I sat with note-book on my knee, pencil in hand and The Man began:
“The air here on this hillside is full of health and healing. Physical
life you know is only possible in a right atmosphere. Add five
parts more of carbonic acid gas and the body is poisoned--ceases to
act--dies! Do you see the change in the constituent parts of the air?
No--your senses are not aware of any change at all if the poison is
introduced gradually; and so the use of the electric light in hotels
has worked a great saving of life among the rural population, for
the most frantic effort to blow it out proves futile; but in days
gone by scarcely a month passed in any city when some innocent and
ignorant individual did not lock the door, close the window, vitiate
his physical atmosphere, and glide off slowly, surely, into that sleep
which we call death.
“In the carboniferous period there was no atmosphere capable of
sustaining animal life. Vegetation was flowerless, and the trees
grew rank in swamps filled with poisonous miasma, death and gloom.
No flowers decked the earth or the tree tops, no fruit hung on the
branches, the song of birds was not heard and the only animal life was
made up of mollusks and the lower forms of animate existence. Gradually
the carbon in the air was absorbed by the vegetation, and sank beneath
the bending swale, and new trees grew, and others followed still, and
these sank and sank again, carrying down into the depths the material
that has formed the shining coal which warms and cheers our homes.
“Gradually this purifying process continued; more and many kinds of
plants sprang into being; these too absorbed the poison from the air,
fit preparation that earth might receive her king. Animal life appeared
in monster shape; fierce, awful forms, that crawled upon the land,
through tangled swamps, or swam the sea, thriving in the atmosphere of
slime--of gloom--of death. Gradually these nightmare forms have passed
away, leaving only grim remains and foot-prints here and there, from
which ingenious men have guessed the right proportion of the whole.
Finer and finer, better and better grows the teeming life of animal and
flower, until in words of prophet told,
“‘Sweet is the breath of morn,
Her rising sweet with song of earliest birds;
Pleasant the sun, when first on this delightful morn
He spreads his orient ray o’er herb, tree, fruit and flower,
Glistening with dew.
Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers,
And sweet the coming on of grateful evening mild.’”
The Man seemed musing to himself instead of talking to me, and I
thought he had been talking without special point, for he was now
silent, seated with back toward me, looking from the window; but it
came to me like a flash without his explaining in words that the
glimpse he had given of the history of the earth was only a summing
up of the history of the soul of man. I saw the hordes of barbarians
intent on conquest come streaming out from back of Assyria over into
Macedonia, into Greece. I saw the teeming millions of Persia sink
struggling beneath the sinking swale, and Greece come forth with men
noble, gentle, refined, compared with what men were before them. Rome
appeared, and I thought surely the carboniferous period was coming
back with its poisonous fumes when Cæsar passed over into Gaul, then
Britanny.
For centuries the earth gave forth no sign; but suddenly I saw a
woman--not an ideal one to be sure, but men lifted their hats to
the Virgin Queen, and with the Elizabethan age came a Spencer and a
Shakespeare.
Surely the flowers had begun to bloom, the woods were full of song of
birds, and I knew The Man was thinking of the What-Is-To-Be when he
slowly and softly repeated the verse I have written. He turned and
looked at me--our eyes met in firm, gentle embrace. Perhaps we both
smiled, and he knew I understood. I had made a great stride to the
front. He had spoken to me without words on a subject I had never
thought of. I had received the message and I felt that this was just
the beginning--only six o’clock in the morning.
I knew all he would say of atmosphere--that if body can not live
excepting in a right atmosphere, neither can spirit; for over and over
had I heard The Man say, “The material world is only symbol--behind
each physical fact is a spiritual truth. Each planet has its own
physical atmosphere varying according to its development.”
“Each person carries with him an atmosphere varying according to his
development,” The Man continued, “and this is why in the presence of
some person your spirit--that is, your better self--acts and lives. You
think great and exalted thoughts with this friend. Neither may say a
word, but your heart is full of love, benevolence and good-will. Now
the person may be a perfect stranger to you, and yet supply you with an
atmosphere in which your spirit may rejoice and sing. And again, who
has not felt in coming into the presence of others, that the air was
filled with the fumes of sulphur and carbonic acid. You become morose,
downcast, spiteful, discouraged. This is only because your spirit is
now in an unfavorable atmosphere. Get enough of these people who carry
with them a tainted atmosphere and keep you in their presence, you will
shrink away and die. Thousands upon thousands of men and women (women
suffer more than men from bad spiritual atmosphere, as they are more
sensitive and more spiritual) die yearly, and others drag their bodies
about--living corpses. See them on the street--these careworn haggard
faces. They die for lack of God’s sunshine--their souls are breathing
an atmosphere of hate, distrust, jealousy and cruel ambition.
“This accounts for the great number of cases of insanity among farmers’
wives. Living as many do, breathing only the atmosphere of those who
are sore labored and distressed--or who think they are, which is the
same thing, ‘For as a man thinketh so is he;’ meeting her husband only
in body and not in spirit, it is impossible for her to generate a
strong spiritual atmosphere of her own. So is it any wonder the soul
becomes weary, the body struggles, cries aloud, totters, reels and
falls?
“Good people meeting together, talking of good things, thinking
great thoughts, putting away all strife, envy and discord, create an
atmosphere favorable to spiritual growth, and make it possible for the
souls of all to expand and reach out, touching Infinity.
“Every wicked thought that flits across the mind is poisoning the
atmosphere which often souls must breathe, and every good thought
you think is adding to the total sum of good, and whether spoken or
unexpressed, enriches the Universe, for thought is an entity producing
a vibration too delicate for our dull physical senses to discern, but
our spirits are thus influenced.
“But this is enough. You must rest and then write out what I have told
you. What I will tell you next Sunday is of much greater import than
you have yet heard me speak.”