We come first to the messages which tell us of the lifebeyond the grave, sent by those who are actually living it. Ihave already insisted upon the fact that they have three weightyclaims to our belief. The one is, that they are accompanied by"signs," in the Biblical sense, in the shape of "miracles" orphenomena. The second is, that in many cases they areaccompanied by assertions about this life of ours which prove tobe correct, and which are beyond the possible knowledge of themedium after every deduction has been made for telepathy or forunconscious memory. The third is, that they have a remarkable,though not a complete, similarity from whatever source they come.

It may be noted that the differences of opinion become mostmarked when they deal with their own future, which may well be amatter of speculation to them as to us. Thus, upon thequestion of reincarnation there is a distinct cleavage, andthough I am myself of opinion that the general evidence isagainst this oriental doctrine, it is none the less an undeniablefact that it has been maintained by some messages which appear inother ways to be authentic, and, therefore, it is necessary tokeep one's mind open on the subject.Before entering upon the substance of the messages I shouldwish to emphasize the second of these two points, so as toreinforce the reader's confidence in the authenticity of theseassertions. To this end I will give a detailed example, withnames almost exact. The medium was Mr. Phoenix, of Glasgow, withwhom I have myself had some remarkable experiences. The sitterwas Mr. Ernest Oaten, the President of the Northern SpiritualUnion, a man of the utmost veracity and precision of statement. The dialogue, which came by the direct voice, a trumpet acting asmegaphone, ran like this:--

The Voice: Good evening, Mr. Oaten.Mr. O.: Good evening. Who are you?The Voice: My name is Mill. You know my father.Mr. O.: No, I don't remember anyone of the name.The Voice: Yes, you were speaking to him the other day.Mr. O.: To be sure. I remember now. I only met himcasually.The Voice: I want you to give him a message from me.Mr. O.: What is it?The Voice: Tell him that he was not mistaken at midnight onTuesday last.Mr. O.: Very good. I will say so. Have you passed long?The Voice: Some time. But our time is different from yours.Mr. O.: What were you?The Voice: A Surgeon.Mr. O.: How did you pass?The Voice: Blown up in a battleship during the war.Mr. O.: Anything more?The answer was the Gipsy song from "Il Trovatore," veryaccurately whistled, and then a quick-step. After the latter,the voice said: "That is a test for father."This reproduction of conversation is not quite verbatim, butgives the condensed essence. Mr. Oaten at once visited Mr. Mill,who was not a Spiritualist, and found that every detail wascorrect. Young Mill had lost his life as narrated. Mr. Mill,senior, explained that while sitting in his study at midnight onthe date named he had heard the Gipsy song from "Il Trovatore,"which had been a favourite of his boy's, and being unable totrace the origin of the music, had finally thought that it was afreak of his imagination. The test connected with the quick-stephad reference to a tune which the young man used to play upon thepiccolo, but which was so rapid that he never could get it right,for which he was chaffed by the family.I tell this story at length to make the reader realise thatwhen young Mill, and others like him, give such proofs ofaccuracy, which we can test for ourselves, we are bound to taketheir assertions very seriously when they deal with the lifethey are actually leading, though in their very nature we canonly check their accounts by comparison with others.Now let me epitomise what these assertions are. They saythat they are exceedingly happy, and that they do not wish toreturn. They are among the friends whom they had loved and lost,who meet them when they die and continue their careers together. They are very busy on all forms of congenial work. The world inwhich they find themselves is very much like that which they havequitted, but everything keyed to a higher octave. As in a higheroctave the rhythm is the same, and the relation of notes to eachother the same, but the total effect different, so it is here. Every earthly thing has its equivalent. Scoffers have guffawedover alcohol and tobacco, but if all things are reproduced itwould be a flaw if these were not reproduced also. That theyshould be abused, as they are here, would, indeed, be eviltidings, but nothing of the sort has been said, and in the muchdiscussed passage in "Raymond," their production was alluded toas though it were an unusual, and in a way a humorous,instance of the resources of the beyond. I wonder how many ofthe preachers, who have taken advantage of this passage in orderto attack the whole new revelation, have remembered that the onlyother message which ever associated alcohol with the life beyondis that of Christ Himself, when He said: "I will not drinkhenceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drinkit new with you in my Father's kingdom."This matter is a detail, however, and it is always dangerousto discuss details in a subject which is so enormous, so dimlyseen. As the wisest woman I have known remarked to me: "Thingsmay well be surprising over there, for if we had been told thefacts of this life before we entered it, we should never havebelieved it." In its larger issues this happy life to comeconsists in the development of those gifts which we possess. There is action for the man of action, intellectual work for thethinker, artistic, literary, dramatic and religious for thosewhose God-given powers lie that way. What we have both in brainand character we carry over with us. No man is too old to learn,for what he learns he keeps. There is no physical side tolove and no child-birth, though there is close union betweenthose married people who really love each other, and, generally,there is deep sympathetic friendship and comradeship between thesexes. Every man or woman finds a soul mate sooner or later. The child grows up to the normal, so that the mother who lost ababe of two years old, and dies herself twenty years later findsa grown-up daughter of twenty-two awaiting her coming. Age,which is produced chiefly by the mechanical presence of lime inour arteries, disappears, and the individual reverts to the fullnormal growth and appearance of completed man--or womanhood. Letno woman mourn her lost beauty, and no man his lost strength orweakening brain. It all awaits them once more upon the otherside. Nor is any deformity or bodily weakness there, for all isnormal and at its best.Before leaving this section of the subject, I should say afew more words upon the evidence as it affects the etheric body. This body is a perfect thing. This is a matter of consequence inthese days when so many of our heroes have been mutilated inthe wars. One cannot mutilate the etheric body, and it remainsalways intact. The first words uttered by a returning spirit inthe recent experience of Dr. Abraham Wallace were "I have got myleft arm again." The same applies to all birth marks,deformities, blindness, and other imperfections. None of themare permanent, and all will vanish in that happier life thatawaits us. Such is the teaching from the beyond--that a perfectbody waits for each."But," says the critic, "what then of the clairvoyantdescriptions, or the visions where the aged father is seen, cladin the old-fashioned garments of another age, or the grandmotherwith crinoline and chignon? Are these the habiliments ofheaven?" Such visions are not spirits, but they are pictureswhich are built up before us or shot by spirits into our brainsor those of the seer for the purposes of recognition. Hence thegrey hair and hence the ancient garb. When a real spirit isindeed seen it comes in another form to this, where the flowingrobe, such as has always been traditionally ascribed to theangels, is a vital thing which, by its very colour andtexture, proclaims the spiritual condition of the wearer, and isprobably a condensation of that aura which surrounds us uponearth.It is a world of sympathy. Only those who have this tieforegather. The sullen husband, the flighty wife, is no longerthere to plague the innocent spouse. All is sweet and peaceful. It is the long rest cure after the nerve strain of life, andbefore new experiences in the future. The circumstances arehomely and familiar. Happy circles live in pleasant homesteadswith every amenity of beauty and of music. Beautiful gardens,lovely flowers, green woods, pleasant lakes, domestic pets--allof these things are fully described in the messages of thepioneer travellers who have at last got news back to those wholoiter in the old dingy home. There are no poor and no rich. The craftsman may still pursue his craft, but he does it for thejoy of his work. Each serves the community as best he can, whilefrom above come higher ministers of grace, the "Angels" of holywrit, to direct and help. Above all, shedding down Hisatmosphere upon all, broods that great Christ spirit, thevery soul of reason, of justice, and of sympatheticunderstanding, who has the earth sphere, with all its circles,under His very special care. It is a place of joy and laughter. There are games and sports of all sorts, though none which causepain to lower life. Food and drink in the grosser sense do notexist, but there seem to be pleasures of taste, and thisdistinction causes some confusion in the messages upon the point.

But above all, brain, energy, character, driving power, ifexerted for good, makes a man a leader there as here, whileunselfishness, patience and spirituality there, as here, qualifythe soul for the higher places, which have often been won bythose very tribulations down here which seem so purposeless andso cruel, and are in truth our chances of spiritual quickeningand promotion, without which life would have been barren andwithout profit.The revelation abolishes the idea of a grotesque hell and ofa fantastic heaven, while it substitutes the conception of agradual rise in the scale of existence without any monstrouschange which would turn us in an instant from man to angel ordevil. The system, though different from previous ideas,does not, as it seems to me, run counter in any radical fashionto the old beliefs. In ancient maps it was usual for thecartographer to mark blank spaces for the unexplored regions,with some such legend as "here are anthropophagi," or "here aremandrakes," scrawled across them. So in our theology there havebeen ill-defined areas which have admittedly been left unfilled,for what sane man has ever believed in such a heaven as isdepicted in our hymn books, a land of musical idleness and barrenmonotonous adoration! Thus in furnishing a clearer conceptionthis new system has nothing to supplant. It paints upon a blanksheet.One may well ask, however, granting that there is evidencefor such a life and such a world as has been described, whatabout those who have not merited such a destination? What do themessages from beyond say about these? And here one cannot be toodefinite, for there is no use exchanging one dogma for another. One can but give the general purport of such information as hasbeen vouchsafed to us. It is natural that those with whom wecome in contact are those whom we may truly call the blessed, forif the thing be approached in a reverent and religious spirit itis those whom we should naturally attract. That there are manyless fortunate than themselves is evident from their own constantallusions to that regenerating and elevating missionary workwhich is among their own functions. They descend apparently andhelp others to gain that degree of spirituality which fits themfor this upper sphere, as a higher student might descend to alower class in order to bring forward a backward pupil. Such aconception gives point to Christ's remark that there was more joyin heaven over saving one sinner than over ninety-nine just, forif He had spoken of an earthly sinner he would surely have had tobecome just in this life and so ceased to be a sinner before hehad reached Paradise. It would apply very exactly, however, to asinner rescued from a lower sphere and brought to a higher one.When we view sin in the light of modern science, with thetenderness of the modern conscience and with a sense of justiceand proportion, it ceases to be that monstrous cloud whichdarkened the whole vision of the mediaeval theologian. Man hasbeen more harsh with himself than an all-merciful God will everbe. It is true that with all deductions there remains a greatresiduum which means want of individual effort, consciousweakness of will, and culpable failure of character when thesinner, like Horace, sees and applauds the higher while hefollows the lower. But when, on the other hand, one has madeallowances--and can our human allowance be as generous asGod's?--for the sins which are the inevitable product of earlyenvironment, for the sins which are due to hereditary and inborntaint, and to the sins which are due to clear physical causes,then the total of active sin is greatly reduced. Could one, forexample, imagine that Providence, all-wise and all-merciful, asevery creed proclaims, could punish the unfortunate wretch whohatches criminal thoughts behind the slanting brows of a criminalhead? A doctor has but to glance at the cranium to predicate thecrime. In its worst forms all crime, from Nero to Jack theRipper, is the product of absolute lunacy, and those grossnational sins to which allusion has been made seem to point tocollective national insanity. Surely, then, there is hope thatno very terrible inferno is needed to further punish those whohave been so afflicted upon earth. Some of our dead haveremarked that nothing has surprised them so much as to find whohave been chosen for honour, and certainly, without in any waycondoning sin, one could well imagine that the man whose organicmakeup predisposed him with irresistible force in that directionshould, in justice, receive condolence and sympathy. Possiblysuch a sinner, if he had not sinned so deeply as he might havedone, stands higher than the man who was born good, and remainedso, but was no better at the end of his life. The one has madesome progress and the other has not. But the commonest failing,the one which fills the spiritual hospitals of the other world,and is a temporary bar to the normal happiness of the after-life,is the sin of Tomlinson in Kipling's poem, the commonest of allsins in respectable British circles, the sin of conventionality,of want of conscious effort and development, of a sluggishspirituality, fatted over by a complacent mind and by thecomforts of life. It is the man who is satisfied, the man whorefers his salvation to some church or higher power withoutsteady travail of his own soul, who is in deadly danger. Allchurches are good, Christian or non-Christian, so long as theypromote the actual spirit life of the individual, but all arenoxious the instant that they allow him to think that by any formof ceremony, or by any fashion of creed, he obtains the leastadvantage over his neighbour, or can in any way dispense withthat personal effort which is the only road to the higher places.

This is, of course, as applicable to believers in Spiritualism asto any other belief. If it does not show in practice then it isvain. One can get through this life very comfortably followingwithout question in some procession with a venerable leader. Butone does not die in a procession. One dies alone. And it isthen that one has alone to accept the level gained by the work oflife.And what is the punishment of the undeveloped soul? It isthat it should be placed where it WILL develop, and sorrowwould seem always to be the forcing ground of souls. Thatsurely is our own experience in life where the insufferablycomplacent and unsympathetic person softens and mellows intobeauty of character and charity of thought, when tried longenough and high enough in the fires of life. The Bible hastalked about the "Outer darkness where there is weeping andgnashing of teeth." The influence of the Bible has sometimesbeen an evil one through our own habit of reading a book ofOriental poetry and treating it as literally as if it wereOccidental prose. When an Eastern describes a herd of a thousandcamels he talks of camels which are more numerous than the hairsof your head or the stars in the sky. In this spirit ofallowance for Eastern expression, one must approach those luridand terrible descriptions which have darkened the lives of somany imaginative children and sent so many earnest adults intoasylums. From all that we learn there are indeed places of outerdarkness, but dim as these uncomfortable waiting-rooms may be,they all admit to heaven in the end. That is the finaldestination of the human race, and it would indeed be areproach to the Almighty if it were not so. We cannot dogmatiseupon this subject of the penal spheres, and yet we have veryclear teaching that they are there and that the no-man's-landwhich separates us from the normal heaven, that third heaven towhich St. Paul seems to have been wafted in one short strangeexperience of his lifetime, is a place which corresponds with theAstral plane of the mystics and with the "outer darkness" of theBible. Here linger those earth-bound spirits whose worldlyinterests have clogged them and weighed them down, until everyspiritual impulse had vanished; the man whose life has beencentred on money, on worldly ambition, or on sensual indulgence. The one-idea'd man will surely be there, if his one idea was nota spiritual one. Nor is it necessary that he should be an evilman, if dear old brother John of Glastonbury, who loved the greatAbbey so that he could never detach himself from it, is to beclassed among earth-bound spirits. In the most material andpronounced classes of these are the ghosts who impinge veryclosely upon matter and have been seen so often by those whohave no strong psychic sense. It is probable, from what weknow of the material laws which govern such matters, that a ghostcould never manifest itself if it were alone, that the substancefor the manifestation is drawn from the spectator, and that thecoldness, raising of hair, and other symptoms of which hecomplains are caused largely by the sudden drain upon his ownvitality. This, however, is to wander into speculation, and farfrom that correlation of psychic knowledge with religion, whichhas been the aim of these chapters.By one of those strange coincidences, which seem to mesometimes to be more than coincidences, I had reached this pointin my explanation of the difficult question of the intermediatestate, and was myself desiring further enlightenment, when an oldbook reached me through the post, sent by someone whom I havenever met, and in it is the following passage, written by anautomatic writer, and in existence since 1880. It makes thematter plain, endorsing what has been said and adding new points.

"Some cannot advance further than the borderland--such as neverthought of spirit life and have lived entirely for theearth, its cares and pleasures--even clever men and women, whohave lived simply intellectual lives without spirituality. Thereare many who have misused their opportunities, and are nowlonging for the time misspent and wishing to recall the earth-life. They will learn that on this side the time can beredeemed, though at much cost. The borderland has many among therestless money-getters of earth, who still haunt the places wherethey had their hopes and joys. These are often the longest toremain . . . many are not unhappy. They feel the relief to besufficient to be without their earth bodies. All pass throughthe borderland, but some hardly perceive it. It is so immediate,and there is no resting there for them. They pass on at once tothe refreshment place of which we tell you." The anonymousauthor, after recording this spirit message, mentions theinteresting fact that there is a Christian inscription in theCatacombs which runs: NICEFORUS ANIMA DULCIS IN REFRIGERIO,"Nicephorus, a sweet soul in the refreshment place." One morescrap of evidence that the early Christian scheme of thingswas very like that of the modern psychic.So much for the borderland, the intermediate condition. Thepresent Christian dogma has no name for it, unless it be thatnebulous limbo which is occasionally mentioned, and is usuallydefined as the place where the souls of the just who died beforeChrist were detained. The idea of crossing a space beforereaching a permanent state on the other side is common to manyreligions, and took the allegorical form of a river with a ferry-boat among the Romans and Greeks. Continually, one comes onpoints which make one realise that far back in the world'shistory there has been a true revelation, which has been blurredand twisted in time. Thus in Dr. Muir's summary of the RIG.VEDA, he says, epitomising the beliefs of the first Aryanconquerors of India: "Before, however, the unborn part" (thatis, the etheric body) "can complete its course to the thirdheaven it has to traverse a vast gulf of darkness, leaving behindon earth all that is evil, and proceeding by the paths thefathers trod, the spirit soars to the realms of eternal light,recovers there his body in a glorified form, and obtainsfrom God a delectable abode and enters upon a more perfect life,which is crowned with the fulfilment of all desires, ispassed in the presence of the Gods and employed in the fulfilmentof their pleasure." If we substitute "angels" for "Gods" we mustadmit that the new revelation from modern spirit sources has muchin common with the belief of our Aryan fathers.Such, in very condensed form, is the world which is revealedto us by these wonderful messages from the beyond. Is it anunreasonable vision? Is it in any way opposed to justprinciples? Is it not rather so reasonable that having got theclue we could now see that, given any life at all, this isexactly the line upon which we should expect to move? Nature andevolution are averse from sudden disconnected developments. If ahuman being has technical, literary, musical, or othertendencies, they are an essential part of his character, and tosurvive without them would be to lose his identity and to becomean entirely different man. They must therefore survive death ifpersonality is to be maintained. But it is no use theirsurviving unless they can find means of expression, and means ofexpression seem to require certain material agents, and also adiscriminating audience. So also the sense of modesty amongcivilised races has become part of our very selves, and impliessome covering of our forms if personality is to continue. Ourdesires and sympathies would prompt us to live with those welove, which implies something in the nature of a house, while thehuman need for mental rest and privacy would predicate theexistence of separate rooms. Thus, merely starting from thebasis of the continuity of personality one might, even withoutthe revelation from the beyond, have built up some suchsystem by the use of pure reason and deduction.So far as the existence of this land of happiness goes, itwould seem to have been more fully proved than any otherreligious conception within our knowledge.It may very reasonably be asked, how far this precisedescription of life beyond the grave is my own conception, andhow far it has been accepted by the greater minds who havestudied this subject? I would answer, that it is my ownconclusion as gathered from a very large amount of existingtestimony, and that in its main lines it has for many years beenaccepted by those great numbers of silent active workers all overthe world, who look upon this matter from a strictly religiouspoint of view. I think that the evidence amply justifies us inthis belief. On the other hand, those who have approached thissubject with cold and cautious scientific brains, endowed, inmany cases, with the strongest prejudices against dogmatic creedsand with very natural fears about the possible re-growth oftheological quarrels, have in most cases stopped short of acomplete acceptance, declaring that there can be no positiveproof upon such matters, and that we may deceive ourselves eitherby a reflection of our own thoughts or by receiving theimpressions of the medium. Professor Zollner, for example, says:

"Science can make no use of the substance of intellectualrevelations, but must be guided by observed facts and by theconclusions logically and mathematically uniting them"--a passagewhich is quoted with approval by Professor Reichel, and wouldseem to be endorsed by the silence concerning the religiousside of the question which is observed by most of our greatscientific supporters. It is a point of view which can well beunderstood, and yet, closely examined, it would appear to be aspecies of enlarged materialism. To admit, as these observersdo, that spirits do return, that they give every proof of beingthe actual friends whom we have lost, and yet to turn a deaf earto the messages which they send would seem to be pushing cautionto the verge of unreason. To get so far, and yet not to gofurther, is impossible as a permanent position. If, for example,in Raymond's case we find so many allusions to the small detailsof his home upon earth, which prove to be surprisingly correct,is it reasonable to put a blue pencil through all he says of thehome which he actually inhabits? Long before I had convinced mymind of the truth of things which appeared so grotesque andincredible, I had a long account sent by table tilting about theconditions of life beyond. The details seemed to me impossibleand I set them aside, and yet they harmonise, as I now discover,with other revelations. So, too, with the automatic scriptof Mr. Hubert Wales, which has been described in my previousbook. He had tossed it aside into a drawer as being unworthy ofserious consideration, and yet it also proved to be in harmony. In neither of these cases was telepathy or the prepossession ofthe medium a possible explanation. On the whole, I am inclinedto think that these doubtful or dissentient scientific men,having their own weighty studies to attend to, have confinedtheir reading and thought to the more objective side of thequestion, and are not aware of the vast amount of concurrentevidence which appears to give us an exact picture of the lifebeyond. They despise documents which cannot be proved, and theydo not, in my opinion, sufficiently realise that a generalagreement of testimony, and the already established character ofa witness, are themselves arguments for truth. Some complicatethe question by predicating the existence of a fourth dimensionin that world, but the term is an absurdity, as are all termswhich find no corresponding impression in the human brain. Wehave mysteries enough to solve without gratuitouslyintroducing fresh ones. When solid passes through solid, itis, surely, simpler to assume that it is done by adematerialisation, and subsequent reassembly--a process whichcan, at least, be imagined by the human mind--than to invoke anexplanation which itself needs to be explained.In the next and final chapter I will ask the reader toaccompany me in an examination of the New Testament by the lightof this psychic knowledge, and to judge how far it makes clearand reasonable much which was obscure and confused.