It is a strange fact that many of my husband's letters to me were
written at the very time when I felt those irresistible impulses to hold
communion with him. Why should we be ashamed to admit openly our belief
in this mysterious intercourse between the spirits of those who are
bound to each other by the tender ties of friendship and affection, when
the experience of every day proves its truth? Proverbs, which are the
wisdom of ages collected into a few brief words, tell us in one pithy
sentence that “if we talk of the devil he is sure to appear.” While the
name of a long-absent friend is in our mouth, the next moment brings him
into our presence. How can this be, if mind did not meet mind, and the
spirit had not a prophetic consciousness of the vicinity of another
spirit, kindred with its own? This is an occurrence so common that I
never met with any person to whom it had not happened; few will admit
it to be a spiritual agency, but in no other way can they satisfactorily
explain its cause. If it were a mere coincidence, or combination of
ordinary circumstances, it would not happen so often, and people would
not be led to speak of the long absent always at the moment when they
are just about to present themselves before them. My husband was no
believer in what he termed my fanciful, speculative theories; yet at the
time when his youngest boy and myself lay dangerously ill, and hardly
expected to live, I received from him a letter, written in great haste,
which commenced with this sentence: “Do write to me, dear S----, when
you receive this. I have felt very uneasy about you for some days past,
and am afraid that all is not right at home.”
Whence came this sudden fear? Why at that particular time did his
thoughts turn so despondingly towards those so dear to him? Why did the
dark cloud in his mind hang so heavily above his home? The burden of my
weary and distressed spirit had reached him; and without knowing of our
sufferings and danger, his own responded to the call.
The holy and mysterious nature of man is yet hidden from himself; he is
still a stranger to the movements of that inner life, and knows little
of its capabilities and powers. A purer religion, a higher standard of
moral and intellectual training, may in time reveal all this. Man still
remains a half-reclaimed savage; the leaven of Christianity is slowly
and surely working its way, but it has not yet changed the whole lump,
or transformed the deformed into the beauteous child of God. Oh, for
that glorious day! It is coming. The dark clouds of humanity are
already tinged with the golden radiance of the dawn, but the sun of
righteousness has not yet arisen upon the world with healing on his
wings; the light of truth still struggles in the womb of darkness, and
man stumbles on to the fulfilment of his sublime and mysterious destiny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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