The range of subjects coming within the scope of my title is so great
that I cannot undertake an exhaustive treatment of any within reasonable
limits, but I hope to supply a few keys by the use of which reverent
minds of any and every school of thought may be able to enter upon
successful explorations.
The amount of evidence necessary to convince a sincere inquirer that
this earth-life, important as it is, is but the threshold of existence,
is not very great, but it must needs be adapted to the individual mind.
To obtain this evidence is worth more to any man or woman than any other
purely mental acquirement can be.
For it is a mental acquisition, the possession of which is related to,
and has a natural influence over, every other we can call our own. Yet
it has not, in itself, any transforming effect upon the life and
character.
When such a result follows, other influences share in the work. He who
has lost friends that were a part of his life, the mother whose children
have fainted away into the world of mystery, the philosopher who has
given the strength of his years to the search for truth, are all
profoundly affected by the discovery; while those in whom the affections
are less strongly developed, or whose mental powers give them no
adequate perception of the profound and far-reaching relations of this
great truth, may hold it as lightly as they do their dreams, and receive
from it no more benefit than they do from them.
Whoever is capable of analyzing a thought or the expression of a
thought, can find evidence of the world beyond strewn along his path on
every hand.
All figurative expressions are merely unconscious devices to give to
thought somewhat of the objective reality it possesses to dwellers in
the Beyond. For instance:
"There are names which carry with them something of a charm. We have but
to say 'Athens,' and all the great deeds of antiquity break upon our
hearts like a sudden gleam of sunshine; 'Florence,' and the magnificence
and passionate agitation of Italy's prime send forth their fragrance
towards us like blossom-laden boughs, from whose dusky shadows we catch
whispers of the beautiful tongue."
Is it doubted that the Athens of which the author speaks will be found
embodied in forms real and tangible in that other world which takes to
itself all that attains to immortality in this one?
Why do authors speak of a _cold_ greeting, of _walls_ of reserve,
_rivers_ of kindness, or the _sunshine_ of love?
They may not be able fully to explain, but expressions like these point
to features of the landscape in that world where the inner becomes the
outer and takes on those garments of reality which belong to it by
right.
The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen
are eternal, and when we have broken connection with our temporal
bodies, or attained a true and perfect control over them, we may enter
into this knowledge, to find it truly a heavenly inheritance.
But it is not alone through figurative and poetic language that we may
discover evidence of the existence of an immaterial world.
The broad fields of philosophy and literary criticism receive their
light, their water, and their air, outside the world of sense almost
entirely. Scarce anything in these domains has any causative relation
with the world of matter.
For instance, take this passage from one of the magazines:
"But what does the work of higher criticism really mean? It means,
briefly, as applied to the Old Testament, the revision of certain
traditions concerning the structure, the date, the authorship of the
books--traditions which had their origin in the fanciful and uncritical
circles of Judaism just before, or soon after, the Christian era."[B]
A careful analysis of the meaning of this will show that it begins and
ends in the domain of abstract thought. To use a figurative expression,
it does not touch the ground anywhere. If our bodies and their needs, if
the earth and its products which minister to those needs, if, in brief,
the material universe really comprised the _all that is_, such a thought
as is contained in the passage quoted could never have come into being.
For it has no practical relation to things as such.
Yet there is nothing especially obscure about it. It was written for men
and women of ordinary intelligence, who are supposed to take an interest
not merely in sacred truths, which, indeed, are not dealt with in the
article from which I quote, but the structural forms containing those
truths.
All of which, rightly interpreted, points to another phase of existence,
which is either near to or far from us according to the stage of our
development, a phase which may become measurably real to us even before
we enter fully upon it, and which has the strongest possible claims upon
our attention.