“But the first ray had struck home at last—the battle had at last begun. Each side had to prepare for the long fight, in which the atom of humanity turned the scale of equal-balanced powers. And so because woman was the first to receive what man could not understand it came about that he looked down on her, and treated her with contempt as a household drudge and worse. It was but another little jest of the great powers of Evil, turning all good to their own account, and instead of woman becoming the acknowledged influence to lead man to higher things, she sank under the stronger power of Evil for the most part, and delivered up the tiny ray of light to him—second-hand as it were, like the Apple in the Garden. It was but natural. The strongest gained and the weak went to the wall.
“But gradually, as century followed century in endless routine, the change began to show itself. True, every weapon of ours was met by a counter weapon from our brother spirits, yet slowly, inch by inch, the great fight was fought, the mystery unfolded.
“And at last intellect broke on cunning. Intellect is not a gift of ours. It comes from the other side. It was forced on them by us, though, since they did not give it till it could act as a slur to our teaching. Wisdom they have never given; it comes from us alone. Still for all that our progress was slow and uncertain. In the first place, we could not tell what had attracted humanity to us, because in structure they were but little different from the other animals—at one time not at all. It took long ages to solve the riddle, and it occupied the undivided attention of some of our wisest spirits.
“At last we discovered that the nucleus of each was a spiritual jewel set like a skeleton of empty cells. These cells, in the early ages, must always have remained empty, for otherwise they would have become noticeable, which they were not. But as the ages passed away we began to find that in some cases some of these cells at least were filling. It was a very wonderful structure, though simple. Every cell was bound to be filled with one of two things (if it filled at all)—Good or Evil. This was the soul—the thing that man has talked about so greatly, the thing for which we fight and which is so precious to us, forming our brightest jewels, and the seeds from which the after life is sown. When the soul is pure and free from every stain we receive it into our own spiritual bodies when death steals on the flesh. And as the Father of the Spirit we form those seeds within ourselves to our own natures. Then from us they pass into the essence of spiritual love and light, the purest element of spirit; such as my wife. And these are those gracious, loving mothers, without whose sweet care and love and wisdom in building up such tender life our labours would be lost. Since at the best the soul is but a crude thing, even when purest, as compared with things of heaven, and of itself would die and never germinate, having no strength to form itself. Indeed, who ever yet, however free from sin, felt themselves fit to step from earth to heaven even by death? For the long rest must come—the pure cleansing, the healing strength, the quickening spirit—to drive away the harshness and the shadow.
“But I have made a digression to explain. I must return to the earth’s history. I said our progress was slow and uncertain; but in eternity the time goes by without respect to feeling, it neither drags nor quickens. Hundreds, nay, thousands of years elapsed before we could make our power felt at all. The earth could not understand us. It was wrapped in the veil of mystery and the chain of slavery, and was blind and deaf to all influence from without. We were alien to it—strangers, ignorant, and, by the law of conquest, weak, for the world was not our own. Moreover, as you will perceive if you care to look into its history, the whole thing reads more or less as a farce, a jest of the Godhead, as indeed it was.
“Whenever good rose up it was rejected, scorned, despised and mocked till it grew old, and then respectability being born with age it was received and converted into evil. Good men died, egged on by screeching multitudes to death, themselves egged on by devils of inferior order, who had chosen evil rather than good. And there the farce and tragedy were again repeated. They rewarded evil with the effects of evil—as they said—bringing about all that torture and disrupture of the spirit, which, like the undying worm the Saviour spoke of, must writhe and twine until its appointed day. Moreover, this suffering and this great curse are due to us, they say. For had we been content to let man live his length of days without knowledge of good or evil, he would never have known pain, and passed away in happiness like summer mist.
“At last we made an agreement at another conference, and it was this.
“We had known that as years rolled by and the empty cells became capable of being filled they had on death descended to hell, there to be emptied or built into hideous shape according to their fulness. Now we demanded that each soul not completely given up to evil (or almost so) might, when emptied, return again to earth, for on some our light had shone, and it meant that this last ray went to swell the enemy’s spoils and weakened us, since it was giving up part of our being. They agreed to this, and then the after suffering began. Hell, previously, had been but the dark shadow, except to those trained to its menial service, who had wilfully steeped themselves in sin and shame.
“It was a bold, it may seem a cruel stroke, as it had taken us long to fathom this little riddle of growing evolution. Heaven is often depicted as a land of endless hallelujahs, but some of us have no taste that way. It needs an absorbing genius of wisdom (which is simplicity) even to understand it. And presently, after these years of failure and disappointment, another little step to success was reached. In hell they give devil’s medicine and devil’s punishment. And it is an excellent cure of its kind. They never punish lightly. If a thing is worth punishing they punish, if not they let it pass, to the winds, perhaps, if it is no use. And so those souls which had to be reclaimed, redeemed if you like it better, suffered their punishment and then returned for the second time to earth. But the cloud of mystery again surrounded them. They remembered, yet remembered not. They were, and are, those more sensitive and higher natures for which the world can often not account. They have had a forgotten experience, whose effects in part remain.
“And it was with these that our best work was done; unless when they dispatched them from their prison they wrought in them a gift. And then the task was well-nigh hopeless. For they felt the presence of the Godhead in themselves and were blinded by the mist. They longed for something higher to respond to themselves, and on the dull cramped earth could find nothing, because the gift had not come from us. But if they sought and strove to find the light we ne’er withheld from any, then they became our truest servants, and the gift given in hell came to heaven and distinguished good from evil as it were, and dwelt with us.