developed the spiritual faculties while here; who has lived the mere
life of the senses with the mere ordinary intelligence, or without it,
but never rising to the nobler intellectual and moral life--is no more
desirable as a companion because he has died than he was before he died.
And the objection to any of the ordinary _seance_ phenomena is, that
whatever manifestations are genuine proceed very largely, if not
entirely, from this strata of the crude and inconsequential, if not the
vicious, with whom the high-minded man or woman would not have
associated in life, and after death their presence would be quite as
much to be deplored. Granted all these exceptions. One may sweep them
off and clear the decks. Then what remains? There remains the truth of
the unity of the spiritual universe; of the truth that the mere change
of death is not a revolutionary one, transforming the individual into
some inconceivable state of being and removing him, in a geographical
sense, into some unrevealed region in space; there remains the truth
that life is evolutionary in its processes; that there is no more
violent and arbitrary and instantaneous change by the event of death,
than there is in the change from infancy into childhood, from childhood
into manhood. There remains the truth that the ethereal and the physical
worlds are inter-related, inter-blended; that man, now and here, lives
partially in each, and that the more closely he can relate himself to
the diviner forces by prayer, by aspiration, by every thought and deed
that is noble and generous and true, and inspired by love, the more he
dwells in this ethereal atmosphere and is in touch with its forces and
in companionship with his chosen friends who have gone on into that
world. There is nothing in this theory that is incompatible with the
teachings of the Church, with all that makes up for us the religious
life. On the contrary, it vitalizes and reinforces that life. This life
of the spirit must be in God. Let one, indeed, on his first waking each
day, place his entire life, all his heart, mind, and faculties, in God's
hands; asking Him "to take entire possession, to be the guide of the
soul." Thus one shall dwell hourly, daily, in the divine atmosphere, and
spirit to spirit may enjoy their communion and companionship. The
experience of personal spiritual companionship between those here and
those on the next plane of life is included in the higher religious life
of the spiri