XXXI SERVICE

 

"WHY is it, Joan," I asked my wife one evening, "that you no longer complain of the impracticalness of Stephen's theories?"

 

"They no longer strike me as impractical," she answered. "But," I said, quoting words of her own, "if when we die we don't, the fact is just so."

 

"And that's true," she answered. "But in the mean time we must live here. From Stephen I have learned something about workaday living."

 

A night or two later Stephen reached the climax of what it has pleased him to call his revelation, and that climax did, indeed, concern the most practical of workaday matters— service.

 

"The one excuse for living," Stephen said, "is leavening through service.

 

"I bring you this fact, that spiritual laws parallel material laws, both being degree expressions of the one reality. Take an engine, and note how the service of the given cog to its neighbor is really service to the entire machine. The cog is a good cog only as it serves the whole of which it is a part. In as far as it pursues ends unrelated to the purposes of the entire machine it is a bad cog. Now, if you will apply your knowledge of the cog—literally—to the spiritual adjustments in the midst of which you live, you will have learned the truth.

 

"The scheme of things is illustrated by man's organizations, which are but unconscious glimpses of the all-embracing oneness. Take an efficient business concern. The departments are intrusted to various heads. Under the supervision of these department heads further details are intrusted to individual employees. Each of these individual employees is absolutely responsible for his given work. If he fails, he lowers the worth and perfection of the business as a whole.

 

"Now suppose consciousness is the business; the degrees of consciousness, the heads of departments; the employee, the individual developer of quantity or quality, according to the plane. You can see that perfection of the whole can be obtained only through the individual.

"Christ preached this, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'

 

"Man through the centuries has gloried in this saying of Christ. Yet the literal truth contained in the words has by most men been only glimpsed. There is but one reality. There is but one 'me,' of which 'the least of these' and the greatest are but parts. Do it to another and you have done it to the whole; serve the whole of which you are a part and you serve yourself."

 

Stephen paused, and asked me to touch Joan's wrist. "Read Joan what I have said, he requested, "and say to her for me that my theories have sought, not only to make the survival of personality after death a reasonable thing, but also to make reasonable, in the light of assured survival, the ethical ideals mere faith has recommended to men."

 

And when I did as Stephen asked Joan said: "I have demanded something practical. I think, Darby, Stephen has given it to me. If we are all just partners in the common business of a one reality, itself imperfect, but developing toward perfection, then the only really practical thing in the world is service."

 

And so in the end the practical Joan was satisfied. "Stephen," I said, when communication was resumed, "Napoleon certainly developed much quantity. His difficulty must have been low quality."

 

"And why do you say that?" asked Stephen.

 

"Because," I answered, "he gave so little of service."

 

"His quality could not have been low," replied Stephen, "considering the very great quantity he developed. What do you know of the purpose he served? Much you can know if you will trace the results that sprang from causes he set in motion. Much, perhaps, you will never know; the skeins of human organization are many, and it is difficult to trace a single thread."

 

Puzzled, I mentioned a contemporary, a great developer of quantity, who has seemed to climb to success over the shoulders of those weaker than himself.

 

"The system that produces such men," answered Stephen, "is bad—just as the French Revolution of itself was bad, yet from that bad much good has sprung. Understand, I do not approve of the many negatives in the character of men like Napoleon and him you have just mentioned. Yet there is sure to be much of the positive in them; hence they serve, despite their selfishness. The man you mention, your fellow-countryman and mine, at least has created work for many hands."

"Then," said I, "it would seem that service need not be proclaimed. One may serve without dedicating himself, as they say, to his fellow-men? One may serve unconsciously?"

 

"But surely," answered Stephen. "Take the scientist, cold, recluse, indifferent apparently to the humanity about him, but who gives his life for the sake of proving a new theory to add to the store of earth's knowledge. He has given of himself to the oneness of the body of the people, to the common knowledge of the generations. He has developed quantity; he has rendered service.

 

"Take the maker of a saucepan. In as far as that man makes a serviceable saucepan—though consciously he labors but for hire—he, too, in his degree gives himself to the oneness of the people. He, too, has developed quantity; he, too, has served.

 

"Listen! It is not the kind of service that matters. It is the service itself.

 

"Nor must service be patently what the world calls utilitarian. The writer of the great poem has just as surely done the whole of consciousness a service as the founder of a hospital. The artist, the musician, the builder of an ocean liner, or the maker of a saucepan, each has served.

 

"Man, in his emotional hypotheses, has lost sight of the divers kinds of service that the world requires. Happily these divers kinds of service spring quite naturally from the divers degrees of men. For it has been given to every soul to have a conception, termed by the Psalmist the still, small voice" (Stephen is in error here; it was Elijah who heard the still, small voice, not David), "of his individual place in the scheme of things and his individual aptness for developing and gathering unto himself that quantity which his endowment of quality, itself the voice, dictates. And yet—to the narrow interpretation of service that has been fostered by dogmatic teaching add the rush of modern life, add the luxuries that have become necessities, the false standards set for all men, whether they be able to measure up to them or not, and do you wonder that more than one man has closed his eyes to that inner sight and his ears to the inner call?

 

"Service is the badge of quality quantitatively fulfilled."

 

"Shall Christ's parable of the talents be cited?" I asked.

 

"But surely," answered Stephen. "You will recall how to one man there had been given five talents, to another two, and to another one. The gift to each was according to his responsibility.

 

"And you will remember how that man to whom, because his quality was high, there had been given five talents, fulfilled his quality. When he returned to his master not five talents, but ten, the master said, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.'

 

"And likewise did the man to whom had been intrusted two talents prove a good and faithful servant, returning to his lord not two talents, nor yet ten, as his fellow-servant had done, but four. And he, too, was promised rulership over many things.

 

"But the third man to whom, because his quality was not so high as the others', there was intrusted but one talent, hid that talent in the earth, totally failing in quantitative development. Him the master called a wicked and slothful servant.

 

"Now is it not plain that the degrees of quality were represented in each of these three men, that from each was expected service according to his individual qualitative degree? From the first man much was expected; and, as he delivered the goods, so he was rewarded. And the second man also made delivery of the goods, still according to quality. Though he served not so greatly as the first man, he served with equal faithfulness. But the third man failed even in the little that was justly expected of him. His service was faithless.

 

"Now I told you a bit ago that modern life has falsely set one standard for all men, whether they are able to measure up to it or not. What I meant is apparent from the parable. It is as though the man of one-talent responsibility had been expected to return to his master ten talents. It is as though ten talents were the sum of service expected from all men, regardless of whether their quality be of five-talent, two-talent, or one-talent capability.

 

"And so the emphasis of my speech to you regarding service is laid, not on the big service that the few may do, but on the small service that the many may do."

 

I took advantage of a pause to ask, "And if the ability be given a man to serve consciously, to efface himself and give greatly, dedicating his heart and mind and hand to a service unbounded, what then?"

 

"This, then," answered Stephen, "if such a one fail, greater is his failure than that of the man who hid his solitary talent, for greater is his achievement if he succeed. It is given to a man to render such service only because his quality has been reborn from a degree of consciousness that through ages of struggle has lifted itself out of unconscious recognition of the oneness of things into understanding. And if this man, himself at the ladder's top, chooses to ignore his opportunity to make the ascent easier for those still on the bottom rungs, he brings to consciousness on graduation only that which was vouchsafed him at birth—his quality. True, his quality, even so, is unempaled; but true also it is that consciousness sits judge of self, and still must the degree be reborn, until quantitatively fulfilled. Individually that man has lost the opportunity earth existence offered.

 

"But listen! King or beggar, each is a cog in the great wheel. The exhorter on the street corner, the martyr at the stake, the dispenser of wide charity, each gives to the whole of consciousness a gift no better than he who every day performs the simple, lowly task, immediately important in his individual existence. A deed of heroism by a man whose soul is fired with understanding means no more as done by that man than a dirty tramp's sharing of the half of his last loaf with a pal. Nor do such men claim heroism for great deeds. Rather they say: 'It was nothing. I saw the thing had to be done—so I did it.' And this is the point, their quality is such that they recognized the need.

 

"Service, the badge of quality quantitatively fulfilled, is the simple process of living fully in one's appointed place."

CONCLUSION—THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

I

 

IF Stephen is real, if he is what he purports to be, then the probability is that the things he has told Joan and me are, in the main, true.

 

"In the main," I say; because, however truthful the general outline of Stephen's philosophy, the chance of error in detail must not be overlooked. Coloring, to use Stephen's own term, must be reckoned with.

 

By coloring we have thus far meant the unconscious distortion of a message by the receiving station. Are there other circumstances that make for inaccuracy of communication? There are, just as surely as a communicated thought requires a material medium of transmission.

 

Convinced, in the days of the ouija-board, that neither Joan nor I guided the tripod, our hands seeming rather to follow it, I asked Stephen for an explanation. He said:

"I confess my inability to make clear to you how this ouija­board is operated. Here, as elsewhere, your limited understanding sets bounds to the knowledge I can bring you. There is involved in communication a psychology and physics new to you concerning which I can tell you little, because of lack of earth terms."

 

Yet repeatedly I raised the question. At the risk of being none too coherent, I submit the following, which summarizes various remarks Stephen has made relative to the material medium employed in transmission of a message:

 

There is a refined form of energy, called by Stephen magnetic consciousness, through the medium of which he is able to impress his thought on Joan's subconscious mind, in some such fashion as I am able to impress my thought on her conscious mind through the medium of atmospheric vibration. But this, we have seen, is not enough; communication results only on release of Stephen's message from Joan's subliminal. The force used in the case of the ouija-board to release the message from the subconscious is the same force originally used to convey the message, though a transformed variety. And the transformation, Stephen has led us to believe, is accomplished by Joan's own subconsciousness.

 

Manifestly such a statement means little until such time as the scientist's physical experimentation discovers and defines the energy Stephen merely predicates. The statement is made here only for the purpose of suggesting the delicate physical adjustments that go to make the mechanism of communication—a mechanism beside which the fine adjustments of a telephone or wireless appear but gross affairs.

 

The success of telephone communication depends on the perfection of the telephonic mechanism. If the connection is imperfect, the message is confused. And so it is, Stephen says, with communication between persons on his plane and persons here on earth; the connection, so to speak, may be good, bad, or indifferent.

 

Therefore, the version of Stephen's philosophy that I have been able to record may contain inaccuracies not only because of mental coloring attributable to the receiving station, but also because of physical defects in what might be called the line of magnetic consciousness, over which Stephen, handicapped by "trouble," could but do his best to make himself understood.

 

Indeed, all conversation I have held with Stephen concerning the manner of communication, or the form of psychic phenomena generally, has tended to impress upon me how ever-present is the possibility of error as the result both of coloring and of defects in the mechanism of transmission.

 

I once asked if the word control, as used in mediumistic parlance, stood for any actual fact.

 

"In a way, yes," Stephen answered. "A receiving station can take the message of a degree the equal of itself and, with less understanding, that of a degree higher than itself. It sometimes happens that high degrees here, hoping to be understood the better by an earth station of low degree, will convey a message through some one here of a degree close to the station's. But such messages are often greatly colored, like a story too frequently repeated.

 

"Many stations speak of their 'controls' and think that only the 'control' can communicate with them directly. This is, of course, an emotional hypothesis. You can understand now how it came about."

 

"Is the idea of materialization also an emotional hypothesis?" I asked.

 

"Not necessarily," Stephen answered. "There are two types of materialization. What might be called true materialization means simply that the range of the earth degree's vision has momentarily broadened, usually, but not always, under the stress of emotion or nervous excitement. We here have nothing to do with that; we are simply seen by the earth degree. But as a rule the interpretation the earth degree puts on the thing it has seen is a colored one.

 

"The other type of materialization is rather difficult for me to explain. There are certain degrees of men who are able to project the true form of their consciousness, of which I have spoken to you, in such a way that it becomes partially dissociate from their bodies. It is then seen as a type of matter, apart from the body as you know it. This projection is entirely physical or natural. We here do not cause it. We might, however, take note of its occurrence; and, if the person happened to be a receiving station, we might by impressing our thoughts on his subconsciousness control the appearance or look of the projected form. Such an undertaking would be so involved that no satisfactory result could be definitely predicted."

 

"How could you control the appearance of the projected form?" I asked.

 

"By controlling the thought of the person from which the form had been projected," Stephen answered. "The projection tends to shape itself to the cast of the projector's thought.

 

"Joan has spoken of our 'making pictures.' By this is meant that by taking thought I can alter the appearance of my material form. If it were possible for you to see me at this moment, I would seem to be dressed in clothes just as you are. That is the 'picture' I would make for your understanding, and, incidentally, I suppose, give you a misconception."

 

"What about table-tippings and raps?" I asked.

 

"These, too, are physical phenomena," Stephen replied, "resulting from partial projection of the true materiality of men's consciousness. These we here can and do use for the purpose of communication, just as we use the ouija-board.

 

"In mental communication the receiving station must constantly differentiate between his own thoughts and those of the communicator; failure to so differentiate results in coloring. Coloring of this sort is less likely when we utilize such obviously physical phenomena as raps and table-tippings. The difficulty here is that the degree exhibiting the physical phenomena is generally of relatively low understanding."

 

Another source of error lies in what Stephen calls "cross­currents." Occasionally messages have come that were not only meaningless to Joan and me at the time, but remained so. This happened more frequently in the days of the ouija-board than after the mental method was developed. Yet only recently a personality appeared that insisted on talking about "digging in the woods," the name "Cora" being associated with the "digging" phrase. Such communicators speak a word or two, and as suddenly as they came are gone; they may later reappear, but as a rule do not. In commenting on this sort of thing, Stephen has said:

 

"A wireless station often picks up messages not intended for it. In the same way our messages are often picked up by earth degrees for whom they are not intended. It sometimes happens in such cases that the receiving station gets parts of one communication jumbled up with parts of another. These cross­currents are unavoidable, and the coloring they cause is quite as annoying to us as to you."

 

I have reproduced these conversations not with the thought that they offer satisfactory explanation of the various psychic phenomena discussed. My purpose has been to suggest the complex possibility of inaccurate communication. If Stephen is real, Joan and I recognize the chance that not all of his speech, as recorded in this book, is necessarily as he would have it.

 

II

 

If Stephen is not what he purports to be, if he is, for instance, the bizarre creation of subconscious mind, then the things he has said must be judged wholly on their own merits.

 

Whatever he is, Stephen has stated a new argument for survival after death, new, at least, to Joan and me. And this argument in no way depends on Stephen himself being a personality that demonstrably has survived death. Briefly, it is this:

 

Evolution represents both qualitative and quantitative development. Yet all change or transformation effected in this world of ours, all earthly development, is quantitative; here no qualitative development occurs. Therefore the actuality of evolution can be explained only on the hypothesis that a world of qualitative development does exist.

 

Let me state the matter concretely. Evolution indicates, beyond any doubt now generally entertained, that man developed out of life less than man. Man constitutes a quality differing from that of his origin. How was the development of that new quality possible in this world which obviously fosters quantitative development only? Is there any escape from the assumption that there exists a world, or mode of being, that admits of qualitative development?

 

Or put the matter this way: Life, the general whole of living things, stretches back continuously, the theory of evolution indicates, to a less-than-life origin. How did life, in quality differing so radically from its non-life origin, come into being? As the result merely of quantitative development? This is impossible. Life is the result of a development both quantitative and qualitative. Yet, Stephen says, earth permits quantitative development only. If so, the fact of biological evolution forces us to predicate a mode or plane of existence that admits of qualitative development.

 

And thus Stephen's qualitative and quantitative analysis of consciousness offers a state, a somewhere, for the continuation of life after what men have called death.

 

But it may be asked: Granted the necessity of the qualitative plane, does it follow that the individual man enters the qualitative mode of being as an individual? May not qualitative development be the activity of cosmic, rather than individual, consciousness, personality as such being lost at death in the great reservoir of the whole?

 

Stephen's answer to the latter question has been, No. He points out that cosmic consciousness, conceived as the destroyer of individuality, is a thought contrary to all of man's experience. "Yet," he has added, "there is an element of truth in the theory. It is a monistic glimpse, colored by emotional reasoning."

Joan and I take this position: If the existence of the qualitative plane should prove to be really indicated, as Stephen says it is, knowledge would have been advanced greatly—simply as the consequence of men reasoning from the basis of things as they are. The new knowledge would definitely indicate some sort of survival after death. In seeking to determine the nature of that survival men could scarcely reject the basis of reasoning that already had profited them so much—things as they are here and now. If quantitative development is effected through individuality, why imagine qualitative development is otherwise brought about?

 

I have stated now what seems to Joan and me the fundamental point of Stephen's philosophy. Is his argument for survival reasonable in the light of men's already acquired knowledge, even though he himself may be other than a living dead man?

 

And now is his philosophy reasonable as a whole?

 

To be truly reasonable a philosophic system must not only present consistently such data as it takes into consideration; it must also be able consistently to incorporate any fact new to it. In other words, the reasonable philosophy is not merely a system, but a method.

 

Joan and I have found Stephen's philosophy a method. We call it a method because it seems to act as a harmonist in every instance where thought has taken opposite paths, each path, according to the mind that travels it, seeming to be the true one.

 

If, for example, you who read are a mechanist, you believe that the universe is the result solely of mechanical forces, that by mechanical forces it is operated, that you yourself as a part of the universe are a mechanism, intricate, yet for all that just so much machinery. Modern science has leaned, with some show of right, to this view-point.

 

Mechanism requires no God. The universe is, the mechanist asserts; its laws are. Jab a man with a pin and he winces; destroy the equilibrium of a tower and it falls. To explain either the wincing flesh or the tottering tower, there is need of no God outside the machine. In all that vast automaton called the universe there is neither design nor aim.

 

Mechanism furnishes a sure basis for science. It asserts the inviolability of physical law. Under its rule Joshua may command, but the sun will not heed. Drought-stricken lands may cry out to the Most High for rain, but the skies do not hear. At a certain temperature the vapors of the atmosphere will condense; then and not until then will precipitation occur. To expect otherwise is like heating water to 212°

 

Fahrenheit and then relying on prayer to prevent its boiling. Mechanism exalts law and banishes superstition.

 

On the other hand, if you are a teleologist, you believe that the universe is the result of an intelligent plan, that an intelligence guides its operation, that you, a part of the universe, are yourself an intelligence capable of conceiving a plan and purposefully executing it. Religion, with great show of right, asserts this viewpoint.

 

To teleology there is indicated a supreme intelligence whose aims the universe carries out. Surely man did not plan the universe. Indeed, who planned man? God, the supreme architect of all, teleology answers. With God, says the teleologist, all things are possible. Primitive teleology believes God can make the rain to fall when and where He will. Nor is the modern teleologist daunted by the formulas of meteorology. Long have we known, says he, that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. If, in granting a prayer for rain, He chooses first to drop the temperature of the atmosphere, then condense its vapors, wherein has He lessened the marvel of His omnipotence?

 

Teleology exalts faith in moral and spiritual values and in the ultimate good. Also it invites ignorance and trembling superstition.

 

Here, then, are contradictory thoughts, mechanism and teleology, both of which appear to be true, but neither of which wholly satisfies.

 

Is Stephen's philosophy mechanistic? Yes. Consciousness is. It is all there ever was or will be. A blade of grass, obeying innate impulse, seeks the light. Human consciousness, impelled by just itself, seeks supremacy. The universe created and creates itself. There is no deus ex machina, no extramundane God.

 

Is Stephen's philosophy teleological? Most assuredly. Consciousness, the all, is a whole of parts. Each part is in process of development, and the degrees of development severally attained by the parts are many. In one degree behold the blindly struggling blade of grass. And then behold man, the free-will degree, who, though he lives in a mechanistic body, has achieved for his self of self the liberty of choice.

 

Men, it is true, do not always choose to choose. We are carried upward toward supremacy not altogether by choice, but partly by an inherent must. Yet, to quote Stephen:

 

"What a blessed philosophy, how superior to your old religion of damnation! How much more encouraging is the knowledge that somehow, somewhere, over a long road or a short one, that ultimate and supreme mansion in the  house of consciousness holds a room for every soul!"

 

Which, now, in the light of man's own knowledge, is the most reasonable—the mechanist, the teleologist, or Stephen?

 

While you are thinking it over let me quote again from Stephen:

 

"Some persons reading this revelation might feel that prayer, which has been of comfort to so many of the human race, is without worth. This is far from true. The voiced longing of a man's soul must of necessity have effect upon that whole of which he is a part.

 

"I have told you that God is Consciousness, the whole. I have also told you that you might, if you wished, translate God as the Supreme Degree of Consciousness, for the Supreme of Consciousness is, in fact, what your old categorical definition of God states—love, love all-wise, all-knowing, all-free. Now if the Supreme be love, can the turning of the individual soul toward it be useless? Prayer, the result of a definite desire on the part of the highest degree of consciousness known to earth, will beyond doubt influence a degree as high as itself. How much the more will it influence a higher degree, to whom increased understanding has brought increased sympathy and increased freedom, increased power.

 

"To whom shall you pray? Call him God, Buddha, Mohammed. Cry to the Virgin Mary or the saints. It is all one—Consciousness, the Reality.

 

"If you have a task to perform and it is more than you can alone accomplish, you turn to your neighbor. And you say to him, 'Come and help me with my harvest and I in turn shall give my aid to you.' You know the result; the task is accomplished.

 

"So in prayer the individual soul, or the national soul, turns to the great, neighboring hosts, calling upon those who have gone on to the higher life and more perfect understanding, and asks aid. And if that aid asked is positive, if it is not evil, but good, consciousness in and of itself is lifted up, and like a friendly neighbor answers the prayer.

 

"Take the present world conditions. Germany prays. France, England, Belgium—the knee of each is bended. The individual prayers of Germany, the crying out of a broken heart for ease, for comfort in suffering, are heard. Germany's national prayer, the negative prayer of tyranny and vengeance surely you know enough of the philosophy of the universe to realize that such a prayer, in the evolutional order of things, must go unanswered. But the prayer that asks for progress, for mercy, for development, for freedom, must have the same influence on the ultimate outcome as that exerted by the peculiar force you know as enthusiasm, which makes it possible for a handful of men to become victors over vast armies."

 

"Stephen, Stephen," I interrupted, it you are drifting into the contention that faith can remove mountains."

"Not drifting," Stephen answered, "but steering a course. I would have you understand that faith, the vision of things to be, does remove mountains—daily."

 

"Perhaps so," I argued. "But isn't it true, under the terms of your philosophy, that all positive things must come to pass, though man utter never a prayer?"

 

"It is a psychological fact," Stephen replied, it and because it is a psychological fact it is also a natural law, that just as surely as man can aid in the consummation of material forces, so, too, can he aid in the consummation of spiritual victories.

 

"There was with earth-consciousness once a great American who is reported to have said, in more wisdom than he knew, 'God helps those who help themselves.' Yet prayer, the outlet of the human heart, the individual cry for aid, is the recognition of the oneness of all things; and the One answers. Moreover, formulation in words of a desire is of itself a definite aid in the attainment of the thing wished for. For a clear thought is a thing, a mighty thing, while a subconscious longing is only an emotion."

 

And now let us approach the contradictions of teleology and mechanism from a new angle. Are you a Stoic or an Epicurean?

 

If you regard this life as a vale of tears, an evil thing to be borne with bravely but in the bearing despised, you are a Stoic. Mortify the flesh, for it is vanity; be indifferent alike to pleasure and pain; and great will be your reward in the final summing up of things.

 

Contrariwise, if you believe that, because there is no final summing up of things, the satisfaction immediately at hand, however fleeting, should be seized, you are an Epicurean. Your shibboleth is, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Pain the world holds, to be sure; well, then, avoid it. Pleasure, the advantage even of the moment, is the end and aim of life. Carpe diem. We'll be a long time dead.

 

Doubtless as your mood varies you are one day a Stoic and the next an Epicurean. For it is the very oddity of such irreconcilables as free will and determinism, teleology and mechanism, Stoicism and Epicureanism, that in both man recognizes truth. And it is the happiness and reasonableness of Stephen's philosophy that it fits into the truth of each.

 

With the Stoic Stephen asserts that the life earth knows is, as compared with the life beyond, dark and narrow. But with the Epicurean he asserts that it is a thing above price. For by reason of the opportunity earth life offers for quantitative development, we take to the future life the requisite of qualitative development.

 

But you say such an assertion is not new, except, perhaps, in the novelty of its form; for centuries Christianity has been preaching a like sermon. In reply to a similar statement by me, Stephen said:

 

"I only repeat the essentials of Christianity and make them understandable, so that men, having learned to ignore its dogmas, may exalt its truth. I seek only to make the creed of service, freedom, and immortality reasonable in the light of the knowledge men have acquired since Christ passed from their sight.

 

"Reread Christ's words. A little you will reject. Much you will accept—all in fact that is essential; and you will know the why and wherefore of your acceptance.

 

"Remember this: Christ is. He is in the world of men to-day just as truly, just as personally, as when He lived with men. He is more truly in your world to-day than then; for now He is supreme."

 

If Stephen is not Stephen, what of the Stephen method? Is it reasonable?

III

 

This Stephen of ours comes and says, "I wish you would take down this letter."

 

And here is the letter in part, intimately personal matter being withheld:

 

DEAR MOTHER,—This story that I have told Darby and Joan, as they choose to call themselves, will, of course, come into your hands…. There are several things I want to say to you.

 

The first is I am. I am just as the book says I am, free to work, free to succeed, free to love you as I always did. Man's consciousness, which is the creative genius of earth, is more potential than his creations. The bridges we build and the books we write live after us, so you say. That is true, but what is truer is that we who created them live after they have crumbled to dust.

Just this, dear mother: I live.

 

And the next thing I want to say to you is that I know you wonder why it was not to you I came instead of to Darby and Joan. This was because you are not what we call a station. Just as all people cannot be musicians and painters, so all people do not have the peculiar quality that makes it possible for us here to use them as communicating stations. You have read the book. You will know what I mean by this.

 

Earth still has much to learn of life; her eyes axe sealed to sights, her ears to sounds. But many there are who have had great glimpses of the truth that there is no real death, that death changes only the form—attribute of consciousness, and that consciousness itself, the you of you and the me of me, goes on into a more wonderful development, where all the dreams we have dreamed and all our heart's desires and longings are fulfilled….

I am with you, following you from room to room as I used to do, longing for your smile. You must smile again…. I am only here, just gone into a new life, a freer country, the same place that you are coming to.

With all my love,

"STEPHEN."

 

And here is another letter lately dictated by Stephen:

 

DEAR DARBY AND JOAN,—I want to thank you for your patient work with me all these long months. I want to thank you for your tolerance of mind, and even your natural curiosity, that allowed you to overcome your skepticism as to that in which you did not believe and which you did not understand.

 

The work has been trying and long. But I am sure you will feel repaid in the quietude it may bring to even a few.

You have told me that my philosophy has taken from you all fear; that alone is worth while. Fear is the greatest enemy of the human mind. It causes more suffering than any other one thing. This, the banishing of fear, is what I want to do for others besides yourselves; this is why, in the hour of earth's hideousness, I was allowed to tell you these truths.

 

I am not good at putting things. So in closing I shall just say— that I am your friend, that I shall always be with you, and that you will be with me.

Faithfully yours,

 

"STEPHEN."

And now it is scarcely to be supposed that Joan and I have passed through the experience this book relates without having formed a definite opinion as to whether Stephen is or is not Stephen. It is one thing to say that during the experience our opinion shifted, now denying Stephen's reality, now affirming it. It would be quite another thing for us to assert that this shifting opinion failed in the end to stabilize itself. To withhold that final belief from you, the reader, would be unfair. So here it is.