-- a condition, it just occurs to me, which seems to correspond roughly with the `Hypnoidal' state); that, after a period which is usually shorter than the average life-time here, they pass to some further state of existence;that people of similar thoughts, tastes and feelings, gravitate together;that married couples do not necessarily reunite, but that the love of man and Page 110woman continues and is freed of elements which with us often militate against its perfect realization; that immediately after death people pass into a semi-conscious rest-state lasting various periods, that they are unable to experience bodily pain, but are susceptible at times to some mental anxiety; that a painful death is `absolutely unknown,' that religious beliefs make no difference whatever in the after-state, and that their life altogether is intensely happy, and no one having ever realised it could wish to return here.I got no reference to `work' by that word, but much to the various interests that were said to occupy them.That is probably only another way of saying the same thing.`Work' with us has come usually to mean `work to live,' and that, I was emphatically informed, was not the case with them -- that all the requirements of life were somehow mysteriously `provided.' Neither did I get any reference to a definite `temporary penal state,' but I gathered that people begin there at the point of intellectual and moral development where they leave off here; and since their state of happiness was Page 111based mainly upon sympathy, those who came over in a low moral condition, failed at first for various lengths of time to have the capacity to appreciate and enjoy it."Page 112AUTOMATIC WRITINGThis form of mediumship gives the very highest results, and yet in its very nature is liable to self-deception.Are we using our own hand or is an outside power directing it? It is only by the information received that we can tell, and even then we have to make broad allowance for the action of our own subconscious knowledge.It is worth while perhaps to quote what appears to me to be a thoroughly critic-proof case, so that the inquirer may see how strong the evidence is that these messages are not self-evolved.This case is quoted in Mr.Arthur Hill's recent book Man Is a Spirit (Cassell & Co.) and is contributed by a gentleman who takes the name of Captain James Burton.He is, I understand, the same medium (amateur) through whose communications the position of the buried ruins at Glastonbury have recently Page 113been located."A week after my father's funeral I was writing a business letter, when something seemed to intervene between my hand and the motor centres of my brain, and the hand wrote at an amazing rate a letter, signed with my father's signature and purporting to come from him.I was upset, and my right side and arm became cold and numb.For a year after this letters came frequently, and always at unexpected times.I never knew what they contained until I examined them with a magnifying-glass: they were microscopic.
And they contained a vast amount of matter with which it was impossible for me to be acquainted."..."Unknown to me, my mother, who was staying some sixty miles away, lost her pet dog, which my father had given her.
The same night I had a letter from him condoling with her, and stating that the dog was now with him.`All things which love us and are necessary to our happiness in the world are with us here.' A most sacred secret, known to no one but my father and mother, concerning a matter which occurred years before I was born, Page 114was afterwards told me in the script, with the comment: `Tell your mother this, and she will know that it is I, your father, who am writing.' My mother had been unable to accept the possibility up to now, but when Itold her this she collapsed and fainted.From that moment the letters became her greatest comfort, for they were lovers during the forty years of their married life, and his death almost broke her heart.
"As for myself, I am as convinced that my father, in his original personality, still exists, as if he were still in his study with the door shut.He is no more dead than he would be were he living in America.
"I have compared the diction and vocabulary of these letters with those employed in my own writing -- I am not unknown as a magazine contributor -- and I find no points of similarity between the two." There is much further evidence in this case for which I refer the reader to the book itself.
Page 115THE CHERITON DUGOUTI have mentioned in the text that I had some recent experience of a case where a "polter-geist" or mischievous spirit had been manifesting.
These entities appear to be of an undeveloped order and nearer to earth conditions than any others with which we are acquainted.This comparative materialism upon their part places them low in the scale of spirit, and undesirable perhaps as communicants, but it gives them a special value as calling attention to crude obvious phenomena, and so arresting the human attention and forcing upon our notice that there are other forms of life within the universe.These borderland forces have attracted passing attention at several times and places in the past, such cases as the Wesley persecution at Epworth, the Drummer Page 116of Tedworth, the Bells of Bealing, etc., startling the country for a time -- each of them being an impingement of unknown forces upon human life.Then almost simultaneously came the Hydesville case in America and the Cideville disturbances in France, which were so marked that they could not be overlooked.From them sprang the whole modern movement which, reasoning upwards from small things to great, from raw things to developed ones, from phenomena to messages, is destined to give religion the firmest basis upon which it has ever stood.Therefore, humble and foolish as these manifestations may seem, they have been the seed of large developments, and are worthy of our respectful, though critical, attention.
