SOME MODERN INSTANCES.
Even in this incredulous age, and amidst the full whirl of our
nineteenth-century civilization, in spite of the dogmatism of our
science and the deadly dullness of our protestantism, instances of
intervention inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint may still
be found by any one who will take the trouble to look for them; and in
order to demonstrate this to the reader I will briefly epitomize a few
of the examples given in one or other of the recent collections of such
stories, adding thereto one or two that have come within my own notice.
One very remarkable feature of these more recent examples is that the
intervention seems nearly always to have been directed towards the
helping or saving of children.
An interesting case which occurred in London only a few years ago was
connected with the preservation of a child’s life in the midst of a
terrible fire, which broke out in a street near Holborn, and entirely
destroyed two of the houses there. The flames had obtained such hold
before they were discovered that the firemen were unable to save the
houses, but they succeeded in rescuing all the inmates except two--an
old woman who was suffocated by the smoke before they could reach her,
and a child about five years old, whose presence in the house had been
forgotten in the hurry and excitement of the moment.
The mother of the child, it seems, was a friend or relative of the
landlady of the house, and had left the little creature in her charge
for the night, because she was herself obliged to go down to Colchester
on business. It was not until everyone else had been rescued, and the
whole house was wrapped in flame, that the landlady remembered with
a terrible pang the trust that had been confided to her. It seemed
hopeless then to attempt to get at the garret where the child had been
put to bed, but one of the firemen heroically resolved to make the
desperate effort, and, after receiving minute directions as to the
exact situation of the room, plunged in among the smoke and flame.
He found the child, and brought him forth entirely unharmed; but when
he rejoined his comrades he had a very singular story to tell. He
declared that when he reached the room he found it in flames, and most
of the floor already fallen; but the fire had curved round the room
towards the window in an unnatural and unaccountable manner, the like
of which in all his experience he had never seen before, so that the
corner in which the child lay was wholly untouched, although the very
rafters of the fragment of floor on which his little crib stood were
half burnt away. The child was naturally very much terrified, but the
fireman distinctly and repeatedly declared that as at great risk he
made his way towards him he saw a form like an angel--here his exact
words are given--a something “all gloriously white and silvery, bending
over the bed and smoothing down the counterpane.” He could not possibly
have been mistaken about it, he said, for it was visible in a glare of
light for some moments, and in fact disappeared only when he was within
a few feet of it.
Another curious feature of this story is that the child’s mother
found herself unable to sleep that night down at Colchester, but was
constantly harrassed by a strong feeling that something was wrong with
her child, insomuch that at last she was compelled to rise and spend
some time in earnest prayer that the little one might be protected from
the danger which she instinctively felt to be hanging over him. The
intervention was thus evidently what a Christian would call an answer
to prayer; a Theosophist, putting the same idea in more scientific
phraseology, would say that her intense outpouring of love constituted
a force which one of our invisible helpers was able to use for the
rescue of her child from a terrible death.
A remarkable case in which children were abnormally protected occurred
on the banks of the Thames near Maidenhead a few years earlier than our
last example. This time the danger from which they were saved arose not
from fire but from water. Three little ones, who lived, if I recollect
rightly, in or near the village of Shottesbrook, were taken out for a
walk along the towing-path by their nurse. They rushed suddenly round a
corner upon a horse which was drawing a barge, and in the confusion two
of them got on the wrong side of the tow-rope and were thrown into the
water.
The boatman, who saw the accident, sprang forward to try to save them,
and he noticed that they were floating high in the water “in quite an
unnatural way, like,” as he said, and moving quietly towards the bank.
This was all that he and the nurse saw, but the children each declared
that “a beautiful person, all white and shining,” stood beside them in
the water, held them up and guided them to the shore. Nor was their
story without corroboration, for the bargeman’s little daughter, who
ran up from the cabin when she heard the screams of the nurse, also
affirmed that she saw a lovely lady in the water dragging the two
children to the bank.
Without fuller particulars than the story gives us, it is impossible to
say with certainty from what class of helpers this “angel” was drawn;
but the probabilities are in favour of its having been a developed
human being functioning in the astral body, as will be seen when later
on we deal with this subject from the other side, as it were--from the
point of view of the helpers rather than the helped.
A case in which the agency is somewhat more definitely distinguishable
is related by the well-known clergyman, Dr. John Mason Neale. He
states that a man who had recently lost his wife was on a visit with
his little children at the country house of a friend. It was an old,
rambling mansion, and in the lower part of it there were long, dark
passages, in which the children played about with great delight. But
presently they came upstairs very gravely, and two of them related
that as they were running down one of these passages they were met by
their mother, who told them to go back again, and then disappeared.
Investigation revealed the fact that if the children had run but a few
steps farther they would have fallen down a deep uncovered well which
yawned full in their path, so that the apparition of their mother had
saved them from almost certain death.
In this instance there seems no reason to doubt that the mother herself
was still keeping a loving watch over her children from the astral
plane, and that (as has happened in some other cases) her intense
desire to warn them of the danger into which they were so heedlessly
rushing gave her the power to make herself visible and audible to them
for the moment--or perhaps merely to impress their minds with the
idea that they saw and heard her. It is possible, of course, that the
helper may have been some one else, who took the familiar form of the
mother in order not to alarm the children; but the simplest hypothesis
is to attribute the intervention to the action of the ever-wakeful
mother-love itself, undimmed by the passage through the gates of death.
This mother-love, being one of the holiest and most unselfish of human
feelings, is also one of the most persistent on higher planes. Not only
does the mother who finds herself upon the lower levels of the astral
plane, and consequently still within touch of the earth, maintain her
interest in and her care for her children as long as she is able to see
them; even after her entry into the heaven-world these little ones are
still the most prominent objects in her thought, and the wealth of love
that she lavishes upon the images which she there makes of them is a
great outpouring of spiritual force which flows down upon her offspring
who are still struggling in this lower world, and surrounds them with
living centres of beneficent energy which may not inaptly be described
as veritable guardian angels. An illustration of this will be found in
the sixth of our Theosophical manuals, p. 38.
Not long ago the little daughter of one of our English bishops was out
walking with her mother in the town where they lived, and in running
heedlessly across a street the child was knocked down by the horses of
a carriage which came quickly upon her round a corner. Seeing her among
the horses’ feet, the mother rushed forward, expecting to find her very
badly injured, but she sprang up quite merrily, saying, “Oh, mamma, I
am not at all hurt, for something all in white kept the horses from
treading upon me, and told me not to be afraid.”
A case which occurred in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Burnham Beeches, is remarkable on account of the
length of time through which the physical manifestation of the
succouring agency seems to have maintained itself. It will have been
seen that in the instances hitherto given the intervention was a matter
of but a few moments, whereas in this a phenomenon was produced which
appears to have persisted for more than half an hour.
Two of the little children of a small farmer were left to amuse
themselves while their parents and their entire household were engaged
in the work of harvesting. The little ones started for a walk in the
woods, wandered far from home, and then managed to lose their way. When
the weary parents returned at dusk it was discovered that the children
were missing, and after enquiring at some of the neighbours’ houses the
father sent servants and labourers in various directions to seek for
them.
Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful, and their shouts unanswered;
and they had reassembled at the farm in a somewhat despondent frame
of mind, when they all saw a curious light some distance away moving
slowly across some fields towards the road. It was described as a large
globular mass of rich golden glow, quite unlike ordinary lamplight;
and as it drew nearer it was seen that the two missing children were
walking steadily along in the midst of it. The father and some others
immediately set off running towards it; the appearance persisted
until they were close to it, but just as they grasped the children it
vanished, leaving them in the darkness.
The children’s story was that after night came on they had wandered
about crying in the woods for some time, and had at last lain down
under a tree to sleep. They had been roused, they said, by a beautiful
lady with a lamp, who took them by the hand and led them home; when
they questioned her she smiled at them, but never spoke a word. To this
strange tale they both steadily adhered, nor was it possible in any way
to shake their faith in what they had seen. It is noteworthy, however,
that though all present saw the light, and noticed that it lit up the
trees and hedges which came within its sphere precisely as an ordinary
light would, yet the form of the lady was visible to none but the
children.