“It would take too long were I to endeavour to remind you of the perfect working out of every detail in the wonderful, inspired story—the comparatively slight stress laid upon the preparation of the little earthly body, miraculous though it was; the thirty years of silence and mystery in the deserts; then the triumphant heralding of the full-grown prophet: ‘There was a man, sent from God, whose name was John’: his very appearance exactly corresponding to the Old Testament descriptions of Elijah.
“You held that, though the actual physical body of a child is prepared by his parents, according to nature’s laws, his spirit—his ego—comes direct from God, entering the body, at the moment of birth, with the first independent breath the baby draws. ‘God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ This followed the forming of the body. ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it.’ You cannot return to a place, unless you have been there before.
“From this you argued that, though a certain amount of likeness to the parents might be inherited, the ego, being the essential part, would mould the body into the appearance it had worn before. A strongly developed spirit, rich with many former experiences, would probably stamp its own likeness so strongly on the bodily development that very little resemblance to the immediate parents would obtain. This is why, in brilliant, gifted children we see so little family likeness; whereas in families in which all are as alike as peas in a pod, you find a lack of gifts, a poverty of mental development, a want of originality, which point to no previous experiences. Having no individual ego of its own, the newly created spirit in its first existence, allows the body to become an exact copy of its parents. ‘Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.’
“With all reverence, you regarded the incarnation of our blessed Lord as throwing important light upon this point. From all eternity He had had an outward form. Man was created in His image. He was the pattern from which man was fashioned. In Old Testament records we find that He appeared many times upon earth and was seen of men: to Adam, to Abraham, to Joshua, to Gideon, to Manoah, to Daniel. These all knew Him, as we say in human parlance, by sight. The hosts of heaven knew Him and adored Him in His divinely glorious outward form. Now comes the time when He is to lay aside that glory and be born, very man, of the substance of an earthly mother. The little body, stainless and sinless, is prepared of a pure virgin through the operation of the Holy Ghost. ‘A body hast Thou prepared for me.’ At the moment of its birth, the great ego of the Son of God enters into it. Then ‘When He bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him’—the scene on Bethlehem’s hills. By degrees that body grows, moulded by the ego within, into the perfect likeness of what a body must ever be, indwelt by the great Ego—the Son of God. He is seen by angels, and recognised. He is seen by demons, and recognised. He is seen by Moses and Elijah on the holy mount and, undoubtedly, recognised. Then—the work of redemption accomplished—raised from the grave and glorified, He takes that same body, bearing the actual scars of crucifixion, back into the Heavens. Would their King return to them in wholly different guise?
“No; the ego, in its changeless consistency, has done its perfect work. Whether ‘in the beginning, with God,’ or born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem’s stable, or ascending triumphant ‘far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come’—He is, in outward appearance, as well as in nature and character, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
“From these sacred facts you deduced that any reincarnation of a fully developed ego would probably reproduce again the likeness to its previous bodily appearance, modified to a certain extent by a diversity of parents, less or more, according to the strength and richness of the ego.
“From this it follows that if one lived who still held the conscious recollection of a person in one incarnation, and if a second incarnation followed so quickly that a meeting on this earth could take place between the newly-arrived and the one who remembered, there would probably be recognition on the part of the latter.
“You also believed that the handwriting, with certain modifications, would be the same; handwriting being so closely allied to character, when allowed free development.
“You believed that the sub-conscious mind is an eternal thing, and holds stored within it every detail of every episode in every incarnation, be they many or few. But the conscious mind and memory, being dependent upon the growth and development of the actual physical brain, knows and remembers the happenings of that body’s life, only. The sub-conscious mind cannot be drawn upon consciously; but sometimes there springs up from it, into the conscious mind, a haunting memory of previous existence: ‘I have been there before! I have done this before!’
“Love being so largely a matter of the sub-consciousness, lovers are quick to find and to recognise one another, when they meet again reincarnate. This accounts for the sudden instinctive attraction known as ‘love at first sight.’ It is, in reality, two faithful lovers hailing one another with joy and delight by the unconscious means of the sub-conscious memory. After marriage this sub-conscious memory may become an exquisite certainty, adding a richness to the bliss of newly-wedded love.