At every festival which we devote to them they rise up; they float about every monument which we raise to them; they listen to every song with which we praise their deeds. A life germ for a new art! How antiquated had these old dramas become, produced over and over again to the weary spectators. Now all at once, above the ground floor with its expanse of old onlookers, there is revealed, as it were, an encircling realm from which a higher company is seen to be looking down, and straightway it becomes the highest aim of men to grow into the likeness of those above rather than those below, to realize, not the desires of those below, but of those above.
The scoffers scoff and the churches contend. It is a question of a secret, irrational to some, rational to others, both because to one and the other a greater mystery remains unrevealed, from the disclosure of which comes quite clearly and obviously the rock upon which the mind of the scoffer and the unity of the church have been wrecked. For it is only a supreme example of a universal law in which they discern an exception to and above all laws.
Not alone through the consecrated bread and wine does Christ reach His followers at the Holy Supper; partake of it in pure remembrance of Him, and He, with His thought, will be not only with you, but in you; the more deeply, as you hold Him more closely in your heart; the more vitally, with so much the more strength will He fortify you; yet, without communion with Him, the sacrament remains but meal and water and common wine.
CHAPTER VI
THE longing in every man to meet again after death those who were most dear to him here, to have communication with them, renewing the old relations, will be satisfied in a more perfect degree than was ever anticipated or hoped for.
For in that life those who were united here by a common spiritual bond will not only meet but will have become one through this bond; there will be for them a unified soul belonging with a common consciousness to both. For already, indeed, are the dead with the living, as are the living themselves, bound together by countless such common ties; but only when death loosens the knot and removes the body which envelops every living soul, will there be added to the union of consciousness the consciousness of union.
Every one in the moment of death will perceive that he still has a place and belongs in the company with those gone before, from whom through common interests he has received help, and so will not enter into the third world as a strange guest, but like one long expected, to whom all with whom he was here united through a common faith, knowledge, and love, will stretch out their hands to draw him to themselves as a partaker of their existence.
Into similar deep fellowship shall we also enter with those great dead who long before our time wandered through the second stage of life, and upon whose example and teaching our own spirit was moulded. So, whoever here lived wholly in Christ will there be also wholly in Him. Yet his individuality will not be extinguished in the higher one, but only gain in power from it, and at the same time reinforce the strength of the higher. For those souls which have grown together as one through their moments of sympathy, gain force each from the other for itself, and at the same time confirmation as individuals through the union of their diversities.
So, many souls will mutually strengthen each other in the greater part of their nature; others are connected only by a few corresponding qualities.
Not all these ties based upon certain spiritual experiences in common will be permanent, but they will be so when they are within the realm of truth, beauty, and virtue.