CHAPTER XXIII. LONELINESS.

 

It is not now my purpose to give my daily life in all its details, enough to say that every hour was filled with interesting events and episodes of all kinds; thousands of new-born spirits entered this Hall, and were here taught in the rudimentary branches of knowledge; went through much the same experience as I had, and similar to those which the reader has been made acquainted with. I visited my husband and children whenever I wished, and tried to do all in my power to shape events to bring them the greatest amount of happiness and du them the most good; still, my power at this time was very limited as far as they were concerned; my husband believed that death was the end; he taught my children to think the same; my baby girl joined me in a short time, and after remaining with me as long as was best for her, was placed in a school for infants whose ages corresponded with her own. Joey, and the two little girls already here, grew apace. I visited them daily, overlooking their welfare. Many people on earth may think that I ought to have had a home, taken my four spirit children to live with me, and waited until my husband and two boys joined me, so that we might all again be united in a happy family.

 

Reader, such are not truthful principles, and it is truth which is to be given in this writing.

 

First, then, I had not wisdom enough to educate my spirit children properly, as they must be educated in the highest principles possible, of love and wisdom. Greater wisdom than mine had founded schools of all descriptions and grades for the education of the young as well as the old, and Annie and Sigismund, being wiser than myself, had cast for me the future of my husband and two children left on earth.

 

My husband, believing that I was forever dead, gradually became resigned, and as the struggle of life went on with him my image faded from his memory: no matter how hard I might try to fan the flame, it would not burn: he was in the material. He soon found that it was very hard for a man alone, to take proper care of two little boys; he needed a wife, and soon found one. He was still a young man, and Annie had told me that he would live on earth with this wife for many years, and would not enter the spirit­world until he was old; that be would live with this wife many, many years longer than he had with me, and she also would bear him a number of children; then, asked Annie, pertinently:

 

"Whose husband will he be, yours or hers?"

 

This thought staggered me at first, for I was yet a babe in wisdom.

 

"Then," continued Annie, "you could not make a home all together, for your two boys on earth will live to be men, and have wives and children of their own; even your little ones here will soon be women, and Joey a man; their mother's love will not always fill the measure of their souls; a greater love than that of mother love awaits them."

 

A greater love than that of mother love? I cried in agony. "Can there be a love greater than that of mother love?"

 

"Certainly," she replied. A mother can be a mother for ever, but mother love alone will not fill the measure of her soul."

 

"Then am I indeed, bereft! My husband has already another wife; my children are growing rapidly into men and women, will have husbands and wives of their own; and you, even you, my sweet sister, have your husband—your Sigismund."

 

"Certainly," she said, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. "I have my Sigismund! Is not my love for him greater than mother love? and yet if I were the mother of a dozen children, his love would not interfere with mother love: his love rounds out and completes my being, and mother love would be wiser, grander, and more capable in consequence. A yearning, wandering spirit has not the wisdom of an angel, and, therefore, cannot do the same amount of good; besides, educational halls are not homes, and one half, of an angel cannot make a home, neither can one half soar into the regions of the blessed."

 

"Regions of the blessed?" I repeated. Where are the regions of the blessed, dear Annie?"

 

"We must first understand the meaning of the word blessed," she answered. "To be blessed is to be happy, is it not, my sister?"

 

"That is not the way I have comprehended it; have always supposed it meant to be blessed by God, or the Saviour, or even by the Virgin Mary."

 

"Well; if a personal God, and Jesus, or Mary his mother, were to lay their hands on your head and say, 'Blessed art thou, O Mary! Sit thou here by my right hand'; would it make you supremely blessed and happy to sit there for evermore, merely shouting praises, while the greater part of mankind went down to hell into the most horrible agony? We will say, for instance, your husband, and the two beautiful boys you left on earth; every human being has a mother somewhere, that would feel for her children precisely as you would."

 

"No; Annie. I am now far advanced beyond such ideas." "Well, then, is not blessedness happiness?

 

The regions of the blessed, mean the regions of the happy. Are you happy yet, dear Mary? Is there nothing left that you desire?"

 

"O Annie; how can you ask that question? I am very far from being happy, and am very, very lonely since Franz has another wife. I do not feel that it is right to call him by the name of husband, much less my husband: another woman now calls him by that endearing name; my two little boys can neither hear nor see me, and have actually forgotten how their mother looked; they now call that other woman mother; the most that I can do is to guard them from evil, as much as possible, by impressing their minds with truth, as far as I myself understand it; but earthly teaching is, at present, more powerful than all I am able to do for them. Annie, the gulf is not yet spanned for me."

 

"No; not yet. The gulf really has been spanned for acres, aye, acres upon ages; it is a condition and not a gulf. To all earthly minds that reach up into the spiritual and angelic, the gulf is spanned, always has been; spirits and angels have always communed with mortals, those whose minds have been open to receive them, and they have ever been ready to give wisdom, love and truth; but, until those whom you have left on earth, and those whom other mothers have left, are wise enough to understand truth, the gulf to them is not spanned; but to return to my former question: Why are you not blessed or happy, Mary? What desire or incompleteness do you feel within yourself?"

 

"O Annie! do not blame me when I tell you that I am lonely. I am nothing more to Franz now, or my two little boys on earth; my children here do not especially need my love or care; their mother's love is not the end and aim of their desires, and, as you say, other and stronger love will soon fill their souls: your love is greater for Sigismund than for me. Yes; I feel a sense of desolation, an incompleteness, a yearning desire for a love greater than I have ever known."

 

"And, it is high time that this desire became more definite," she said. "I have been waiting patiently until your soul should grow to this point. You have been doing for others all that you could, since coming here; the time has now come when you must take a step higher; you have outgrown your past condition, and all is well: Mary, you have thus far been but a spirit; the time is near at hand when you will become an angel."

"You often speak of spirits and angels, dear Annie, as though there were a distinction between them. Please tell me what the difference may be?"

"The difference is this," she replied: "a spirit is the undeveloped half of an angel. Every child is a spirit; all males and females, still disunited, are spirits or uncompleted angels, and they cannot become angels until they are developed up to that point where the), fully comprehend the true eternal union of the two in one, the two halves that make the perfect whole."

"By this you mean marriage, do you not?" "Certainly!"

"But I have been married, as you know."

"Are you very sure that you were ever united?" she asked.

"What a strange question, dear sister: was not Franz my husband?"

"Yes; he was your husband, as mortals wed; but is he your husband now?"

 

"O no!" I answered sadly, with drooping head: "he belongs to another, and I am bereft!"

 

"But, even if he were not married to another, would he yet be your husband? Would his soul and yours be the perfect and complete whole? Could you soar with him into the regions of the blessed, and be eternally happy in his society? Could he respond to every desire of yours, and fill you with bliss unspeakable? Mary, I shall now pierce your soul with a dart of truth. Franz was never your other self, can never be, will never be, and by the time he reaches this life you will be as far apart as the poles; your souls never even blended, although your marriage was as happy as most earthly marriages are; it is not your body now that is to be married, but your soul. There are many kinds of earthly marriages, but only one eternal or heavenly marriage, and it is of this that you must now learn."

 

"Are you and Sigismund eternally married?" Most certainly we are. We are one angel, and cannot be severed any more than a man can sever his right side from his left, or cut himself in two lengthwise and live. If a man cut his body in twain, behold! it perishes, but his spirit lives unsevered and complete, although his body perishes he cannot sever his spirit in that way; it is impossible: no more can spirits once united and made whole sever or cut themselves apart. Mary, it still remains for you to be thus united, but I shall tell you a still deeper secret. The other half of your own soul is in existence, and always has been, but it is not Franz; his soul and yours are not at all alike, and if you had remained very much longer on earth you would have been very unhappy and incomplete; the mother love would not have satisfied that part of your being any more than it does now. Mother love and conjugal love are entirely different in their attributes; one does not and cannot take the place of the other. True conjugal love endures forever; parental love is swallowed up within conjugal love, and when every mother's child has found its own other self and is united to it, thus becoming a completed angel, the mother love ceases. The love of the completed angel becomes universal love, or the love which mortals suppose to be God love. Do I make this clear to you, Mary?"