erefore didst thou doubt?"

Section 5

Sometimes one vaguely wonders, How can there be spiritual recognition?
How shall we recognize each other without this accustomed bodily shape?
And in the effort to realize the fact of recognition men have made many
guesses. But really we know nothing about the "How." We know that the
self in that life can think and remember and love. We know that we can
still communicate thoughts to each other. Can we not leave with God
the "how" of recognition?

In several places Scripture seems to suggest that the souls of the
departed are clothed in some kind of visible spirit shape. They are
spoken of as not only recognized but in some way seen as in the case of
Samuel and of Dives and Lazarus and of Moses and Elias at the
Transfiguration and of our Lord Himself in the spiritual body after the
Resurrection. They seem to be visible when they please and as they
please.

But when a mother asks, how then should she know her child who died
twenty years ago, one feels that recognition must be something
spiritual and not depending on visible shape. Even here on earth much
of our recognition is spiritual. Soul recognizes soul. We recognize
in some degree good and evil character of souls even through the coarse
covering of the body. We instinctively, as we say, trust or distrust
people on first appearance. Or again, a slight young stripling goes
away to India and returns in twenty years a big, bearded,
broad-shouldered man, with practically no outward resemblance to the
boy that went away. But even though he strive to conceal his identity
he cannot hide it long from his mother. She looks into his eyes and
her soul leaps out to him. Call it instinct, insight, intuition,
sympathy, what you please, it is the spiritual vision, soul recognizing
soul. If that spiritual vision apart from bodily shape plays so great
a part in recognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there? In
that life where there is consciousness, character, memory, love,
longing for our dear ones, and power of communication, is it
conceivable that we should have intercourse with our loved and longed
for, without any thrill of recognition? Surely not. Instinctively we
shall know.

It was not mother that I knew thy face,
It was my heart that cried out Mother![1]

{108}

Section 6

P.S.--I let these words stand as they appear in the earlier editions of
this book. For they are true. But to my mind now