Astronomy teaches us that our earth, together with the other members of
the solar system, is traveling through space, at the rate of eight miles
per second, around a distant center, in an orbit requiring many
thousands of years to complete.
We learn from this that we are constantly changing our place in the
universe, and are entering new etherean fields, not only every year, but
every day and hour. Since we are unconscious of this motion, it may seem
to have no vital relation to us, yet, by a knowledge of the fact, we may
gain an insight into the wonderful resources of this great machine for
recording events.
Every thought and feeling of which we are conscious makes its mark, not
only upon our bodies, both the outer and the inner, but also upon the
ether through which we are passing. I am alluding not to the words in
which we clothe or perhaps conceal our thoughts or feelings when
communicating with one another, but to the thought-current itself at the
point of origin.
This would be the same in the minds of all men of equal intelligence,
without regard to nationality; and those beings who are able to read the
marks left by these currents would find them written in unmistakable
characters, and of a size proportionate to our rate of travel, on the
fair ethereal page.
In one respect we are at an enormous disadvantage in our relations,
conscious or unconscious, with the denizens of the Beyond.
Our thought-motions compared with theirs are like an ox-team to a
locomotive. It is a fact, and there is no use in quarreling with it. On
the other hand, through our association with matter we are able, without
permanent injury, to bear oppressions of the spirit which would be death
itself to them; and those among them who would take delight in insulting
us are deterred from doing so by our insensibility to the stinging
thought-current. We ourselves would not insult a post for being one.
These oppressions of spirit, or depressions, as we blindly call them,
are a part of the system by and through which we are made to manifest
what manner of person we are; and our blindness as to the real meaning
of the life we have come into possession of, our persistent mistaking it
for an end, instead of a means to an end, brings it to pass that the
tests we undergo as to our fitness for this or that position in the
real though hidden life that awaits us all, are real and genuine tests,
which they could not be, to their full extent, if we clearly understood
at the time just what was being done. Every thoughtful man and woman
looking back over life can discern how this or that decision has been a
turning-point leading on to unexpected success or paving the way to
disaster or defeat. When the test is complete, some inkling of its
meaning often dawns upon us, and we resolve to be on guard next time,
and then perhaps we start off on some rainbow chase, only to discover
that we are the prey of delusion once more. Then, perhaps, we get angry
and curse the whole machine as the product of some stupid blunderer,
thereby avoiding the confession of any mental obliquity on our own part.
Not all of the delusions of mortality are of a kind that lead to such a
result. Some have been imposed upon us by our risen brothers of the
other sphere, and have held sway over our minds, as they did over our
fathers' minds, and over their fathers' before them, none of us living
long enough on the mortal side, or obtaining sufficiently clear
independent light, to enable us to become free. The shaking off of the
fetters of this mental bondage is a special characteristic of our own
day; and those who have listened to the torrents of eloquence poured
from the lips of the young mediums upon this subject, know that this
work, the necessity for which, as I have indicated, is largely due to
other-world intelligences, is now being forwarded from the same quarter
with tremendous power. Verily, there must have been a revolution in the
heavens, or this would not be. And such, indeed, is the case. The
tremendous power of an organized hierarchy under the controlling
influence of a single mind so prominently in evidence here, is without
a counterpart on the other side to-day, although the sins against
humanity which have been charged against the priesthood of past ages
should more properly be laid at the door of their invisible inspirers,
then in the height of that power which is no longer theirs. To-day the
enemies of racial progress are to be sought for on earth, where the
intoxicating dreams of power without responsibility have found lodgment
and worked their corrupting influence in the minds of not a few of our
brothers, who seem to forget that they are still members of the race
they are seeking to enslave, and that their responsibility for misusing
the power entrusted to them will be accounted all the greater in
consequence.