LETTER XXXIX
THE DOCTRINE OF DEATH

 

MANY times during the months in which I have been here have I seen men and women lying in a state of unconsciousness more profound than the deepest sleep, their faces expressionless and uninteresting. At first, before I understood the nature of their sleep, I tried as an experiment to awaken one or two of them, and was not successful. In certain cases, where my curiosity was aroused, I have returned later, day after day, and found them still lying in the same lethargy.

 

"Why," I asked myself, "should any man sleep like that—a sleep so deep that neither the spoken word nor the physical touch could arouse him?"

 

One day when the Teacher was with me we passed one of those unconscious men whom I had seen before, had watched, and had striven unsuccessfully to arouse.

 

"Who are these people who sleep like that?" I asked the Teacher; and he replied:

"They are those who in their earth life denied the immortality of the soul after death."

"How terrible!" I said. "And will they never awaken?"

"Yes, perhaps centuries, perhaps ages hence, when the irresistible law of rhythm shall draw them out of their sleep, into incarnation. For the law of rebirth is one with the law of rhythm."

"Would it not be possible to awaken one of them, this man, for instance?"

"You have attempted it, have you not?" the Teacher inquired, with a keen look into my face.

"Yes," I admitted.

"And you failed?" "Yes."

We looked at each other for a moment, then I said:

"Perhaps you, with your greater power and knowledge, could succeed where I have failed."

He made no answer. His silence fired my interest still farther, and I said eagerly:

"Will you not try? Will you not awaken this man?" "You know not what you ask," he replied.

"But tell me this," I demanded: "could you awaken him?"

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"Perhaps. But in order to counteract the law which holds him in sleep, the law of the spell he laid upon his own soul when he went out of life demanding unconsciousness and annihilation—in order to counteract that law, I should have to put in operation a law still stronger."

"And that is?" I asked.

"Will," he answered, "the potency of will." "Could you?"

"As I said before—perhaps." "And will you?"

"Again I say that you know not what you ask."

"Will you please explain?" I persisted, "for indeed this seems to me to be one of the most marvellous things which I have seen."

The face of the Teacher was very grave, as he answered:

"What good has this man done in the past that I should place myself between him and the law of cause and effect which he has wilfully set in operation?"

"I do not know his past," I said.

"Then," the Teacher demanded, "will you tell me your reason for asking me to do this thing?"

"My reason?"

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"Yes. Is it pity for this man's unfortunate condition, or is it scientific curiosity on your part?"

 

I should gladly have been able to say that it was pity for the man's sad state which moved me so; but one does not juggle with truth or with motives when speaking to such a Teacher, so I admitted that it was scientific curiosity.

 

"In that case," he said, "I am justified in using him as a demonstration of the power of the trained will."

 

"It will not harm him, will it?"

 

"On the contrary. And though he may suffer shock, it will probably be the means of so impressing his mind that never again, even in future lives on earth, can he believe himself, or teach others to believe, that death ends everything. As far as he is concerned, he does not deserve that I should waste upon him so great an amount of energy as will be necessary to arouse him from this sleep, this spell which he laid upon himself ages ago. But if I awaken him, it will be for your sake, 'that you may believe.' "

 

I wish I could describe the scene which took place, so that you could see it with the eyes of your imagination. There lay the man at our feet, his face colourless and expressionless, and above him towered the splendid form of the Teacher, his face beautiful with power, his eyes brilliant with thought.

 

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"Can you not see," asked the Teacher, "a faint light surrounding this seemingly lifeless figure?"

 

"Yes, but the light is very faint indeed."

 

"Nevertheless," said the Teacher, "that light is far less faint than is this weak soul's hold upon the eternal truth. But where you see only a pale light around the recumbent form, I see in that light many pictures of the soul's past. I see that he not only denied the immortality of the soul's consciousness, but that he taught his doctrine of death to other men and made them even as himself. Truly he does not deserve that I should try to awaken him!"

 

"Yet you will do it?" "Yes, I will do it."

 

I regret that I am not permitted to tell you by what form of words and by what acts my Teacher succeeded, after a mighty effort, in arousing that man from his self-imposed imitation of annihilation. I realised as never before—not only the personal power of the Teacher, but the irresistible power of a trained and directed will.

 

I thought of that scene recorded in the New Testament, where Jesus said to the dead man in the tomb, "Lazarus, come forth!"

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"The soul of man is immortal," declared the Teacher, looking fixedly into the shrinking eyes of the awakened man and holding them by his will.

 

"The soul of man is immortal," he repeated. Then in a tone of command:

 

"Stand up!"

 

The man struggled to his feet. Though his body was light as a feather, as are all our bodies here, I could see that his slumbering energy was still almost too dormant to permit of that really slight exertion.

 

"You live," declared the Teacher. "You have passed through death, and you live. Do not dare to deny that you live. You cannot deny it."

 

"But I do not believe—" began the man, his stubborn materialism still challenging the truth of his own existence, his memory surviving the ordeal through which he had passed. This last surprised me more than anything else. But after a moment's stupefaction I understood that it was the power of the Teacher's mental picture of the astral records round this soul which had forced those memories to awaken.

 

"Sit down between us two," said the Teacher to the newly aroused man, "and let us reason together. You thought yourself a great reasoner, did you not, when you walked the earth as So-and-so?" "I did."

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"You see that you were mistaken in your reasoning," the Teacher went on, "for you certainly passed through death, and you are now alive."

"But where am I?" He looked about him in a bewildered way. "Where am I, and who are you?"

"You are in eternity," replied the Teacher, "where you always have been and always will be."

"And you?"

"I am one who knows the workings of the Law." "What law?"

"The law of rhythm, which drives the soul into and out of gross matter, as it drives the tides of the ocean into flood and ebb, and the consciousness of man into sleeping and waking."

"And it was you who awakened me? Are you, then, this law of rhythm?"

The Teacher smiled.

"I am not the law," he said, "but I am bound by it, even as you, save as I am temporarily able to transcend it by my will—again, even as you."

I caught my breath at the profundity of this

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simple answer, but the man seemed not to observe its significance. Even as he! Why, this man by his misdirected will had been able temporarily to transcend the law of immortality, even as the Teacher by his wisely directed will transcended the mortal in himself! My soul sang within me at this glimpse of the godlike possibilities of the human mind.

"How long have I been asleep?" demanded the man. "In what year did you die?" the Teacher asked. "In the year 1817."

"And the present year is known, according to the Christian calendar, as the year 1912. You have lain in a death-like sleep for ninety-five years."

"And was it really you who awakened me?" "Yes."

"Why did you do it?"

"Because it suited my good pleasure," was the Teacher's rather stern reply. "It was not because you deserved to be awakened."

"And how long would I have slept if you had not aroused me?"

"I cannot say. Probably until those who had started even with you had left you far behind on the road of evolving life. Perhaps for centuries, perhaps for ages." "You have taken a responsibility upon yourself," said the man.

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"You do not need to remind me of that," replied the Teacher. "I weighed in my own mind the full responsibility and decided to assume it for a purpose of my own. For will is free."

"Yet you overpowered my will."

"I did; but by my own more potent will, more potent because wisely directed and backed by a greater energy."

"And what are you going to do with me?"

"I am going to assume the responsibility of your training." "My training?"

"Yes."

"And you will make things easy for me?"

"On the contrary, I shall make things very hard for you; but you cannot escape my teaching."

"Shall you instruct me personally?"

"Personally in the sense that I shall place you under the instruction of an advanced pupil of my own."

"Who? This man here?" He pointed to me.

"No. He is better occupied. I will take you to your teacher presently."

"And what will he show me?"

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"The panorama of immortality. And when you have learned the lesson so that you can never forget nor escape it, you will have to go back to the earth and teach it to others; you will have to convert as many men to the truth of immortality as you have in the past deluded and misled by your false doctrines of materialism and death."

 

"And what if I refuse? You have said that will is free." "Do you refuse?"

 

"No, but what if I had?"

 

"Then, instead of growing and developing under the law of action and reaction, which in the East they call karma, you would have been its victim."

 

"I do not understand you."

 

"He is indeed a wise man," said the Teacher, "who understands the law of karma, which is also the law of cause and effect. But come. I will now take you to your new instructor."

 

Then, leaving me alone, the Teacher and his charge disappeared in the grey distance.

 

I remained there a long time, pondering what I had seen and heard.

 

LETTER XL

THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY

 

I AM about to say something which may shock certain persons; but those who are too fond of their own ideas, without being willing to grant others their ideas in turn, should not seek to open the jealously guarded doors which separate the land of the so-called living from the land of the certainly not dead.

 

This is the statement which I have to make: that there are many gods, and that the One God is the sum-total of all of them. All gods exist in God. Do what you like with that statement, dear world, for truth is more vital than anybody's dream, even yours or mine.

 

Have I seen God? I have seen Him who has been called the Son of God, and you may remember that He said that whoever had seen the Son had seen the Father.

 

But what of the other gods? you ask; for there are many in the world's pantheons. Well, the realities exist out here.

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What I you say again, can man create the gods of his imagination and give them a place in the invisible? No. They existed here first, and man became aware of them long ago through his own psychic and spiritual perception of them. Man did not create them, and the materialists who say that he did know little of the laws of being. Man, primitive man, perceived them through his own spiritual affinities with and nearness to them.

 

When you have read folk-tales of this god and that, you have perhaps spoken patronisingly of the old myth-makers and thanked your lucky stars that you lived in a more enlightened age. But those old story-tellers were the really enlightened ones, for they saw into the other world and recorded what they saw.

 

Many of the world's favourite gods are said to have lived upon the earth as men. They have so lived. Does that idea startle you?

 

How does a man become a god, and how does a god become a man? Have you ever wondered? A man becomes a god by developing god-consciousness, which is not the same as developing his own thought about God. During recent years you have heard and read much of so-called Masters, men of superhuman attainments, who have forgone the small pleasures and recognitions of the world in order to achieve something greater.

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Man's ideas of the gods change as the gods themselves change, for "everything is becoming," as Heraclitus said about twenty-four centuries ago. Did you fancy that the gods stood still, and that only you progressed? In that case you might some day outstrip your god, and fall to worshipping yourself, having nothing to look up to as superior.

 

Accompanied by the Teacher, I have stood face to face with some of the older gods. Had I come out here with a superior contempt for all gods save my own, I should hardly have been granted that privilege; for the gods are as exclusive as they are inclusive, and they only reveal themselves to those who can see them as they are.

 

Does this open the door to polytheism, pantheism, or other dreaded isms? An ism is only a word. Facts are. The day is past when men were burned at the stake for having had a vision of the wrong god. But even now I would hesitate to tell all that I have learned about the gods, though I can tell you much.

 

Take, for instance, the god whom the Romans called Neptune. Did you fancy that he was only a poetic creation of the old myth­makers? He

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was something more than that. He was supposed to rule the ocean. Now, what could be more orderly and inevitable than that the work of controlling the elements and the floods should be assumed by, and the work parcelled out among, those able to perform it? We hear much of the laws of Nature. Who enforces them? The term "natural law" is in every man's mouth, but the Law has executors in heaven as on earth.

 

I have been told that there are also planetary beings, planetary gods, though I have never had the honour of conscious communion with one of them. If a planetary being is so far beyond the daring of my approach, how should I comport myself in approaching the God of gods?

 

O paradoxical mind of man, which stands in awe and trembling before the servant, yet approaches the master without fear!

 

I have been told that the guardian spirit of this planet Earth evolved himself into a god of tremendous power and responsibility in bygone cycles of existence. To him who has ever used a microscope the idea need not be appalling. The infinitely small and the infinitely great are the tail and the head of the Eternal Serpent.

 

Who do you fancy will be the gods of the future cycles of existence? Will they not be those

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who in this cycle of planetary life have raised themselves above the mortal? Will they not be the strongest and most sublime among the present spirits of men? Even the gods must have their resting period, and those in office now would doubtless wish to be supplanted.

 

To those men who are ambitious for growth, the doors of development are always open.

LETTER XLI
THE DARLING OF THE UNSEEN

 

I HAVE written you before of one whom I call the Beautiful Being, one whose province seems to be the universe, whose chosen companions are all men and angelkind, whose playthings are days and ages.

 

For some reason, the Beautiful Being has lately been so gracious as to take an interest in my efforts to acquire knowledge, and has shown me many things which otherwise I should never have seen.

 

When a tour of the planet is personally conducted by an angel, the traveller is specially favoured. Letters of introduction to the great and powerful of earth are nothing compared with this introduction, for by its means I see into the souls of all beings, and my visits to their houses are not limited to the drawing-rooms. The Beautiful Being has access everywhere.

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Did you ever fancy when you had had a lovely dream that maybe an angel had kissed you in your sleep? I have seen such things.

 

Oh, do not be afraid of giving rein to your imagination! It is the wonderful things which are really true; the commonplace things are nearly all false. When a great thought lifts you by the hair, do not cling hold of the solid earth. Let go. He whom an inspiration, seizes might even—if he dared to trust his vision—behold the Beautiful Being face to face, as I have. When flying through the air one's sight is keen. If one goes fast and high enough, one may behold the inconceivable.

 

The other night I was meditating on a flower-seed, for there is nothing so small that it may not contain a world. I was meditating on a flower-seed, and amusing myself by tracing its history, generation by generation, back to the dawn of time. I smile as I use that figure, "the dawn of time," for time has had so many dawns and so many sunsets, and still it is unwearied.

 

I had traced the genealogy of the seed back to the time when the cave-man forgot his fighting in the strangely disturbing pleasure of smelling the fragrance of its parent flower, when I heard a low musical laugh in my left ear, and something

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as light as a butterfly's wing brushed my cheek on that side.

I turned to look, and, quick as a flash, I heard the laughter in the other ear, while another butterfly touch came on my right cheek. Then something like a veil was blown across my eyes, and a clear voice said:

"Guess who it is!"

I was all a-thrill with the pleasure of this divine play, and I answered:

"Perhaps you are the fairy that makes blind children dream of daisy fields."

"However did you know me?" laughed the Beautiful Being, unwinding the veil from my eyes. "I am indeed that fairy. But you must have been peeping through cracks in the door when I touched the eyes of the blind babies."

"I am always peeping through cracks in the door of the earth people's chamber," I replied.

The Beautiful Being laughed again:

"Will you come and have another peep with me this evening?" "With pleasure."

"You could not do it with pain if I were by," was the response.

And we started then and there upon the strangest evening's round which I have ever made.

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We began by going to the house of a friend of mine and standing quietly in the room where he and his family were at supper. No one saw us but the cat, which began a loud purring and stretched itself with joy at our presence. Had I gone there alone, the cat might have been afraid of me; but who—even a cat—could fear the Beautiful Being?

 

Suddenly one of the children—the youngest one—looked up from his supper of bread and milk, and said:

 

"Father, why does milk taste good?"

 

"I really do not know," admitted the author of his being, "perhaps because the cow enjoyed giving it."

 

"That father might have been a poet," the Beautiful Being said to me; but no one overheard the remark.

 

One of the other children complained of feeling sleepy, and put his head down on the edge of the table. The mother started to arouse him, but the Beautiful Being fluttered a mystifying veil before her eyes, and she could not do it.

 

"Let him sleep if he wants to," she said. "I will put him to bed by and by."

 

I could see in the brain of the child that he

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was dreaming already, and I knew that the Beautiful Being was weaving a fairy-tale on the web of his mind. After only a moment he started up, wide awake.

 

"I dreamed," he said, "that —— [the writer of these letters] was standing over there and smiling at me as he used to smile, and with him was an angel. I never saw an angel before."

 

"Come away," whispered the Beautiful Being to me. "From dreaming children nothing can be hidden."

 

We then paid a visit to the future mother of my boy Lionel. Oh, mystery of maternity! The eyes of the Beautiful Being were like stars as we gazed upon this other flower-seed, whose genealogy goes even beyond the days of the cave-man—aye, back to the time of the fire-mist and the sons of the morning stars.

 

"Come away!" said the Beautiful Being again. "To brides who dream of motherhood much also is revealed, and for this evening we remain unknown."

 

We passed along the margin of a river which divides a busy town. Suddenly from a house by the river-bank we heard the tinkle of a guitar and a woman's sweet voice singing:

 

"When other lips and other hearts Their tale of love shall tell…. Then you'll remember—you'll remember me."

 

The Beautiful Being touched my hand and whispered:

 

"The life that is so sweet to these mortals is a book of enchantment for me."

 

"Yet you have never tasted human life yourself?"

 

"On the contrary, I taste it every day; but I only taste it—and pass on. Should I consume it, I might not be able to pass on."

 

"But do you never long so to consume it?"

 

"Oh, but the thrill is in the taste! Digestion is a more or less tiresome process."

 

"I fear you are a divine wanton," I said, affectionately.

 

"Be careful," answered the Beautiful Being. "He who fears anything will lose me in the fog of his own fears."

 

"You irresistible one!" I cried. "Who are you? What are you?"

 

"Did you not say yourself a little while ago that I was the fairy who made blind babies dream of daisy fields?"

"I love you," I said, "with an incomprehensible love."

"All love is incomprehensible," the Beautiful Being answered. "But come, brother, let us climb the hill of vision. When you are out of breath, if you catch at my flying veil I will wait till you are rested."

 

Strange things we saw that night. I should weary you if I told you all of them.

 

We stood on the crater of an active volcano and watched the dance of the fire-spirits. Did you fancy that salamanders were only seen by unabstemious poets? They are as real—to themselves and to those who see them—as are the omnibus drivers in the streets of London.

 

The real and the unreal! If I were writing an essay now, instead of the narrative of a traveller in a strange country, I should have much to say on the subject of the real and the unreal.

 

The Beautiful Being has changed my ideas about the whole universe. I wonder if, when I come back to the earth again, I shall remember all the marvels I have seen. Perhaps, like most people, I shall have forgotten the details of my life before birth, and shall bring with me only vague yearnings after the inexpressible, and the deep unalterable conviction that there are more things in earth and heaven than are dreamed of in the philosophy of the world's people. Perhaps if I almost remember, but not quite, I shall be a poet in my next life. Worse things might happen to me.

 

What an adventure it is, this launching of one's barque upon the sea of rebirth!

 

But by my digressions one would say that I was in my second childhood. So I am—my second childhood in the so-called invisible.

 

When, on my voyage that night with the Beautiful Being, I had feasted my eyes upon beauty until they were weary, my companion led me to scenes on the earth which, had I beheld them alone, would have made me very sad. But no one can be sad when the Beautiful Being is near. That is the charm of that marvellous entity: to be in its presence is to taste the joys of immortal life.

 

We looked on at a midnight revel in what you on earth would call "a haunt of vice." Was I shocked and horrified? Not at all. I watched the antics of those human animalculae as a scientist might watch the motions of the smaller living creatures in a drop of water. It seemed to me that I saw it all from the viewpoint of the stars. I started to say from the viewpoint of God, to whom small and great are the same; but perhaps the stellar simile is the truer one, for how can we judge of what God sees—unless we mean the god in us?

 

You who read what I have written, perhaps when you come out here you will have many surprises. The small things may seem larger and the large things smaller, and everything may take its proper place in the infinite plan, of which even your troubles and perplexities are parts, inevitable and beautiful.

 

That idea came to me as I wandered from heaven to earth, from beauty to ugliness, with my angelic companion.

 

I wish I could explain the influence of the Beautiful Being. It is unlike anything else in the universe. It is elusive as a moonbeam, yet more sympathetic than a mother. It is daintier than a rose, yet it looks upon ugly things with a smile. It is purer than the breath of the sea, yet it seems to have no horror of impurity. It is artless as a child, yet wiser than the ancient gods, a marvel of paradoxes, a celestial vagabond, the darling of the unseen.

LETTER XLII
A VICTIM OF THE NON-EXISTENT

 

THE other day I met an acquaintance, a woman whom I had known for a number of years, and who came out about the time I did.

 

Old acquaintances when they meet here greet each other about as they did on earth. Though we are, as a rule, less conventional than you, still we cling more or less to our former habits.

 

I asked Mrs. —— how she was enjoying herself, and she said that she was not having a very pleasant time. She found that everybody was interested in something else, and did not want to talk with her.

 

This was the first time I had met with such a complaint, and I was struck by its peculiarity. I asked her to what cause she attributed this unsociability, and she replied that she did not know the cause, that it had puzzled her.

 

"What do you talk to them about?" I asked.

 

"Why, I tell them my troubles, as one friend tells another; but they do not seem to be interested. How selfish people are!"

 

Poor soul! She did not realise here, any more than she had on earth, that our troubles are not interesting to anybody but ourselves.

 

"Suppose," I said, "that you unburden your. self to me. Tell me your troubles. I will promise not to run away."

 

"Why, I hardly know where to begin!" she answered. "I have found so many unpleasant things."

 

"What, for instance?"

 

"Why, horrid people. I remember that when I lived in —— I sometimes told myself that in the other world I would not be bothered with boarding-house landladies and their careless hired girls; but they are just as bad here—even worse."

 

"Do you mean to tell me that you live in a boarding-house here?"

 

"Where should I live? You know that I am not rich."

 

Of all the astonishing things I had heard in this land of changes, this was the most astonishing. A boarding-house in the "invisible" world! Surely, I told myself, my observations had been limited. Here was a new discovery.

"Is the table good in your boarding-house?" I asked. "No, it is worse than at the last one."

"Are the meals scanty?"

"Yes, scanty and bad, especially the coffee."

"Will you tell me," I said, my wonder growing, "if you really eat three meals a day here, as you used to do on earth?"

"How strangely you talk!" she answered, in a sharp tone. "I don't find very much difference between this place and the earth, as you call it, except that I am more uncomfortable here, because everything is so flighty and uncertain."

"Yes, go on."

"I never know in the morning who will be sitting next me in the evening. They come and go."

"And what do you eat?"

"The same old things—meat and potatoes, and pies and puddings."

"And you still eat these things?" "Why, yes; don't you?"

I hardly knew how to reply. Had I told her what my life here really was, she would no more have understood than she would have understood two years ago, when we lived in the same city on earth, had I told her then what my real mental life was. So I said:

"I have not much appetite."

She looked at me as if she distrusted me in some way, though why I could not say.

"Are you still interested in philosophy?" she asked. "Yes. Perhaps that is why I don't get hungry very often." "You were always a strange man."

"I suppose so. But tell me, Mrs. ——, do you never feel a desire to leave all this behind?"

"To leave all what behind?"

"Why, boarding-houses and uncongenial people, and meat and potatoes, and pies and puddings, and the shadows of material things in general."

"What do you mean by 'the shadows of material things'?"

"I mean that these viands and pastries, which you eat and do not enjoy, are not real. They have no real existence."

"Why!" she exclaimed, "have you become a Christian Scientist?"

At this I laughed heartily. Was one who denied the reality of astral food in the astral world a Christian Scientist, because the Christian Scientists denied the reality of material food in the material world? The analogy tickled my fancy.

"Let me convert you to Christian Science, then," I said.

"No, sir!" was her sharp response. "You never succeeded in convincing me that there was any truth in your various fads and philosophies. And now you tell me that the food I eat is not real."

I puzzled for a moment, trying to find a way by which the actual facts of her condition could be brought home to the mind of this poor woman. Finally I hit upon the right track.

"Do you realise," I said, "that you are only dreaming?" "What!" she snapped at me.

"Yes, you are dreaming. All this is a dream—these boarding­houses, et cetera."

"If that is so, perhaps you would like to wake me up."

"I certainly should. But you will have to awaken yourself, I fancy. Tell me, what were your ideas about the future life, before you came out here.

"What do you mean by out here?" "Why, before you died!"

"But, man, I am not dead!"

"Of course you are not dead. Nobody is dead.

But you certainly understand that you have changed your condition."

"Yes, I have noticed a change, and a change for the worse." "Don't you remember your last illness?" "Yes."

"And that you passed out?"

"Yes, if you call it that."

"You know that you have left your body?"

She looked down at her form, which appeared as usual, even to its rusty black dress rather out of date.

"But I still have my body," she said.

"Then you have not missed the other one?" "No."

"And you don't know where it is?"

My amazement was growing deeper and deeper. Here was a phenomenon I had not met before.

"I suppose," she said, "that they must have buried my body, if you say I left it; but this one is just the same to me."

"Has it always seemed the same?" I asked, remembering my own experiences when I first came out, my difficulty in adjusting the amount of energy I used to the lightness of my new body.

"Now you mention it," she said, "I do recall having some trouble a year or two ago. I was quite confused for a long time. I think I must have been delirious."

"Yes, doubtless you were," I answered. "But tell me, Mrs. have you no desire to visit heaven?"

"Why, I always supposed that I should visit heaven when I died; but, as you see, I am not dead."

"Still," I said, "I can take you to heaven now, perhaps, if you would like to go."

"Are you joking?"

"Not at all. Will you come?"

"Are you certain that I can go there without dying?" "But I assure you there are no dead."

As we went slowly along, for I thought it best not to hurry her too swiftly from one condition to another, I drew a word-picture of the place we were about to visit—the orthodox Christian heaven. I described the happy and loving people who stood in the presence of their Saviour, in the soft radiance from the central Light.

"Perhaps," I said, "some dwellers in that country see the face of God Himself, as they expected to see it when they were on earth; as for myself, I saw only the Light, and afterwards the figure of the Christ."

"I have often wished to see Christ," said my companion in an awe-struck voice. "Do you think that I can really see Him?"

"I think so, if you believe strongly that you will."

"And what were they doing in heaven when you were there?" she asked.

"They were worshipping God, and they were happy—"

"I want to be happy," she said; "I have never been very happy."

"The great thing in heaven," I advised, "is to love all the others. That is what makes them happy. If they loved the face of God only, it would not be quite heaven; for the joy of God is the joy of union."

Thus, by subtle stages, I led her mind away from astral boarding-houses to the ideas of the orthodox spiritual world, which was probably the only spiritual world which she could understand.

I spoke of the music—yes, church music, if you like to call it that. I created in her wandering and chaotic mind a fixed desire for sabbath joys and sabbath peace, and the communion of friends in heaven. But for this gradual preparation she could not have adjusted herself to the conditions of that world.

When we stood in the presence of those who worship God with song and praise, she seemed caught up on a wave of enthusiasm, to feel that at last she had come home.

 

I wanted to take leave of her in such a way that she would not come out again to look for me; so I held out my hand in the old way and said good-bye, promising to come again and visit her there, and advising her to stay where she was. I think she will. Heaven has a strong hold on those who yield themselves to its beauty.