Spirit Occupations

Here is another extract from the same little booklet as yesterday’s blog:

Spirit occupations might easily be understood. Work is the universal law. The next world must be a sphere of fresh activity.

When George Pelham was asked of what the occupations of spirits consist, he replied that they were like the noblest occupations of men, and consisted in helping others to advance. This contains a profound philosophical truth. If our varied occupations upon earth, says M. Sage, are regarded from a superior point of view, it will be seen that their ultimate end is the perfection of mankind. Those of us who have evolved furthest realise this and the others do not. The world has been compared to a crucible in which souls are purified by pain and work and prepared for higher ends. Willingly or not, consciously or unconsciously, we force one another to advance and to improve in all respects.

Progress is the law of life. Higher spirit intelligences act by intermediaries or inspiration. They find as much difficulty in descending to our atmosphere as the diver in sinking to the depths of the ocean. At times I have been privileged to enjoy their presence. Bands of Indians have been engaged for a long time in preparing the séance room for their descent into our midst. A gauzy screen has been placed to lessen the effect of their effulgent radiance and keep back earth’s impurities. The sitters have been bathed in Arctic coldness but, as the eloquent and uplifting messages and influences have been received, they have felt as if transported to the very gate of heaven. No human language can portray or express the exquisite delight and ecstasy, a foretaste of joys yet to be.

In the inspired words of one writer, “Man makes his own destiny. He rises or falls in accordance with his own works. But a primordial and absolute law governs creation – the law of progress. Everything rises in the Infinite. In the ascension of souls, the moral qualities have no less value then the intellectual qualities. The supreme aim of all beings is the perpetual approach to perfection and divine happiness.”

“The vast strides man has made during the short compass of his present earth-life in his march towards civilisation are a prophecy of the infinite possibilities before him in future, and death is only a stage in man’s evolution upwards, only another name for birth, introducing him into another grander sphere of the eternal process moving on.”

Such are the revelations of Modern Spiritualism.

Let me close with the following beautiful lines from Tennyson’s genius:

(The Question)
Will my tiny spark of being
Wholly vanish in your deeps and heights?
Must my day be dark by reason,
O ye heavens, of your boundless nights,
Rush of suns and roll of systems,
And your fiery clash of meteorites?

(The Answer)

Spirit, nearing yon dark portal
At the limit of thy human state,
Fear not thou the hidden purpose
Of that power which alone is great,
Nor the myriad world, His shadow,
Nor the silent Opener of the Gate!