CHAPTER XI.
It will readily be seen that to take firmly the position that realities may be devoid of materiality involves a great deal, and those who endeavor to prevent this thought from taking root in any particular mind are apt to hold up before him examples of the immaterial which are not real. Most dreams are of this nature. Their confused outlines make temporary impressions on the memory and are then forgotten. But we have not to do with such as these. We recognize that real things may be material, such as certain houses, lands, or mountains, and that unreal things may be immaterial, like passing dreams just spoken of; but the immaterial which is none the less real is what we bring into view. And if we are ready to admit, or to go further and declare, that reality and materiality are not necessarily conjoined, we are then ready to give a fair hearing to the statement that a real but immaterial world, inhabited by real but immaterial beings, is in closest relations with our own.
These real but immaterial beings, because they are real and intelligent, are possessed of the primal attributes of all intelligent beings: they have memory, feeling, emotion, will.
In power they differ widely from each other, and in their essential character there are as many shades of difference as with mortals.
Let us speak first of their power. This is mostly exercised in their own field, that of the immaterial, yet to suppose that it is any the less real in its effects upon our lives is to forget how small a part our senses directly play in influencing our motives. The end and object of our efforts may be to obtain the means to gratify our senses or those of our friends, but the process through which we are obliged to work is so complicated, it involves the play of so many forces, it brings us into relations with so many people, each with his own plans and purposes, that we are continually making decisions based upon what we consider as probable, rather than certain, results. This is the opportunity of the spirits, and we often discover that all our efforts have simply tended to the advancement of others, while we are left in the lurch. The man who keeps his temper under such circumstances may be favored by the receipt of a thought-message. It enters his mind as ideas do, with a flash, and if he is wise he will carefully elaborate it into words. I have been working for myself only, bending everything as far as possible to my own enrichment. Others have been doing the same. What right have I to complain if they have done with me, by their superior power and foresight, what I have tried to do with them? None at all.
Morally we are on the same level. Let this misfortune be a lesson to me. Henceforth I will at least make an effort to do as I would be done by.
As he makes this resolution, a warm glow suddenly pervades his being. He feels at once lighter and stronger, and then perhaps he does a little thinking for himself. "If I believed in angels, I should say that they were near, and touched me then; I never felt anything like it." Little does he suspect the truth, that the whole idea which he so carefully elaborated in his mind had been flashed into it from without by an angel-friend, and that when it had borne its natural fruit in a good resolution, it became possible for the same friend to convey to him a touch of her own delight.
It may be objected that illustrations like these prove nothing as to the source of the experience; that to deny that invisible intelligences so play upon men is as rational, or more so, as to say they do. But we are not limited to such comparatively indefinite evidence. For nearly fifty years it has been permitted, or commanded, or both, that these invisible beings should demonstrate the reality of continued existence, and they have been doing so in a great variety of ways. For particulars, reference is made to the periodical literature devoted to the subject, and to the scores of books which have been written upon it.