“It is done by overpowering them, as the sun dispels mist, separating them into smaller particles or units. And when that is impossible, by driving them like clouds before a high wind. They work for evil, but can be separated sometimes from the mass and united with constructive forces. Only small fragments of the main forces can be so converted, at present. Mostly we rout them.”
“Does an evil soul lose personality?” his sister questioned. “Is it absorbed, or broken into fragments?”
“The individuality that finds its first expression in your life is never absorbed or broken up. I speak of the forces of disintegration, composed of more individuals than the greatest army, as being routed. We mass ourselves and our purposes against them and theirs, when we fight in the open here. But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit on the job, and try to call to the purpose that is ours more clearly and appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. That’s the reason we are begging you now to work with us. A great crisis is at hand, and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a real victory. The individual whose purposes are fundamentally destructive is not damned nor lost. He is just delayed. Sooner or later he must work his way up, and it is entirely up to him whether he does it sooner or later—after he reaches this life, especially. In your life, he is sometimes confused or misled. He pays for that, too—not pays, but makes good for it, by working here for the development he had not sense enough to take there. But his delay is brief, beside that of the essentially destructive force.”
A little later, Mrs. Wylie spoke again of her uneasiness about her mother’s visit to K——, and some one suggested telegraphing her that Frederick had been with us that evening.
“Give her my love when you wire,” he directed, “and tell her I’m on the crossing, still ringing that bell. Don’t you worry, Sis. I’ll go and stay with her most of the time she’s there, and she’ll know it. I’ll come to you, Easter, too, for a little while.... Tell Dad I’ll be taking care of Mother. He needn’t fret about it.”
“Do you want me to look up ‘Bob’ and tell him about his little girl?” she asked.
He replied, “Yes, do.” And when she asked if he could give her something more definite than a Christian name by which to trace this unknown man among his large and scattered acquaintance, he wrote the name of a Middle Western city, adding: “You can find out from the fellows. All of them know Bob.”
This seems to be a case of marked deflection of ray, to use Mr. Kendal’s simile, for up to the day when this manuscript goes to the printer the Gaylord family have been unable to identify “Bob,” although there was a confused intimation, late in April, that Mrs. Z—— had made a mistake in the name, and a suggestion that the surname was Roberts. It is not impossible that this was one of those wily incursions of disintegrating force, with intent to confuse, to which we afterward grew accustomed.