It may be worth our while to inquire how this extremely modern doctrine came into being, and if we can solve the problem, it may reflect light upon the genesis of other doctrines very much older and equally erroneous.
There is something so startling, so unexpected, in the phrase, "There is no death," that we are quite safe in assuming that it did not originate in the mind of a mortal. In fact, one would be obliged first to disown his mortality before he could utter it with any consciousness of speaking the truth. If, then, the words have come from the Beyond, it would appear that some super-mundane intelligence has been promulgating error. But let us not be too hasty. Let us remember that in our grandfather's time the great majority of people looked upon death as the termination of existence. It was an impenetrable darkness. Those who claimed to know anything different were so few, and their evidence was so mysterious, as to have a scarcely perceptible effect on this portion of our race. Death had come to mean annihilation, and when the age-long dictum, shutting the two worlds apart, was removed, those spirit-teachers who were commissioned to scatter the darkness were obliged to use expedients. Laying aside their own understanding of the word death, and taking up the erroneous meaning attached to it by those whom they wished to reach, they sent out this incisive denial, There is no death. The paraphrase would be, There is no such death as you believe in, which was the truth, and had the effect of truth upon the minds of those who heard it, lifting them out of the darkness, flashing upon them, light. The word was a medicine of wonderful effect, but it was not intended as a food, and spiritualists of to-day who make it a part of their daily diet are most seriously injured thereby. Who that has ever attended the average séance but can recall the careless trifling, the insensate levity, of many while waiting for the hour. By their conduct they seem to say, What is death more than a mere journey to another country? Or a séance, what is it more than a telephone office? Most startling will be the event to such as these.
CHAPTER VIII.
But it is time that we took a comprehensive view of this outer world which lies beyond the domain of sense.
What is the most striking difference between that world and this one? I answer, the world we are now living in is a material world, which to understand most thoroughly we must acquire a knowledge of the properties of matter. This we begin to do in earliest childhood by the use of our senses, and this we continue to do, to a greater or less extent, as long as we live, calling into play the reason, highest sense of all, as soon as it is developed; and by the use of this, the royal sense, with the others as its servitors, we may arrive at a very thorough comprehension of the world of matter, so far as its relation to our needs is concerned.
On the other hand, the world that lies before us is, above all else, an immaterial world, using the phrase to denote an almost entire absence of matter, but not in the least to indicate any absence of reality. No, for this future life is a reality more positive in its character than the foundations of the pyramids, and its manifestations, being neither more nor less than the manifestations of living beings, can only be understood when that fact is kept in mind. They do not lend themselves to the inspection of the curious, these denizens of another life, but when conditions favor, they take hold of human instrumentalities and wield them with a power and skill that defy all resistance for the time, and leave on all who are present an ineffaceable mark.
It may be objected that this statement is incapable of proof, that, of all who have crossed the line between life and death, none have returned to bring positive evidence of the existence of such an unknown country, inhabited in such a way. The contrary is asserted, and while facts do not need the bolster of argument, whoever is in possession of a fact can present arguments relating thereto tending to throw light upon it. It is asserted by those who claim to know, of whom the writer is one, that an inhabited domain is in immediate touch with the earth, although not discoverable by any of the scientific instruments of investigation, such as the telescope, the microscope, or the spectroscope, nor yet by the surgeon's scalpel.
The camera, however, which may be called an instrument of record, has, at certain times, produced evidence which has excited a vast amount of argument pro and con.