There are many things which we would like to say to you, but the conditions and circumstances which control our operations render it impossible for us to present to your mind the light which it so much seeks. To answer the demands of your spirit is now impossible to us. Time and the unfoldings of your mind can only solve the questions you would propound. You are well aware that the growth of your present knowledge is but the effect of earnest inquiry, of patient toil, and deep study, and experiment after experiment in your searchings for truth. Such was the only way you reached the position which you now occupy in the science so dear to you. It came in no other way, it could come in no other. The child is subjected to the necessity of first learning the alphabet before it is prepared to spell, and must understand the meaning of words before it can comprehend the sentence it reads. So in this investigation. That which is apparently of little meaning must first be learned, the alphabet must be mastered, hard words pronounced, and all must be understood before there is a fittedness for progression. The wisest on earth, aye, the wisest in spirit life, are learners, students: none but God is perfectly wise; and it is no humiliation to any mind that it contains not all of wisdom. Let us say to you that if patient in your investigations, you shall in due time obtain that which you so earnestly seek. Could we work miracles, (a thing impossible,) they would astound rather than enlighten your mind. Could we withdraw the veil which separates the vision from the things you desire to see in our spheres of life, you have no data by which you could make plain to yourself or to the eyes of your fellow-man the sights you would behold.
Go on in your searchings, our good friend: the end is not yet with you. Brilliant minds with brilliant thoughts are burning to give utterance to earth through you. You are a selected instrument of our own choosing, and we are watching and guiding in the path and to the goal you seek. You may not only “speak trumpet-tongued to the scientific world,” but in thunder-tones to those savans who think they are the masters of the keys of knowledge.
Author’s Reply to the preceding Address.
Philadelphia, June 15, 1855.
To my spirit friends, to whom I owe the preceding address:
It is quite unnecessary for my angel friends to urge upon my heart, or upon my reason the nothingness of this world, in comparison with that of which a description has lately been given to me.
So highly do I estimate the prospect thus awakened, that it seems almost too good, too desirable to be realized. There are so many painful ideas awakened in my mind respecting the lot of humanity, by the events of past and present times, that it is difficult to conceive that, at the short distance of little more than the eightieth part of the diameter of our globe, there should be such a contrast. But to heighten my appreciation of the inestimable value of such an heirship is utterly uncalled for. If there be any drawback, it is the misery which pervades this mundane sphere. The sympathy which, on the one hand, ties you to this world, must, on the other, cause a participation in the sufferings which pervade all animated nature. While I am aware that sympathy, as above suggested, would prevent me from flying from a perception or contemplation of the wretchedness in question, it seems as if the heaven of Spiritualism were, in this phase, in some degree open to the objection to the heaven of Scripture, founded on its too great proximity to hell. Is not the spiritual heaven too near this sphere, and too much associated with it by its sympathy, not to suffer indirectly a portion of its miseries?
If there were any thing I should deem to be requisite to render existence in the spirit world happier, it would be the power of removing the miseries of this lower world, and especially those arising from Error—the most prolific source of evil. According to Addison’s allegory, Death admitted the pretensions of Intemperance to be superior in destructiveness, to those of any of the numerous diseases which competed for the honour of the premiership in his cabinet; but might not Error have successfully competed with Intemperance?—Error, the main cause of intemperance, of intolerant bigotry, and of war, which destroys both by the sword and by sickness which it induces?
It is difficult for us to conceive that good, affectionate spirits are not unhappy at witnessing the distress which they cannot relieve. The prisoners at Sing Sing are said to undergo mental torture by the silence imposed upon them. Yet this is imposed upon spirits, when often a word would prevent fatal events.