DO SPIRITS CARE FOR THEIR EARTHLY
BODIES?
As a rule the exceeding change in
surroundings at death eclipses all thoughts and wishes in connection
with the earthly body. Yet there are exceptions, and lingering delicacy
of feeling. It is regarded usually as a cast-off garment, and no longer
a part of self. Our feelings toward the deserted shrine is the result of
ages of tradition, and because we can only perceive with our senses the
ruin left us.
In the days of the Pharaohs the
belief in the final return of the spirit to the body, and the
resurrection of the latter, made it imperative to
preserve it with greatest care. The Greeks
considered it the height of impiety
to leave their dead on the field of battle unburied, for then the
spirits wandered on the banks of the nether world until the burial.
The Judgment Day, transferred from
Egyptian to Christian theology, with the idea of physical resurrection,
has preserved this superstitious regard. If the dead are to arise at the
sound of the trump of doom, it will be
pleasant for families and friends to stand grouped together, and it would
indeed be lonesome to awake
out of the grave among howling savages.
But Spiritualists accept none of
these childish myths. We believe and know that death is the final
separation of the spirit from the body. That body goes back to the
elements from which it came. Its particles enter again into the cycle of
organic life; to the spirit it is no more than in
outgrown garment. Friends may
treasure it as the only tangible and visible
object between them and the silence
which gathers over the tomb, and love finds relief in this last blinding
homage, yet the freed spirit regards
the broken body as the butterfly does
the shell of the chrysalis from which
it has escaped. The physical body is
being constantly renewed; and the especial form from which it departs is
no more its personality than the many others it has discarded atom by
atom.
Our affections are gratified by
bringing the remains of our beloved home, even if only a few crumbling
bones remain. Why should we, when those departed ones care nothing for
the dissolving house of clay? I write
this with a heart full of sympathy
for those whose dear ones rest in foreign
soil, or lie on the floor of the
deep, deep sea; and I write for their consolation. One comfort is
bestowed—they who die and are buried far from home never seem dead to
us. Not until we see the wasted form, and with reverent care consign it
to the tomb, do we realize the event: or we may, after distant
Journeying, stand by the neglected mound, thrown by strange hands over
the beloved form, and through our tears become conscious of our loss.
