IV
The friend I have called Mr Harry Denton, during his psychic researches, came, as many others have done, very strongly under the influence of "Imperator," the chief of the Stainton Moses controls.
I knew that this was the case, especially during the last three or four years of my friend's life, and I always rather resented the fact, for the limitations of Imperator have always appealed to me so strongly, as to dim, perhaps unduly, his undoubted claims to appreciation.
I have read many of the private Stainton Moses' records (thanks to my friendship with the executor, with whom these journals were left), and in all those referring to Imperator's communications, there was to my mind the same note of cock-sureness and mental tyranny.
There was too much of finality and self-assertion, too much of "Thus saith the Lord," about Imperator's remarks for my rebellious soul. I could never be strongly impressed by any personality, however admirable, that so palpably exacted allegiance and unquestioning obedience. These must be the unconscious tribute to the Genius of Holiness, as to any other sort of genius; never an enforced levy upon us.
So at least it seems to me. Certainly I would not escape one sort of priestcraft to set up another in its place, whether the niche be filled by Mrs Besant or Mrs Eddy or Mr Sinnett, or any other fallible fellow-creature. Not even Imperator can strike me as infallible; and his own evident belief in that direction does not affect the question.
It seemed to me rather to be deplored that Mr Denton, with his wide outlook and cosmic conceptions, should fall so strongly under any special influence, even that of the admirable Imperator!
So I was curious to know what his views were upon this subject from the other side of the veil. I will now leave him to speak for himself.
H. D.—You want me to tell you just my position about the Imperator group before and since I passed to this side? That is easily done. Remember, the teaching I got through Imperator was practically the first spiritual teaching I ever had—the first I mean, of course, that I could assimilate, because it appealed to my reason, as well as to my sense of the fitness of things—and therefore I can never feel sufficiently grateful to him and his group; and I see that they can teach many who would not be amenable to a more distinctly spiritual appeal.
Imperator is a great force in his way; a sort of plough that goes over the hard, caked-up earth and throws it open to the sunshine and rain and all Nature's beautiful influences, to all the possibility of Divine influences on the corresponding sphere.