I will tell you of a beautiful scene I have recently witnessed in one of the sanitariums of spirit life. Picture to yourselves an immense garden, spread with a closely-cropped carpet of the freshest, greenest, and most velvety grass you can conceive adorned with parterres of fragrant, bright-colored flowers. The trees are tall, stately, and graceful, and their foliage glistens as though sprinkled with dew; rippling streams of water make rhythmic music pleasant to the ear. The sky is cloudless, and the sun shines mildly down upon the placid scene. The atmosphere is of a peculiar golden tint that clothes every object in a mantle of beauty. Birds with musical throats and bright plumage flit from flower to flower undisturbed by those human beings who are walking the grounds, or seated in various parts of the garden. Small, white, cosey-looking dwellings, simple and neat, are scattered here and there, while in the center of this immense park a stately, white temple uprears its shining dome.
This place is a sanitarium or home where weary women, as well as neglected children, from the earth sphere are brought to receive protection, care, and instruction from the pure mother souls who abide in this lovely spot.
The teachers and nurses of this glowing plane are of a truly spirituelle character; their lives are spent in seeking to guide, influence, and encourage unfortunate spirits to find a higher and better life than that they have hitherto known, and in endeavors for self-improvement.
Here teachers and preceptors are educated and directed through a course of experience that will prepare them to guide and guard those young souls who come to the spirit world with no natural guardian or parent to care for them. Love is the ruling power in this community, and no unkind, unsympathetic thought finds its way hither.
INTERESTING INCIDENT: A MOTHER FINDS HER CHILD.
But the incident which I propose to relate to you was so beautiful I feel that I must tell you of it now while it is fresh in my mind: a beautiful young female spirit, a true teacher, a natural mother-soul, whose entire being is illuminated with the light of benevolence and love, had brought to her charming little cottage in the delightful garden a young child, one who had recently passed to the higher life, with no kind hand to close its mortal eyes or to drop tender caresses upon the marble brow,—one of the waifs of society, cast out by mankind, and permitted to ignobly perish from the earth.
This child was brought to the bright Summer-land, and tenderly cared for by guardian angels; all the good within its nature was encouraged to unfold and blossom out; all the attributes of ill, the conditions of carnal life transmitted to it by others, were fading for want of nourishment and attention.
The work of cultivating and beautifying an immortal soul, as was this little one, under the direction of a sweet, self-denying, loving spirit, is delightful to contemplate; but the most thrilling incident in this special instance, and one which came under my immediate observation, was this:—
One day there came to this garden of delight a poor, sin-stained, weary woman,—one who, through all the misery heaped upon her by the conditions of vice and crime, still kept the love-light for her child burning in her soul. She had been an inhabitant of the spirit world three years, but, because of the crudities of physical conditions still clinging to her spirit, had been held down to the earthly sphere.
Now, she had been found by a benevolent spirit, and conducted to the blooming paradise of which I write. Sad, disheartened, despairing, nothing could rouse her from her condition of unhappiness. The tender encouragements of benevolent beings, the beautiful objects and sweet sounds around her, the gentle ministrations of kindly spirits, seemed to have no effect upon her state of apathy. At last it was suggested that she be taken to the grove, where the children were busy with their innocent sports; and accordingly the unfortunate woman was conducted to a green and shady spot where a company of little spirits, under the care of their teachers and guides, were engaged in pleasant pursuits.