise and rear its spiritual head 
 
 As from the caterpillar and the worm 
 A winged thing of coloured light is bred. 
 
 “ Your dreams are of the earth ; you hope to reign 
 O’er subject heathen, to be kings and lords ; 
 
 Some lost inheritance of land to gain 
 
 And banquet around dainty -laden boards. 
 
 “ But in the resurrection pipe and flute 
 Escort no more to her beloved the bride ; 
 
 No children there of wedlock are the fruit ; 
 
 No love intense to passion is allied. 
 
 “For bodies like the angels’ will require 
 Conditions more ethereal and more blest, 
 
 For which your grovelling natures must aspire 
 If ever they would rest a perfect rest. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 39 
 
 “ And, touching resurrection, here again 
 You err and think it has no place as yet. 
 
 Your fathers are not dead, but living men ; 
 
 That God is Jacobs God you quite forget. 
 
 “ He has them with Him nearer to His throne : 
 
 And they are even now incorporate souls : 
 Their bodies lighter, fairer than your own, 
 
 Through heavenly ether range in radiant stoles. 
 
 “ The dead are raised, and even while I speak 
 I see the souls of many burst their shell, 
 
 Into a second life superior break, 
 
 And there in spirit-flesh with Abram dwell. 
 
 “ And these are equal to the angels, nay, 
 
 Are higher than the angels ; children, these, 
 
 Of God and of the resurrection. Say, 
 
 Can dead men to my Father bow their knees? 
 
 “ And did not Moses hear my Fathers voice 
 When in the burning bush His glory flamed, — 
 ‘ I am their God ; e’en now they are My choice ; 
 Therefore am I the God of Jacob named. 
 
 “ * I wait not till the sun shall wane to give 
 The faithful the reward of faithful strife ; 
 
 They live to me and I to them will live 
 For ever, and my realm entire is life.’ ” 
 
40 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The Sadducees amazed Thy doctrine heard, 
 
 Lord Christ ; yet few its hidden sense could find ; 
 
 And thine evangelists still preach that word, 
 
 Yet still the multitude is crass and blind. 
 
 XLIL Transformed into an Angel of Light. 
 
 Though guilt and hideousness are near akin 
 And passions violent deform the face, 
 
 There are exceptions to this rule, and sin 
 Is sometimes veiled in loveliness and grace. 
 
 The dove-soft eye, the chiselled profile, hair 
 Of raven hue in glossy tresses shed 
 
 O’er neck and bust as Parian marble fair, 
 
 The lightsome laughter, and the queenly tread, 
 
 Have often mantled cruelty and lust 
 Insatiate ; and this leads us on to think 
 
 That many spirits base, impure, unjust, 
 
 Of no Gehenna brimstone smoke may stink, 
 
 But rather float, all beauty and perfume, 
 
 And quaff the nectar of such flowers as grow 
 
 In ether, while at heart they feel their doom 
 Is black, intense, unmitigated woe. 
 
 The Spirit-Body will be no relief 
 
 From pain, however brightly it may shine, 
 
 The light of grace alone will banish grief, 
 
 Its absence burn like fire of wrath divine. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 41 
 
 XL III. Men are Spirits. 
 
 Despite the density of mortal frames — 
 
 Despite the grovelling of the meaner kind— 
 
 I look on men as spirits — living flames 
 Alight with varied energy of mind. 
 
 And if the spirits of another sphere 
 
 Regard us sometimes through the mutual veil, 
 
 What can they contemplate in beings here 
 But spirits panoplied in spirit-mail ? 
 
 The will, the growing mind, the undying soul, 
 Are visible to them at every pore, 
 
 And every action of the breathing whole 
 Looks to them spiritual more and more. 
 
 So let the brother of his sister think ; 
 
 So let the loved one of her lover dream. 
 
 We all are spirits wandering on the brink 
 Of spiritdom advanced. Thus we shall seem 
 
 More like to what we really are, shall grow 
 In power magnetic over human hearts, 
 
 Rise into higher spheres of thought, and know 
 Far better how to play our future parts. 
 
 XLIY. Dreams. 
 
 More than ourselves we are sometimes in dreams. 
 The body slumbers but the soul awakes, 
 
 And the electric body, as it seems, 
 
 The place awhile of the more sensuous takes. 
 
42 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 And in this state the spirit is more free 
 
 To commune with such agents as may bring 
 Some message bearing on our destiny 
 
 Straight from the throne of our all-seeing King. 
 
 A dream once turned the current of my years 
 And spake in darkness with a voice aloud, 
 Steadied a mind that wavered in its fears, 
 
 And chased away an ever-blackening cloud. 
 
 Full often have the dead in dreams appeared ; 
 
 Full often has the spirit-body bent 
 Above the sleeper, recognized, though feared, 
 
 As one upon a special errand sent. 
 
 God of the spirits of all kinds of flesh, 
 
 Waking or sleeping we are wholly Thine, — 
 
 Oh, manifest Thy will in dreams afresh 
 If dreams will keep us on the sacred line ! 
 
 XLY. Luz. 
 
 The Rabbis tell us of a tiny bone 
 Which in the spinal column will defy 
 Decay, and which of all our dust alone 
 Will last while intervital years sweep by, 
 
 And then, fermented by the dew of heaven, 
 Expand into a body meet to be 
 The rest and dwelling-place of souls forgiven 
 And in their new embodiment set free. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 43 
 
 They called it Luz, and let that be its name. 
 
 A kind of Luz exists in every form 
 
 Once of immortal souls the mortal frame 
 
 With gushing life-streams of the heart’s blood 
 warm. 
 
 It will develop. J udas knew it well — 
 
 The valiant Maccabeus — when he sent 
 
 That costly offering for the men who fell 
 In battle and their patriot life-blood spent, 
 
 And He, convinced the tomb had not the power 
 To hold its captives — that the seed would win 
 
 Its way to light as herb bedewed or flower — 
 Sought sacrifice to wash away their sin. 
 
 For “well and honestly” had Judas thought 
 Concerning resurrection, and he knew 
 
 How vain and empty all he had been taught 
 Unless the valiant dead were risen too — 
 
 Unless they stood before their Father clothed 
 And individualized, to reap reward 
 
 Or expiate sin they had not duly loathed 
 
 And wipe the stains of conquest from their sword. 
 
 I doubt not like a chime rang in his ear, 
 
 “ Awake and sing, 0 ye who dwell in dust : 
 
 Your dew is as the dew of herbs. The seer 
 Has seen you rising, and arise you must.” 
 
44 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 He offered prayers that were to take effect 
 At once, not waiting for the world’s last day, 
 
 To win some present grace for Jews elect 
 
 And speed them shriven on their ascending way. 
 
 XLYI. The Spiritual System. 
 
 There are, I know, who when they read my page 
 (If any read) will say, “ This feeble brain 
 
 And morbid, quite unworthy of the age, 
 
 Turns to his nursery Bible tales again, 
 
 “ And bows the knee to a tiara’d priest — 
 
 A senile despot ; — toss his book aside ! 
 
 It is as vain and valueless as yeast 
 Upon the crest of the advancing tide. 
 
 “ He uses freedom to become a slave ; 
 
 His will — his choice — is to be blindly led ; 
 
 He prates of science ; — as if science gave 
 
 Her countenance to aught his Church has said !” 
 
 I answer — herein meeting scorn with scorn — 
 
 I do not write for those who ape the brute, 
 
 Who think for this life only they were born 
 And ne’er aspire to any nobler fruit. 
 
 The Church — the Scriptures — these I take as guide 
 In matters that concern the deathless soul : 
 
 You to another system are allied, 
 
 A system whereof matter is the whole. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 45 
 
 Yet matter — matter’s self — to which you cling, 
 And which I reverence even more than you, 
 Will prove you are a wretched grovelling thing — 
 Will prove the spiritual system true. 
 
 XLYII. Angelic Bodies are Beal. 
 
 Not only spirits, angels too, possess 
 An organism suited to their sphere, 
 
 With faculty of wearing any dress 
 
 In which it may behove them to appear. 
 
 In every age they have been seen by men : 
 
 Between them and the court of heaven they fly : 
 If what we read of them is fiction, then 
 God, revelation, “ truth ” is all a lie, 
 
 And we are nothing more than nature’s sport ; 
 
 And confluent atoms have the power of thought ; 
 And speculation is of no import ; 
 
 And all things tend to anything or nought. 
 
 But if the angels really are ; if they 
 
 Have from all time been ministers unseen, 
 Bursting, however, sometimes into day, 
 
 And carrying on an intercourse between 
 
 Spheres widely differing in kind and end, — 
 
 And if the records of their acts are true, — 
 They are to deeds most varied apt, and lend 
 Themselves to shapes mysterious to view 
 
46 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Yet real as the lights that in the North 
 In winter span the sky with arches bright 
 
 And dart their fiery sheaves and columns forth 
 With colours tremulous that charm the sight. 
 
 For all we see is real. Nothing meets 
 The retina or spirit’s inward eye 
 
 But has a substance, though it perhaps defeats 
 The keen observer’s keenest scrutiny. 
 
 XLVIII. The Acts of Angels are According to 
 
 Law. 
 
 What is there that the angels have not done ? 
 What is there that the angels have not seemed ? 
 
 For joy they shouted when the world begun, 
 
 And succoured Him by whom it was redeemed. 
 
 But mark, in all the works they have achieved, 
 
 In all the prodigies their hands have wrought, 
 
 They were organic, and must be believed 
 To be embodiments of active thought. 
 
 For angels equally with spirits tread 
 The hills of cloud or fluctuate in air 
 
 In bodies on ambrosial ether fed 
 
 And, in proportion to their virtues, fair. 
 
 And all the miracles they ever wrought, 
 
 And all the miracles men ever saw, 
 
 Though alien utterly to human thought 
 Were done according to inviolate law — 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 47 
 
 The rigid rules of spiritual law 
 
 Which often supernatural we call ; 
 
 As if in nature there were any flaw 
 
 Or fissure I Perfect order reigns through all, 
 
 And laws are subject unto laws without 
 Collision. Could we take a wider range 
 
 And see as gods, we should not have a doubt 
 The sequences of nature never change. 
 
 XLIX. Material Attributes of Angels. 
 
 Whene’er we turn the prophet’s sacred page 
 And cull with reverent hand its Eden fruits, 
 
 We find in every clime, condition, age, 
 
 The angels have material attributes. 
 
 They see, they touch, they brandish flaming swords, 
 They plant their feet among the myrtle trees, 
 
 Smite down the captains of Assyrian hordes 
 And speak withtongues and talk with men at ease. 
 
 Now in the altar-flame they heavenward soar ; 
 Now rescue saints from lions or from fire ; 
 
 Now pause beside the peaceful threshing-floor ; 
 Now chant Messiah’s birth in jubilant choir. 
 
 Where’er the Spirit of the Lord descends 
 The angel squadrons hover round the way, 
 
 Ambassadors for grand and gracious ends 
 Duly accredited to sons of clay. 
 
48 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 And thus they form a part of one vast scheme 
 Redemptive, in which God the Son conveys 
 
 His gifts to man by things that are — not seem — 
 Allied to human sense and human ways. 
 
 L. Angels Entertained Unawares. 
 
 Some “ entertained angels unawares,” 
 
 So like — so very like — they were to men. 
 
 Abram his tent and viands with them shares, 
 And they elude Lot and Manoah’s ken. 
 
 For subtle power is to this nature given 
 Of moulding their material shapes at will, 
 
 Appearing habitants of earth or heaven 
 But resting pure and abstract angels still. 
 
 LI. The Universal Fluid. 
 
 And whence have these their finer substance drawn? 
 And by what genesis did they obtain 
 
 A garment glittering like the dewy lawn 
 
 When morning bursts her golden gates again ? 
 
 Whence came these swords of spiritual fire 
 Which flame innocuous or destroy at will ? 
 
 Is there a universal fluid higher 
 
 And rarer than the finest airs that fill 
 
 The regions which our senses can explore ? 
 
 And has the Lord of life from out the deep 
 
 Of this exhaustless mine delved all the ore 
 Of elemental matter ? Never sleep 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 49 
 
 Has closed the eyes of the Almighty mind ; 
 Fatigue and rest have ne’er relaxed His hand ; 
 
 The sunshine of His face has ne’er declined 
 Nor His tide loitered upon any strand. 
 
 The boundless realms of space with sun and moon 
 And stars which swiftest angels cannot reach 
 
 By him are wrought off like some vast cocoon 
 Perennially, His power and love to preach. 
 
 And of one substance He has woven all, 
 
 And still is weaving and will ever weave 
 
 Systems on systems that arise and fall 
 
 In periods longer than thought can conceive, — 
 
 Of that one fluid substance ; rather say 
 
 Of none — no substance — nothing but the force 
 
 Of His own will adorable, whose sway 
 
 Extends from spirit-fount through matter’s course, 
 
 And breathes in knotted vortex rings the breath 
 Of worlds, elaborating out of nought 
 
 Empires and states of beauteous living death 
 And dying life most exquisitely wrought, — 
 
 And out of matter — matter such as here 
 We picture to ourselves — evolving mind ; 
 
 Imaginations lofty ; reasonings clear 
 
 And hopes for scaling highest grades designed ; 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Phenomena alike of men and things, 
 
 Of planets, milky ways and vapour stars. 
 
 Of worlds and satellites and moons and rings, 
 
 And souls and bodies leaping mortal bars ; 
 
 And realms of angels and abodes of saints ; 
 
 Intelligences high, capacious, keen ; 
 
 And bliss beyond what liveliest fancy paints, 
 
 And bliss beyond all bliss that yet has been ; 
 
 And genius with its flower-dust of thought, 
 
 The exquisite aroma of its line, 
 
 Its intuitions, faculties untaught, 
 
 Its words inspired, its instincts half divine, 
 
 And love that flings a rainbow over tears — 
 
 Love that is love the more when sorrow-fed, 
 Without which none could bear the weight of years, 
 And all the bound and spring of life were dead ; 
 
 And valour — moral courage — strength to brave 
 Discouragement, rebuke, neglect, and scorn, 
 
 To fight convinced a higher Hand will save, 
 
 To suffer certain of a brighter morn ; 
 
 And natural and spiritual forms ; 
 
 And others more than we shall ever know 
 That bask in light or tame infuriate storms ; 
 
 And every necessary grade of woe ; 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 51 . 
 
 Yes, out of matter — ether — what you will — 
 Something or nothing — with a plastic hand 
 Elaborating all the things that fill 
 
 The universe or ever can be planned, — 
 
 Thus working forth from spirit, and again 
 Through matter back unto the spirit-spring 
 In process everlasting, and which men 
 See dimly like a half-conjectured thing. 
 
 LI. Angels Create their own Bodies. 
 
 And God, who loves to delegate His might, 
 
 To angels in a sense creative lends 
 Ths faculty of gathering on the right 
 
 And left the particles which each extends, 
 
 Contracts and moulds by effort of the will 
 Into the special shape that suits an aim, 
 
 Some purpose of his being to fulfil 
 
 In altered guise though in himself the same. 
 
 LII. Man Made of Air. 
 
 And what is man but organized air ? 
 
 For mainly on the atmosphere we live, 
 
 Feeding without an effort or a care 
 
 The frames to which but little else we give. 
 
 For even when we slake our thirst and eat 
 Our daily bread, the elements of air — 
 
 They chiefly form the food we find so sweet, 
 
 They chiefly mix the draughts that taste so rare? 
 
 4—2 
 
52 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The spirit gently breathing round the earth 
 With light and heat upon its balmy wings 
 Is that unseen refection whence, from birth 
 To death, all that we have and are outsprings. 
 
 LIII. Spiritual Phenomena Frequent and 
 Infrequent. 
 
 I doubt it would not render angels blest 
 To be concerned in all our mean affairs, 
 
 Nor would the souls of men find peace and rest 
 In being over-conversant with theirs. 
 
 So pressing the concerns of daily life, 
 
 So hardly taxed our energies to gain 
 The bread which perishes, that studies rife 
 With spirit rapture would engender pain, 
 
 And half unfit us for our earthly sphere ; 
 
 And therefore angel visits rarely break 
 On human vision, rarely spirits cheer 
 The lonely walks that sad survivors take. 
 
 ’Tis mercy all, but special mercy this, 
 
 That sometimes strangely sweet and loving eyes 
 Gaze on us with a glance of earnest bliss 
 And witness to the truth of paradise. 
 
 And many from the cradle have beheld 
 Such visitors, and seen them circle brows 
 Of others like a halo, and have spelled 
 The lessons writ in answer to their vows : 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 53 
 
 And many felt their consolations sweet 
 
 So sweet that when their silent steps no more 
 
 Trod the calm air- waves of a blest retreat 
 The heart too full of grief in tears ran o’er. 
 
 A nd many have been raised in air and made 
 To dominate your gravitation laws, 
 
 And pestilent devils torturing and afraid 
 
 Have been cast out, — and prayer alone the cause. 
 
 And many with new tongues have spoken clear, 
 And many drained a poison-cup unharmed 
 
 And read the thoughts of others far and near 
 And charmed for good and ill and disencharmed. 
 
 And they who call these things inventions new 
 Forget the faithful apostolic past, 
 
 Forget Christ’s promise that, the ages through, 
 Visions and dreams and miracles should last. 
 
 LIV. “Try the Spirits.” 
 
 If spirits are abroad and talk with men, 
 
 How shall we know if they be good and true ; 
 
 If evil, track them to their noisome den, 
 
 If good the path of their desire pursue ? 
 
 The test of spirits, like the test of those 
 Who unto spiritual gifts lay claim, 
 
 Is near at hand and urgent to propose — 
 
 The reverence they do to Jesu’s name. 
 
54 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 If from His Majesty they never shrink 
 Accept His doctrine, practical, entire, 
 
 Their wings, be sure, have dipped in Gihon’s brink, 
 Their tongues, be sure, are cloven “ as of fire.” 
 
 On them the Heavenly Dove complacent sits ; 
 
 We need not fear their voice if they comply 
 With our demands and feed us with some bits 
 Of wisdom learnt in schools of thought on high. 
 
 But if they blink at Jesu’s Church and name, 
 
 And writhe and mock beneath that sacred spell, 
 I brand their unseen brows with blasting shame 
 And count them for the ministers of hell. 
 
 LV. The Law of Sympathetic Attraction. 
 
 And what will group together heavenly souls ? 
 
 And what will group together heavenly frames ? 
 Is there no law imperious that controls 
 
 The social concourse of those spirit flames ? 
 
 There is a law as potent as the sun 
 Exerts — as potent as the planets feel ; 
 Attraction — sympathy — the terms are one — 
 Draws heart to heart as loadstone draws the steel. 
 
 The living atoms rush towards the sphere 
 Congenial, and revolve around the blaze 
 Of spirit-centres during life-time dear, 
 
 Or perhaps revealed to them in after days. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 55 
 
 Love — unity of purpose — mutual sense 
 
 Of truth and beauty — these are links that bring 
 
 Together souls incorporate speeding hence 
 To orb each in his own appointed ring, 
 
 And from that charmed circle start and fly 
 Held by a lengthening never-broken cord 
 
 To waft commissions on from sky to sky 
 
 And wider spread true knowledge of the Lord. 
 
 LYI. Recognition Hereafter of Congenial 
 Spirits. 
 
 If we should hope for less than Tully hoped — 
 
 If we aspired not one day to behold 
 
 The bravest warriors who with sin have coped 
 In glint of snowy vest and crowns of gold, 
 
 We were unworthy of the Christian name — 
 Unworthy of the Church whose dew is still 
 
 Upon our foreheads, and whose trumps proclaim 
 E’en now the gathering upon Zion’s hill. 
 
 There let us trust to bow the knee before 
 The spirits who for us had strongest charms, 
 
 Over their glorious lineaments to pore, 
 
 To kiss their feet and fold them in our arms. 
 
 For they and we shall, polarised alike, 
 
 Attract instinctively and eke repel : 
 
 Poets into the poet ranks will strike, 
 
 Disciples easily their master tell. 
 
56 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The toilsome sons of science will embrace 
 The pioneer foresighted, eager, sage, 
 
 In features glorified past features trace 
 
 Through all the counter lines of youth and age. 
 
 Oh, joy to wander through the porch more grand 
 Than ancient Stoa, and through groves more blest 
 Than Academia, and on every hand 
 Discover where our heroes walk or rest. 
 
 “ What gods are these, who struggled once in tears 
 Through that dim valley of our earthly star, 
 And now are younger with increase of years, 
 
 And grow from what they were to what they are?” 
 
 If Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, had 
 
 Such hold upon us here, what will they prove 
 When, made supremely wise, supremely glad, 
 Their very intellect is merged in love ? 
 
 All errors rectified, all stains effaced, 
 
 The mighty dead will group around us, known 
 And individualised, in bodies braced 
 By food ethereal even as our own. 
 
 L YII. Recognition hereafter of those we love. 
 
 But if we recognise the spirits raised 
 By genius high above their fellow men, 
 
 Much more shall we recall — nor feel amazed — 
 The faces that we loved most dearly then. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 57 
 
 The faces — for indeed the spirit form 
 Is like, so like, the body whence it rose, 
 
 It seems at times with the same life-blood warm — 
 With the same blush of health and beauty glows. 
 
 Nor ever portrait was by limner made 
 So life-like as the spirit-body seems 
 
 To its original in light and shade, 
 
 In tone and colour, gesture, glances, gleams. 
 
 Materialising power it has within, 
 
 As Christ the Lord when risen from the dead, — 
 
 Power o'er itself to thicken and to thin, 
 
 Liken, unliken, be, or be not, read. 
 
 But on the loving the beloved will shine 
 Complacently, recalling youthful hours 
 
 When nascent love made earth seem half divine 
 And Eden's light invested fading bowers. 
 
 Is there a hand thine own has fondly pressed 
 More dear than any other, quick or dead, 
 
 Is there a bosom where alone found rest 
 The fevered throbbing of thy aching head ? 
 
 Is there an eye whose depth of tearful light 
 Was to thy soul a well of joy unique ? 
 
 And are there lips, now closed by death and night, 
 That sipped the honey of thy blossom cheek 
 
58 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 In pure affection ? Thou shalt grasp that hand 
 And on that faithful bosom shalt recline ; 
 
 Those eyes will single thee from any band 
 
 And those fond lips again shall close with thine. 
 
 For in the spirit body is contained 
 
 A strict resemblance to its former shell ; 
 
 Old beauty in new beauty is ingrained 
 And old emotions in new pulses swell. 
 
 LVIII. Fribble Objects. 
 
 And here perhaps some fribble will object, 
 
 “ You preacher of a Moslem paradise, 
 
 No doubt you soon will join the Islam sect 
 And find your level in its sensual lies.’ , 
 
 I answer, “ Fribble, were I to explain 
 
 How high Mount Zion above Mecca towers, 
 
 How every corner of the heavenly plain 
 
 Is steeped in gracious dew of Hermon showers, 
 
 “ I should but waste my words, for much I fear 
 You are of those whom light, malefic, gnomes 
 
 Will seize on when you reach your proper sphere 
 And whirl like stubble round their quarried 
 domes.” 
 
 LIX. Our Children recognized hereafter. 
 
 Oh, mother, weeping for your blue-eyed boy 
 In spite of all the minister has said, 
 
 For in your darling was your only joy, 
 
 His sisters wedded and his father dead. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 59 
 
 And scanty comfort find you in the thought 
 That in his God the child’s dear spirit rests ; 
 
 His image ever to your mind is brought 
 His face so full of wiles, his laugh, his jests. 
 
 W ell, mother, let your widowed heart revive : 
 Your arms of love may fondle him anew ; 
 
 His very flaxen locks shall wave, alive 
 
 With glint as glossy and with charm as true ; 
 
 His spirit-body shall repeat the play, 
 
 The prayer, the smiles, with mutual caress, 
 
 That made the solace of your wintry day, 
 
 And you again your darling shall possess — 
 
 Possess more beautiful than here below — 
 
 Possess and never, never, lose again — 
 
 Redeemed and washed as white as virgin snow : 
 Oh, widowed mother, what a meeting then ! 
 
 Though here we walk by faith and not by sight, 
 Yet even here, if such His gracious will, 
 
 He could — yea, answering your prayers, he might 
 Show you your darling living, breathing, still — 
 
 Show you His slender hands upon the chord 
 Of some angelic harp, and bid you hear 
 
 His dulcet accents hymn the exalted Lord 
 Who died for him and for his mother dear. 
 
60 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 LX. The Divina Commedia. 
 
 I spoke of Dante, for indeed he best 
 Of all the poet-seers the world unseen 
 
 Has painted ; e’en as Shakspeare of the rest 
 Most masterful in actual life has been. 
 
 By marvellous intuition Dante caught 
 
 The essential features both of heaven and hell ; 
 
 The outward forms embodying inward thought ; 
 The modes of anguish and of bliss as well ; 
 
 The vast variety of spirit states — 
 
 More vast than we on earth can ever guess ; 
 
 The penal steps that lead to twelve pearl gates — 
 In which the body is concerned no less 
 
 Than the undying spirit ; and the laws 
 Of moral evolution. Well indeed 
 
 That Comedy is called Divine, because 
 
 It sows of truth occult such plenteous seed. 
 
 But spiritual body is the base 
 
 Of Dante’s every picture of the dead :* 
 
 Abstract from each of them time, form, and space, 
 And all his bloom of poetry is shed. 
 
 * See especially II Purgatorio, xxy. 88 — 108, on the aerial body. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 61 
 
 LXI. Christ’s Miracles According to Law. 
 
 O Thou one Mediator ’twixt God and man, 
 
 Who to redeem and teach the world wast sent. 
 If we should call Thee a great Medium, can 
 We be with justice deemed irreverent ? 
 
 For Thou didst act according unto law 
 
 When seemingly Thou didst the law transcend 
 And by Thy will supreme together draw 
 Such airy particles as served Thy end 
 
 To multiply the fish and loaves of bread ; 
 
 Materialise and dematerialise at will ; 
 
 Walk on the rolling waves or raise the dead ; 
 
 The demons chase ; the howling tempest still ; 
 
 Bestore the blind to sight ; make water wine ; 
 
 Hide healing virtue in Thy garment’s hem ; 
 
 On Tabor gloriously transfigured shine 
 
 And wither from the root the fig-tree stem. 
 
 We say not vaguely Thou wert Lord of all 
 
 And therefore all things were beneath Thy sway 
 Before a grander Majesty we fall 
 
 For, working miracles, Thou didst law obey. 
 
 And we have seen Thee delegate Thy power 
 At times to these frail creatures of Thy hand, 
 And make them dominate matter for an hour 
 By force of will, that we may understand 
 
62 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 How certain laws surpass all we can know 
 From science, and preside o’er wondrous acts 
 
 Called supernatural, for here below 
 
 They seldom have become recorded facts, 
 
 Our second Moses, Giver of the law, 
 
 In all Thy life obedient unto rule, 
 
 We pray Thee grant us reasonable awe, 
 
 And teach us lessons in a higher school, 
 
 That we may recognise Thy deeds divine 
 
 As breaches of no law which Thou hast made ; 
 
 May see the saving Thaumaturgus shine 
 In darkness, nor be slavishly afraid, 
 
 But bow the knee before the Law of Laws 
 
 The mind supreme, through whom all forces play, 
 
 Who ne’er produced effect without a cause 
 Co-equal, never could impede or stay 
 
 The course of His own works, or counter-plan 
 Eternity’s designs, or turn aside 
 
 From old procession, or impose on man 
 Phenomena to nature erst denied, 
 
 Or undo anything His Father wrought 
 From everlasting, or by fits and starts 
 
 Upset the balance of inquiring thought 
 By imitating the magician’s arts. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 63 
 
 No, Jesu, Master, Lord and God, Thy ways 
 Inscrutable were ever ordered, sweet, 
 
 Evolving, slow, as in Thine ancient days,— 
 
 No timing like the timing of Thy feet I 
 
 LXII. Creation Demonstrated by God 
 Incarnate. 
 
 The mystery of creation Thou hast made 
 As clear as may be to our finite view 
 And torn away the folds of shade on shade 
 That wrapped it round so many ages through. 
 
 For who that marks Thy limitless control 
 O’er all the elements of matter needs 
 A clearer proof that Thou didst breathe the soul 
 And sow the fields of heaven with starry seeds? 
 
 For He who made the lame to dance with glee 
 And poured the day beam on the sightless nerve — 
 He taught the planets in their course to flee 
 And lurid comets how to sweep and swerve. 
 
 What He, the Word, “in the beginning” said — 
 
 “ Let there be light 1” He in His brief career 
 On earth repeated momently and laid 
 The corner-stone of every science here.* 
 
 * The Book of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John begin with 
 the same expression: “ In the beginning, i.e., from all eternity 
 
64 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 LXIII. Faith Kemoving Mountains. 
 
 Matter was powerless beneath the hand 
 
 Of the Great Master-Mind ; — it melts like wax; 
 
 The mountains shift their bases on the land 
 And slip into the restless ocean tracts. 
 
 The lightning of His will makes iron flow 
 Like water, and He dissipates in air 
 
 The pregnant germs of malady and woe 
 In answer to the feeblest follower’s prayer. 
 
 And greater works than these His children do 
 (For Christ is Father of the Chosen race) 
 
 If in His vital truth their faith be true 
 And all their being subject unto grace. 
 
 Oh mountain, lifting up thy head so proud ! 
 
 Oh mountain ! any saint on bended knee 
 
 Might view thee torn from thy foundations, bowed. 
 Broken and crushed, and cast into the sea. 
 
 LXIY. St. Paul’s Prayer for the Body. 
 
 “ Blameless until the coming of the Lord 
 
 Your body be preserved,” such was the prayer 
 
 Of blessed Paul, yet is that body stored 
 Only in changeful currents of the air. 
 
 The bodies of the Thessalonian saints 
 
 To whom he wrote that prayer long since were made 
 
 Parts of the ever-flying breeze which paints 
 The cheeks that in succession bloom and fade. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY* 
 
 65 
 
 We argue, then, that in the Spirit Paul 
 Spake of the body that cannot decay — 
 
 The spirit-frame that never knows a pall, 
 
 But in the night of death begins its day. 
 
 Preserve it in us blameless, so that we 
 Be ready for Thy coming, whensoe’er 
 Thou comest, and Thy gracious will it be 
 In us to grant the great Apostle’s prayer, 
 
 LXY. “ Earth to Earth.” 
 
 Then do we lose all reverence for the field 
 Wherein the bones of saints and martyrs lie ? 
 And will their relics no more fragrance yield, 
 Because we know that they in turn must die, 
 
 Resolve into the aura that careers 
 
 O’er mountain tops and strews the holt with leaves. 
 Harrows the heart of mariners with fears, 
 
 Or ^whispering wafts perfume about our eaves? 
 
 No; dear and honoured be the sacred dust 
 Of what were living temples of the Lord, 
 
 And dear the tilth to which our hands entrust 
 The grim remains refusing to be stored. 
 
 This is the highest glory of the earth, 
 
 That from its quickened dust we all proceed, 
 And that when death becomes our second birth, 
 
 It holds the husk which held the vital seed. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 LXVI. Spirit-Writing. 
 
 As some whom we have known could often draw 
 Flow’rets and tendrils of worlds out of sight, 
 Under conditions varying from law, 
 
 So did the prophets and apostles write. 
 
 For as in these without the will or mind, 
 
 The pencil, guided by an unseen hand, 
 
 Traced grapes and stems and leaves and buds, 
 designed 
 
 With mystic meaning, — so we understand 
 
 The pen that Daniel, Luke, Isaias, held 
 
 To have been ofttimes moved without their will, 
 By inspiration’s breath divine impelled 
 Th’ apocalyptic scroll of life to fill. 
 
 And thus the Sacred Text bears seldom trace 
 Of human imperfection : God reveals * 
 
 In it the glorious Gospel of His grace, 
 
 And in our hearts the spirit- writing seals. 
 
 LXVI I. Bodiless Ghosts. 
 
 The immortality which some proclaim — 
 That of a naked spirit merely — seems 
 To me an expectation drear and tame — 
 Most hideous and improbable of dreams. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 67 
 
 What comfort in the thought that our egress, 
 From bodies suited to external things 
 Varied and lovely, will but leave us less 
 Complexity of being, clip our wings, 
 
 Eliminate our faculties of sight, 
 
 Of hearing, touch, communing with our kind, 
 Block up the genial avenues of light, 
 
 And in self-consciousness' lone prison bind 
 
 The heavenly captives ? Better far than this, 
 Methinks, about the pastures to be whirled, 
 Contribute to survivors’ transient bliss 
 
 And help to form the beauty of the world. 
 
 Let those who will pine to be simply ghosts 
 And less than ghosts — for even these appear — 
 But I shall hope to join th’ embodied hosts 
 Who see and who are seen in vision clear. 
 
 LXVIII. Bising from the Grave. 
 
 The body is the only real tomb ; 
 
 From it alone th’ immortal frame will rise * 
 
 The body also is a perfect womb, 
 
 For it produces children of the skies. 
 
 If on the couch of death you see it lie, 
 
 The hues of life fast fading from the cheek, 
 
 The blue and red merged in a leaden dye, 
 
 The whole expression peaceful, sweet and meek, — 
 
 5—2 
 
G 8 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL -BODY. 
 
 Say thou, “ It is my brother’s — sister’s — grave, 
 But out of it the spirit-body springs 
 
 And flies to Him who is so strong to save : — 
 
 And as the may-fly opes its mottled wings 
 
 From sheaths along the feathery larva drawn 
 And casts its pellicle into the tide 
 
 And skims the lake that bounds the velvet lawn 
 With green and brown and yellow livery pied, — 
 
 So rises now the spirit from the tomb ; 
 Inaugurates a never-dying day ; 
 
 Puts off the pellicle of pain and gloom ; 
 
 Puts on the resurrection’s bright array.” 
 
 LXIX. Taking the Veil. 
 
 I saw her stand before the altar, fair 
 
 And clothed in rich apparel — saw her train 
 
 Sweep the encaustic tiles, and her long hair 
 
 Braided with flowers and jewels — saw with pain 
 
 And pleasure mingled ; loving friends I saw 
 Around her, heard the choral voices sing. 
 
 An anthem jubilant yet rife with awe 
 
 As if concerned with some mysterious thing. 
 
 I saw them take away her costly tire 
 
 And loose the circlets of her jewelled locks : 
 
 The shears divide them ; silent is the choir, 
 
 And on a bier she lies ; the pall that shocks 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 69 
 
 My memory as it shocked me then in fact 
 
 Is thrown about her, and the death’s heads stare; 
 The convent bells toll for the last grim Act, 
 
 The requiem for the dead floats on the air. — 
 
 And she was dead — dead in a sense. But, lo. 
 
 She rises ; she is called by a new name ; 
 
 The sisters beckon her in robes of snow 
 And in Maria’s stead the virgin claim. 
 
 She looks her last adieu to earthly toys 
 And through the sombre grating passes in, 
 
 And music, angel- sweet, is pledgingjoys 
 Perennial in long victory over sin. 
 
 I saw the outline of her figure plain 
 
 And waving garment. “ ’Tis prefigured death,” 
 I said ; “ her soul and body find a reign 
 
 Of higher thought and more harmonious breath.” 
 
 LXX. Body within Body. 
 
 How many forms within one human form ! 
 
 A perfect series closely intertwined ; — 
 
 The netted skin with its life-colour warm ; 
 
 The nervine system, and the veins that wind 
 
 With arteries ever in the shape of man ; 
 
 The muscles and the bones conformed likewise ; 
 The skeleton — the basis of the plan — 
 
 Composed of substance in the self same guise 
 
70 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Earthly and animal — by chemist solved 
 If need be ; and above and over all 
 
 The spiritual body, which evolved 
 
 From mind and matter rightly so we call — 
 
 The spiritual body, which records 
 
 In its immortal tissues thoughts and deeds, 
 
 Proves that we are or we are not the Lord’s, 
 
 And of our future contains all the seeds. 
 
 This is the only body that will rise, 
 
 A better likeness of the one it leaves ; 
 
 For flesh and blood inherit not the skies 
 Nor incorruption the corrupt receives. 
 
 So “ fearfully and wonderfully made” 
 
 Is man that he who ’neath the surface dips 
 
 There finds the base of Christian doctrine laid, 
 And man himself is God’s apocalypse. 
 
 LXXI. “Be Zealous for the Better Gifts.” 
 
 Forbidden to hold commerce with the dead ; 
 Forbidden to aspire to spirit-gifts ! 
 
 Why, this is the reverse of what is said 
 In Scripture ; and indeed what Zion lifts 
 
 Above Mount Sinai is the clearer light 
 Of immortality upon its crown, 
 
 The unity of regions out of sight 
 
 With churches on which grace is raining down 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 71 
 
 In rich profusion. Gifts of grace abound 
 If we but seek them, — faith to move the hills — 
 
 To heal the sick — o’er laggard space to bound — 
 To turn the current of events like rills — 
 
 To waken flow’rets from the desert sand — 
 
 To summon spirits from the luminous deep — 
 
 To speak with tongues — to solve and understand 
 All mysteries — to sleep a charmed sleep — 
 
 To hide the stigmata — to live on air — 
 
 Be nourished by the eucharist alone — 
 
 To wrestle with the might of Jacob’s prayer — 
 
 To levitate inert and ponderous stone — 
 
 To prophesy — dream dreams and pour the tide 
 Of untaught music — paint with skill inspired — 
 
 To walk the world with angels at our side 
 
 And with the Sacred Heart’s own flame be fired — 
 
 Talk with the dead — consult them, pray, invoke 
 Their presence and their blessing— with them grow 
 
 Familiar as if with dear friends we spoke, 
 
 And more and more about their status know, — 
 
 These are some only of the gifts divine 
 
 Which to the Church of God by right belong ; 
 
 The legacy of Christ has made them thine; 
 
 They who contest it do thee shameful wrong. 
 
72 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 See that thou prize them, lest they too run wild ; 
 
 For only within limits are they good ; 
 
 They may be counterfeits, abused, defiled, 
 
 If not beneath the shadow of the Food. 
 
 LXXII. “ Knowledge shall be Manifold.” 
 
 The glories of the earth and sky are made 
 More clear by science every day and hour, 
 
 And therefore now may be the more displayed 
 The greater marvels of the Spirit’s power. 
 
 Let matter learn to own its sovereign lord. 
 
 Let spirit find in matter deeper deeps 
 Of beauty till their strength together poured 
 O’er every barrier of resistance sweeps 
 
 And floods the church with knowledge and with 
 grace 
 
 And rolls o’er sceptic ruins, saps the towers 
 Of Babel menace and reflects the face 
 Of heaven in this mirror- world of ours. 
 
 LXXII I. The Dead Invoked. 
 
 Here let me pause awhile, perhaps ne’er again 
 To strike the chord. Ye spirits of the dead, 
 
 If I have sought your blessing on the strain — 
 
 I f I have felt your blessing round me shed — 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 If this midsummer task was day by day 
 Laid at your feet, confided to your wings — 
 Take it entire and foster it, I pray, 
 
 That many a voice may echo what it sings. 
 
 As yet our languid hearts have done you wrong 
 And doubted your complete existence there 
 In God’s immediate presence ’mid the throng 
 Of angel-men in form surpassing fair. 
 
 As yet your person has for us been shorn 
 Of its proportions comely, grand and meet, 
 To decorate the children of the morn 
 Who in aurora’s light aurora greet 
 
 And represent, each in his finite sphere, 
 
 The Saviour-God who took the form of man — 
 Who glorified the frame He died in here 
 And rendered yours as like it as He can 
 
 Whose power is limitless. For this we know 
 That seeing Him we shall be like Him seen, 
 And sure we are that you are fashioned 
 
 As to be like what Christ Himself has been 
 
 Since from the earth His rapt disciples saw 
 Him mount to heaven with promise to return, 
 Reduce the natural to spirit law 
 
 And all for which regenerate instincts yearn 
 
74 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 Fulfil, with you for coadjutors, you 
 
 Descending from your blood-bought thrones to 
 grace 
 
 His triumph and to swell the pageant due 
 To the complete redemption of our race 
 
 And meet in the mid heavens the saints who late 
 Were sighing for His advent — meet them 
 changed 
 
 Into the likeness of your nobler state 
 
 And round your common Prince in order ranged. 
 
 LXXIV. A Last Request. 
 
 Meanwhile, dear spirits, you within the veil 
 And we who in the outer court abide 
 
 Cooperating cannot wholly fail 
 
 To see the victory turning to our side. 
 
 Lift us above ourselves and let us see 
 Things spiritual with an eye so clear 
 
 That they to us realities may be 
 
 Compared with the material phantoms here ; 
 
 And deep within us let the body grow 
 
 Which to your piercing sight is always plain ; 
 
 Weave us a perisprite as pure as snow 
 To make the mortal loss immortal gain. 
 
INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. IMMORTAL FORM ... 1 
 
 II. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY 1 
 
 III. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY THE TYPE OF OURS ... 2 
 
 IV. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY RECOGNISABLE 3 
 
 V. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY MYSTERIOUS 4 
 
 VI. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY : ITS VARIOUS MODES AND 
 
 ASPECTS 4 
 
 vii. st. Teresa’s visions of the glorified body ... 5 
 
 VIII. CHRIST’S SPIRIT-BODY IN THE EUCHARIST ... 7 
 
 IX. SINE LABE CONCEPTA 8 
 
 X. THE ASSUMPTION 9 
 
 XI. “ WE SHALL BE CHANGED ” 10 
 
 XII. MEETING THE LORD IN THE AIR 11 
 
 XIII. THE DEPARTED NOT MERE SPIRITS 11 
 
 XIV. AN ORGANISM INDISPENSABLE 12 
 
 XV. CHRIST’S WITNESS AS TO THE SPIRIT-BODY ... 13 
 
 XVI. LAZARUS AND DIVES 14 
 
 XVII. THE APPARITION OF SAMUEL TO SAUL 14 
 
 XVIII. THE SCALE OF MATTER GRADUATED 15 
 
 XIX. THE APOCALYPSE 16 
 
 XX. THE VISION MATERIALISTIC IN PART 17 
 
 XXI. “ GOD GIVETH IT A BODY AS HE WILL ” 18 
 
 XXII. OCCULT BODILY FACULTIES 19 
 
76 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXIII. “ CLOTHED UPON WITH OUR HABITATION THAT 
 
 IS FROM HEAVEN ” ... ... 20 
 
 XXIV. THE BUTTERFLY 21 
 
 XXV. ARE THE DEPARTED NEAR ? 22 
 
 XXVI. CREMATION 23 
 
 XXVII. THE DEAD BECOME THE FOOD OF THE LIVING ... 24 
 
 XXVIII. LIFE A CONTINUAL RESURRECTION 25 
 
 XXIX. “ THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH ” ... 25 
 
 XXX. “ THE HOUR COMETH AND NOW IS ” 26 
 
 XXXI. THE SOUL HOVERING ROUND THE CORPSE ... 28 
 
 XXXII. RESURRECTION OF SOME NATURAL BODIES ... 29 
 
 XXXIII. A TENTATIVE TASK 30 
 
 XXXIV. A CENSOR’S VOICE 32 
 
 XXXV. REPLY 33 
 
 XXXVI. THE SOUL-BODY PRESERVES OUR IDENTITY ... 33 
 XXXVII. VARIETY OF CONDITIONS IN THE NEXT WORLD ... 34 
 
 XXXVIII. PROTEAN SPIRIT-BODIES 35 
 
 XXXIX. CHANGE OF ENVELOPE 36 
 
 XL. “ THE BODY OF THIS DEATH ” 37 
 
 XLI. THE CAPTIOUS QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES ... 38 
 
 XLII. TRANSFORMED INTO AN ANGEL OF LIGHT ... 40 
 
 XLIII. MEN ARE SPIRITS 41 
 
 XLIV. DREAMS 41 
 
 XLV. LUZ 42 
 
 XLVI. THE SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 44 
 
 XLVII. ANGELIC BODIES ARE REAL 45 
 
 XL VIII. THE ACTS OF ANGELS ARE ACCORDING TO LAW ... 46 
 
 XLIX. MATERIAL ATTRIBUTES OF ANGELS 47 
 
 L. ANGELS ENTERTAINED UNAWARES 48 
 
 LI. THE UNIVERSAL FLUID 48 
 
 LII. MAN MADE OF AIR 51 
 
 LIII. SPIRITUAL PHENOMENA FREQUENT AND INFRE- 
 QUENT 52 
 
 LIV. “ TRY THE SPIRITS ” 53 
 
 LV. THE LAW OF SYMPATHETIC ATTRACTION ... 54 
 
 LVI. RECOGNITION HEREAFTER OF CONGENIAL SPIRITS 55 
 LVII. RECOGNITION HEREAFTER OF THOSE WE LOVE ... 56 
 
INDEX, 
 
 77 
 
 PAOE 
 
 LVIII. FRIBBLE OBJECTS 58 
 
 LIX. OUR CHILDREN RECOGNISED HEREAFTER ... 58 
 
 LX. THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 60 
 
 [LXI. CHRIST’S MIRACLES ACCORDING TO LAW ... 61 
 
 LXIL CREATION DEMONSTRATED BY GOD INCARNATE .. . 63 
 
 LXIII. FAITH REMOVING MOUNTAINS ,.64 
 
 LXIV. ST. PAUL’S PRAYER FOR THE DEAD 64 
 
 LXV. EARTH TO EARTH ” 65 
 
 LXVI. SPIRIT-WRITING 66 
 
 LX VII. BODILESS GHOSTS 66 
 
 LXVIII. RISING FROM THE GRAVE 67 
 
 LXIX. TAKING THE VEIL 68 
 
 LXX. BODY WITHIN BODY 69 
 
 LXXI. “ BE ZEALOUS FOR THE BETTER GIFTS ” 70 
 
 LXXII. “ KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE MANIFOLD ” 72 
 
 LXXIII. THE DEAD INVOKED 72 
 
 LXXIV. A LAST REQUEST 74 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY. 
 

 
 
 
 

V