CHAPTER I. THE INTRODUCTION.

 

If 'tis true,

As ancient said, we were two wandering halves Until we found each other, then a whole

We've blended in a unit, which to part

Would be to crush us both.

Life's Passion Story.

 

True spiritual growth garners the present for future needs; enjoying the present life, because such is best for future welfare. This is the moral of this narration.

 

HOW baleful the light of passion! how it blasts! The human spirit is like a mirror, bright as burnished silver held in the hand of a child, reflecting every thought and deed, day by day. Day by day the Present overshadows the Past, and the outlines of the old become more dimly defined.

 

At times the mirror is beautiful when thoughts white as snow are written thereon, with pictures lovely as Eden. At other times the black cloud overspreads all its face and the demon eye of lightning stares baleful from the mist.

 

There are pictures of joy, of misery, of pleasure, of pain, of duties done and neglected, successes and defeats of anticipations and regrets in wonderful kaleidoscopic changes; and the child and the man and the world think that the new writing, with its sharply drawn images, ever blots out the old, and that the fading outlines, disappear forever.

 

But there comes a day when the child, having ascended the pathway of life and descended, reaches the head-lands overlooking the Mystic Sea which laves with sullen waves the shores of life and death. The dawning light from the remote horizon is caught by the mirror and it becomes ablaze.

 

Every thought, every image which has beautified or darkened its fair face, appears in an ineffaceable panorama. The recording angel has allowed no erasure, and all the world may read the Open Book.

 

Leon and Hero were drawn tegether by the harmonious similarity and diversity which create and intensify the attractions of love and bind the spirit in eternal matehood. Their home was in a secluded vale surrounded by lofty mountains, yet near a great metropolis where civilization flowed at its highest, and they enjoyed the pleasures of retired rural life, and the benefits of a populous district. Wild and awe-inspiring scenes environed their retreat, while the retirement and secure ease were a source of pleasure and a means of elevation. Drawn together by the gentle gravitation of love; united by the ties of harmony; content with the little world of happiness each found in the other, and the never ending delight surrounding nature afforded, their cottage was a paradise where Eden was again revived.

 

Their home was really such as the children of the Orient picture in the land of dreams—such as cultured minds would be expected to create. Surrounded by overshadowing trees, tall oaks, graceful elms and drooping willows, entwined with tendrils of the loving vine, decorated with a great variety of choicest flowers, the useful blended with the ornamental, until the embowered cottage seemed the residence of some sylvan goddess, who, weary with the cares of restless life, had employed all the means at her command to create a favorite seat.

 

They fully enjoyed the beauties lavished by nature and lived to learn and love, unmindful of the throbs of the great world. True, perhaps, there was a loss in this manner of life. Leon as a man of affairs acquired neither fame nor credit. On the contrary, he was regarded as an enthusiast, a mystic, a sentimental dreamer. This is the verdict of the worldly crowd on all those whom they do not understand, because withdrawn from their crude and ignoble ways of thought. Theirs was true marriage, the institution of nature, yielding untold pleasures, the perversion of which produces the most fearful misery the human heart can suffer. No sweetness like that of true spiritual marriage; no bitterness as bitter as false unions on the plane of convenience or desire. In the wedding of congenial souls, each blends with the other in mutual oneness of thought, feeling, sentiment and aspiration, while the individuality of both is intensified.

 

When the Creator had laid the foundation of the earth and reared the pillars of the heavens, over-arched with its splendor of stars, in an Eden of perfect happiness, amid the opulent bloom of flowers, making the air sweet with perfume, he united man and woman in marriage. They were to mutually support each other; to share each other's burdens, to enjoy each other's pleasures, and walk the paths of the new world hand in hand, and heart beating to heart, actuated by a common purpose. This ideal union has become more and more actualized with advancing civilization, with the refinement of intellect and purity of morals, until we can look forward to that grand civilization which will recognize perfect equality between man and woman; the husband and wife, with perfect trust and exclusive love, walking the path of life, realizing the Eden of the dreaming past in the wreath of joy that ever the dull realities of the present give them.

 

Marriage is thus the foundation of social life, of the home, and all that word implies. There is no other in the language around which clusters such a host of delicate fancies which recall such a flood of memories! We remember the stories related by the blaze of the evening fire, by our dear old father; the songs sang by our sainted mother; the lullaby which hushed our infantile petfulness and the hymns which first lifted our souls to heavenly things. "A mother is more than a thousand fathers," and the sweetest of all words is wife, for it implies a world of blessedness from the day she was a blushing maiden, through the long years of devoted motherhood; to the tender care with which she gives her last kiss to the pale and silent lips of the companion of her life journey.

 

They had two children, bright, beautiful, joyous, the embodiment of health, now grown to the estate of manhood and womanhood, and gone out like fledged birds to seek what the great world had in store for them.

 

Well-developed minds have an intuitive belief in immortality. The pure spirit feels the prompting assurance of a glorious future, of which the present is a shadow; it cherishes the truthful conception that death will not sever the ties of affection. Fully recognizing this, Leon and Hero looked forward with joy to the hour of dissolution. Not that they wished to die, or leave the cares of this life, but they knew that the change would be for the better, and when their task was finished on earth, they wished to renew their lives in other scenes. Perfect happiness is limited amid the jarring scenes of earth. It rests shortly and moves often. There is but one assurance, that all things will change; nothing will endure forever, and the poorest joy has its clouds.

 

They grew old together; not in spirit, for that never feels the pangs of decay; but the years fell on their physical forms, and the frosts whitened and paled. It should be a joy to grow old; to feel the ripeness and full fruition of years! What a glad fact it is, that as we approach the West the days shorten and time rushes with ever accelerated pace! The weeks are days and the days hours, all too short for the work we wish to crowd into them. In life's morning the day before us stretched out and away into the dim vista, and at night the morning seemed so far away we forgot its events. There was infinite time, and we wondered at people who had no time. What became of their time? How did they dispose of it when time to us was the most cheap and common? The steep ascent of the mountain of life was laborious, but we soon had burdens laid on us, and duties, which we were compelled to perform. Our pathway over the flinty rocks had to be hewn with our own hands, the way cleared, and day by day came new cares, and to do all that was required of us filled the measure of each day. Then the time shortened. Then we understood the necessity of haste. We reached the summit. The whole way had been up hill. The sun had come to the meridian and shines with increasing splendor. We can pause for a brief moment on the grand divide, and while the pass stretches down the slope into the grey east, to the west, away to the remote sky-line, is our future. If the sun low down casts lengthening shadows, we hurry and are hurried on to the nearing goal, feeling that though weary, there is not time remaining to perform all that there is for us to do. Such a vast amount of obligations, such intimate dependencies reach out near and remote, it seems we have done little else than contract alliances, and gather the sheaves for others to thresh the grain.

 

The sun passes into the golden glory of the West, and our journey is now not up a toilsome path, but descends by gentle inclinations. We have learned the grand lesson of doing, of sustained effort, and what were burdens become delights. We have double lives, a conscious present, and the delicious memories of the past. We stir the embers of recollection, and they flame with beauty, for even from our remembered pain there comes a sad pleasure, and life has many joys. If we have lived rightly, we have learned time is measured by actions, and have gained the meaning of the legend carved over the grand central entrance of the Cathedral of Milan: "That, only is important which is eternal." Religion has taught us with her silvery voice of charity to little purpose, if the affairs of this life do not begin to merge into the boundless realm that extends in mystery beyond the clouds of life's setting sun.

 

Age had rested lightly on those of whom we write, but the hour of the great transition came. Hero's gentle spirit was first to close her eyes on the scenes of this life, and awake to the eternal realities. Spirits of departed friends welcomed her to the higher sphere, and her love found sympathy in the hosts of resplendent beings who surrounded her. Joy of joys! No barrier separated her from her beloved, except that of invisibility. She could approach him when she wished, and when dark thoughts clouded his agitated heart, she soothed him with her gentle influence, changing his thoughts by turning them toward heaven. How cheering the belief in guardian angels! It lifts the soul above the mists of sorrow to feel the presence of the loved ones who have passed from earth—from mortal gaze, but who nevertheless live in a far brighter sphere amid the light of the source of love, and for the affection they bear their friends on earth, come and solace them in time of trial, and ennoble them with great truths. It is a blessed belief which purifies and intensifies the life.

 

The Angel of Death, who really is the Angel of the Resurrection, waited not long before he again visited the cottage. Leon is to cross the limits of the two worlds. There is nothing to draw him back from the threshold of the unseen land. Children, family, friends, and a thousand cares generally bind the striving soul to earth, but his children he had educated, and beheld them all rightly directed in life. The family tie was severed; nothing remained.

 

A spirit in this condition softly sinks away to sleep, but the agony caused by its striving to remain after death is inevitable and terrible. All his attractions are beyond the grave. His second self has passed through the "shadow and the vale" before him, and he must pass its mythic terrors before he can behold her angel purity. His being folds inward, and the deep sleep of the transition comes slowly on. Oblivion hovers over all things. All perception for the time is gone. Hours pass away, and be awakes from his dream-state to full consciousness, to hear his name spoken in endearing accents.

 

"Leon, it is I. Do you not recognize your Hero? I who went before you, and who now with your friends have come to welcome you to your new home! Take this robe, finer it is than the gossamer, setting to shame the purple of the East; wear it, it is your habiliment, similar to ours."

 

So suddenly and unexpectedly did the brilliant reality burst upon his vision that he stood in speechless astonishment. With an effort he called the name of Hero, as he threw his arms around her. Do spirits weep? Ah! there is a pain in joy itself which oftener forces tears to strong eyes than grief.

 

"Realization of my former fancies, am I eternally to enjoy such bliss as this? Can, can this be reality,? or is it delusive fancy which gives my dreams form and substance?"

 

"Leon, this is no hallucination. Our belief was true, and all that you now see and feel is but a drop compared with the ocean of delight in store. You have yet to behold the groves and bowers; murmuring streams and dashing waterfalls; the rose-hued landscapes; the continual delight of our new home. Here, too, are the joyous and enlightened companions with whom I have passed my hours while tarrying for you. They have been my guides, instructors and friends, they are now yours. We have much to learn before we go onward, for my longer stay here has advanced me further than you in the ways of spiritual life."

 

"Then I am to detain you here until I become equally proficient! Ah! I cannot ask you to make such sacrifice. Go on in the ways of light, while I struggle on as best I may; some time I shall overtake you in the ascending ladder of light."

 

"Oh! speak not thus. Are not our destinies bound together by inviolable laws? Shall these ties be broken? In all that I have learned I will instruct you, and together we will go on in progress."

 

"But the sacrifice you make is too great, and I am not so selfish as to ask it."

 

"You will see it in a different light, for what I have acquired relates to the spirit's home, and in teaching you we shall journey through its vast domain, enjoying the sweetest pleasure."

 

"Where are we now? Oh! have I not quitted my own room yet! How long am I to remain?

 

"No longer than you desire. Every spirit follows its own inclination; some go away immediately, while others are so engrossed in the cares of life as to remain around the old homestead or familiar places for years. You, having no such attractions, may at once depart to our new home, and become acquainted with your new associates."

 

Passing upward with the attendant spirits, Leon found himself far, far above the Earth. Through the breaks in the clouds he saw the green fields and mountain slopes beneath him. With soul thrilled with pleasure he gazed on the gorgeous panorama which met his astonished sight His cottage with its garden became a mote and disappeared in the distance.

 

"Hero," he said, "are you not sad to leave that spot where we have passed so many happy days? I must confess it produces on me unpleasant feelings."

 

"Should the butterfly regret its Caterpillar state?" she responded. "Should it lament how many sunny days it passed in the shade of the old oak, and gnawed the acrid leaves? It has wings now and can swiftly fly from flower to flower. Its sunniest day in the oak was passed in eating the rough leaves; now it can sip honey from the flowers the day long, and the heavens are far brighter than before."

 

"Is the change I have undergone so great? Will the pleasures of this life so completely eclipse the enjoyment of my previous state, that all its happy hours will be forgotten?

 

"Not forgotten, but surpassed. If you believe not my words, look around you and become assured. We are in the Sphere of Light."

 

He gazed about him, and beheld the Spirit-world in all its ethereal beauty.

 

"This the Spirit-home. Why the floor is of earth! The plants are true plants! I can grasp them; and yonder the far expanding ocean reflects the azure sky, while from its crested waves a zephyr comes to fan my brow! Am I dreaming? Such beauty and transparency can belong alone to the ideal!"

 

"My beloved, this is no fancy, but reality. This is land, that is water, these are plants. You are not deceived in the least. I do not wonder at your incredulity. I have seen those who for years thought themselves dreaming, and no argument could persuade them that they were not. One I knew who kept a memorandum of every occurrence for a long time, that when consciousness returned he might relate all he had heard and seen to his friends. Remember that this world corresponds to the lower world, as a reflection in a mirror, and that spirits hold the same relations to spiritual substance that man holds to physical matter, and you will soon comprehend the reality of these scenes."