* * * * * Yet another bundle follows _Calamus_; a packet of more or less personal letters or messages called _Messenger Leaves_. In subsequent editions they were sorted out into other sections. They are not all new; but among those that now appear for the first time are the daring and noble lines to Jesus. My spirit to yours, dear brother, Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you, I do not sound your name, but I understand you, (there are others also;) I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since--and those to come also, That we all labour together, transmitting the same charge and succession; We few, equals, indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, We, enclosers of all continents, all castes--allowers of all theologies, Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers, nor anything that is asserted, ... Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers, as we are.[315] Scattered through the generations--so we may read his thought--are those who have come into the cosmic consciousness or larger life, who have passed beyond the reach of time and of mere argument, and who therefore understand one another as others cannot understand them. The love and communion which exists between such Great Companions, is a pledge and earnest of the Society of the Future, when all men shall be one, even as these are one. The thought may shock those to whom it comes suddenly, if they see in Whitman the "mere man" of their own narrow conception of humanity. But in judging him we must remember that he openly claims for himself and for other men all the Divine attributes which Christians are in the habit of ascribing to their Lord. Whitman believed that Jesus identified himself with Humanity; and that all who enter, as he entered, into the cosmic life share in the fellowship of God, even as did he. More fully than many Christians, Whitman recognised Jesus as literally his elder brother; he joined with him in the words "Our Father," feeling them to be true. And as one reads the gospel narratives one ventures to believe that the Master who called the disciples his friends, would himself have been eager to welcome the assertion of such a relationship. Another letter[316] is to one about to die; it is filled not with melancholy but with congratulation. The body that dies is but an excrement, the Self is eternal and goes on into ever fuller sunlight.