In this connection, it is interesting to note that in every instance when messages of importance have come, it has been during intercourse primarily requested by those gone before, who have asked me to send for the person here through whose co-operation the freest communication could be established—Frederick writing more fluently to some member of his family than to me alone, Mary Kendal to Mansfield, David Bruce to his wife, and so on. Conversely, interviews arranged at the instigation of persons on our own plane have been generally without satisfactory result.
“We who can tell it clearly, and whom she can absolutely identify,” Frederick went on, “have had extraordinary fluency, and almost unlimited authority to speak. We have spoken to our own, and through them to all who will listen. Keep the personal part of all we have said as sacredly to yourselves as you like, but my own desire is that the parts of my messages that will carry conviction or comfort to people suffering in ignorance of all this may be given to them through you—as your faith and conviction will lead you to do, I know—not in your name or mine, but in the spirit of light, healing, and progress we all serve.”
When this was construed as an intimation that he did not want his name used, he returned: “I have no slightest objection. I have only a feeling that this personal revelation belongs to you. Use it as you choose. I do not ask anything, except that you share its essence with those who suffer as you have suffered. Give them what will relieve them, and do it as you think best.”
At this point, the question of publication was dropped, though he returned to it the next day. A short pause followed. Then the touch on the pencil changed, Frederick’s bolder writing being succeeded by a smoother, more flowing, and exceedingly rapid script, in a message to Mr. Gaylord from his mother, for whose early death he had never ceased to grieve.
“—— dear, this is Mother.
“Frederick told me I could reach you at last. I have had always the greatest desire to touch you, to tell you that your mother could not leave you, could not cease to love you, could not leave off watching over you, hoping for you, guarding your highest hopes and ideals. To have known the darkness that fell upon you, and to be unable to lighten it, or to soothe your anguish, made me as sad as one can be in this fine and everlastingly expanding life. I knew that you must some day come back to me, and into full knowledge of all that eternal life means, so I could bear it.
“You have been always a joy and a source of great happiness to me, in your splendid adherence to the things we know now to be the first and fundamental principles of life. We did not know, when I was with you, all the wonders and beauties of the eternal life we talked about. We thought heaven was quite different from this. But it is heaven, in a much higher and finer way than anything we dreamed of then, and to be able to come back to you now—to my boy, through his boy—and tell you all this, is almost as wonderful and blessed to me as it is to you.
“I have gone on to a life and a work I cannot easily explain to you now. I have lost touch with the material things of your life. But you, your purpose, your achievement of force, the love you have never ceased to give me, the love with which you bless and are blessed by your family—all these things I know, dear, and have always known.
“For so long, I tried to tell you not to grieve. We have been so close together, in the ways that are real and infinite. Never grieve again, dear son, for any loved one coming to this happy life. We do not leave you. We do not part in any way, except the way of flesh. We are happy, but can be so much happier if you know us with you and of you, and if you can come to us in confidence and love and conviction of our life, as we never cease to go to you.
“Your father wanted me to tell you this is from him as well as from me. He is doing a great work and cannot come to you now, but he knew that I should soon come to say this, and he wants you to know that he, too, is happier in your growing knowledge of our unceasing life, and unceasing love, and unceasing upward growth.