No, the whole question at present must be determined by our recognition or non-recognition of the photographs produced.
If Mr Boursnell or any other photographer can produce (_as he has done_) my old nurse, who died twenty-three years ago, and was never photographed in her life, then we must find some other suggestion than that of "common or garden faking" as a solution of the mystery. There she sits, as in life, with a little knitted shawl round her shoulders and the head of a tiny child upon her lap. The eyes are closed, and give a dead look to the face, yet the features are to me quite unmistakable, and no one knew the dear old woman so well as I did.
Again, I have in my little picture gallery, an old and very well-known Oxford professor, in whose house I stayed many times.
Quite unexpectedly he appeared on one of Mr Boursnell"s plates last summer, and although this special photograph is fainter than the one just described, the likeness can only be denied by someone more anxious to be sceptical than truthful. I compared the photograph with an engraving of the professor in much earlier life--which is to be found in the Life published since he pa.s.sed away--with an artist friend (who had not known him). We went over the features one by one, and my friend said she noticed only one small difference, the exact length of the upper lip, and this, she considered, would be amply accounted for by the lapse of time between the two pictures and the slight lengthening of the upper lip owing to loss of teeth. The professor pa.s.sed away as an old man; the picture engraved in the Life represents him as he was at least twenty years before his death.
But the most interesting point to me in this photograph, is the appearance on his lap of a much loved dog, a rather large fox terrier named "Bob." I had not noticed Bob until a daughter of the professor pointed him out to me, and now I cannot understand having missed him at first.
Bob was not only the most important person in the Oxford household, but he was good enough to be very fond of me, so it seems to me quite natural that he should have come with his master to pay me a visit.
I remember arriving at the house one dark winter"s evening after an absence of over two years, and Bob"s welcome to me was so ecstatic that he nearly knocked me down in a vain attempt to get his paws round my neck.
I heard the professor, who was always rather jealous of Bob"s affections, say in a whisper to his wife: "Most touching thing I ever saw, that dog"s welcome when Miss Bates arrived!"
Dear Bob! I am so glad he can still come and see me, with his dearly loved master.
Another shuffle of the photographs brings to the top a sweet girlish face and figure, "sixteen summers or something less."
She appeared first upon a plate in the summer of 1905, but so indistinctly as to the _face_ that I could not recognise it.
A few months ago the same figure appeared again, but quite clearly this time, and involuntarily, as I looked at it, I exclaimed: "_Why, of course, it is Lily Blake!_"
Now it is nearly thirty years since I met this charming child; during my first visit to Egypt. She and her father (a well-known physician) and her aunt, were spending a six weeks" holiday in Cairo, and I saw more of her than would otherwise have been the case, because she was the playmate of another young girl--the child of friends of mine at Shepheard"s Hotel.
Lily was a sweet-looking, delicate girl, with soft, sleepy blue eyes, and was always dressed in a simple, artistic fashion. A few months after our return to England I saw in the papers the death of this pretty child; for she was little more at the time. I wrote a letter of condolence and sympathy, which was at once answered by the aunt in very kind fashion; and since then I have seen nothing to remind me of Lily until this last year has brought her once more within my ken. I am only too thankful to realise that any influence so pure and beautiful as hers, may be around me sometimes in my daily life.
And now let me say, in the words of our great novelist:
"Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out!"
Only I trust in this case we have managed to rise a little above the usual atmosphere of Vanity Fair.
Surely the aim of all psychic research should be to give us a _scientific_, as we have already, thank G.o.d, a spiritual, foundation for the "Hope that is in us."
Spirit photographs and spirit materialisations and abnormal visions or abnormal sounds amount to very little, if we look upon them as an end in themselves, and not as the symbols and the earnest of those greater things which "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of _man_ to conceive."
I remember, years ago, in the course of a deeply interesting conversation with Phillipps Brooks, the late Bishop of Ma.s.sachusetts, that I asked him what he thought about modern theosophy, which was just then becoming a _culte_ in his native town of Boston. There was a great deal of talk at the time about the new philosophy and the wonderful phenomena said to accompany its propaganda. Sir Edwin Arnold had written his "Light of Asia," and Oliver Wendell Holmes had welcomed it with wondering awe, as something approaching a new revelation. And smaller people were talking about the historical Blavatsky tea-cups, and hidden heirlooms found in Indian gardens, and some of us were wondering how soon we should learn to fly, and what would come next.
The bishop"s answer to my question was so genial, so characteristic, and showed such divine common-sense!
"It is not a question of _flying_," he said. "I should like to fly as much as anybody; and a queer sort of bird I should appear!" (He was well over six feet, and broad in proportion.)
"If you suddenly found you could fly," he continued, "it would be _absorbing_ on Monday morning, _intensely interesting_ on Tuesday, _interesting_ on Wednesday, and _quite pleasant_ on Thursday, but by the end of the week it would be getting normal, and you would want to discover some other new power. No, believe me, the real question is not _flying_, but WHERE you would fly, and WHAT YOU WOULD DO WHEN YOU GOT THERE."
This sums up the case in a nut sh.e.l.l, and seems to me only another way of saying: "Don"t forget the spiritual significance beneath the scientific symbol."
And I would add: "Let us all join hands in the interesting and absorbing work of trying to make our symbols as scientific as we can, by finding out the laws which govern them, as well as all other things, in this universe of Love and Law. Probably we are here to learn, above all things else, that Love and Law are ONE."
Many people have had far more remarkable experiences than mine. For various good reasons I have carefully abstained from any attempt to cultivate, or in any way increase, the sensitiveness which is natural to me.
I can only a.s.sure my readers that my record has been absolutely accurate. In many cases it would have been very easy to write up the stories into some far more dramatic form; but by doing so the whole aim and object of my book would have been destroyed.
I wanted to trace the thread of what we at present consider abnormal, through the whole skein of a single life, hoping thereby to encourage others to do the same.
It is only by putting these things down, if not for publication, then in some diary or commonplace book, that we can realise how far our normal life is, even now and here, interpenetrated by another plane of existence.
And so farewell to all kind readers who have followed me to the end of my personal record of curious events--curious chiefly by reason of our present imperfect knowledge.
APPENDIX
I
Much has been said of the folly and triviality of all messages coming, or purporting to come, from the Unseen. I think here, as elsewhere, like clings to like, and we get very much what we deserve; or rather, to put it in a more philosophical and Emersonian way, we receive _what belongs to us_.
Emerson tells us in one of his most illuminating pa.s.sages, that everything which belongs to our spiritual estate is coming to us as quickly as it can travel. All the winds of heaven, all the waves of earth, are bringing it to us, and neither angel nor devil can prevent our taking what is ours or rejecting what is _not_ ours.
This is a universal law, and applies to automatic writing as to everything else. Emphatically we get what belongs to our spiritual estate.
Therefore any casual and general remarks as to the foolishness of all automatic writing, must of necessity be made by those who are ignorant of this spiritual law, or whose experience of such messages is very limited.
I intend to give a few which I have myself received, in the form of an Appendix to my book. With one exception, they all come from a very dear friend, who pa.s.sed into the other sphere little more than a year ago under peculiarly happy circ.u.mstances. I do not wish to give his name, although it would add considerably to the interest of the narrative. I shall therefore call him Mr Harry Denton. The messages will be given exactly in the form in which they were received, and without any editing. We never discussed theological ideas from any standpoint of _creed_; but I imagine that my friend, when here, would have looked upon Jesus Christ as one of the many inspired teachers of the world, and that his views were cosmic rather than religious--_in any narrow sense_--and certainly _religious_, in the broad sense of the term, rather than _theological_.
The first conversation (for this is a better description of my friend"s communications than the word _message_) refers to my own att.i.tude, as compared with that of a lady friend of mine, regarding Jesus of Nazareth.
H. D.--I see a great stream of light round you, Kate, and it seems to have come with your truer conception of Jesus Christ. It is all right for your friend to say she prefers to put the matter aside and leave it alone. That is just the best thing she can do; in fact, the _only_ thing she can do at present.
The seed is still underground, and the moment of emergence has not come.
To try and force it above ground just now, would be fatal. It would also be immature and uncalled for. The old husks of man-made creeds must drop off gradually, leaving the bud they protected intact, not be torn off by an impatient hand.
So far her instinct seems to me a true one. But the case is widely different for _you_. The husks _have_ fallen off, as a matter of fact, and the discomfort and sense of something wrong arose from your knowing that you were only striving desperately to clutch on to them, when the fine, strong bud was there, able and ready to take its proper share of sunshine and rain, and even to bear the cold winds of misrepresentation and misunderstanding if need be.
"QUIT YOU LIKE MEN, BE STRONG." That is _your_ lesson-book, and you will never feel happy or content until you are learning it.
Surely you must feel how much you have gained since you faced your own facts?
E. K. B.--Yes, Harry, I do; but I don"t quite understand _your_ position. Are you at the same point of view?
H. D.--No; not yet. It is all rather foreign to my previous notions. I thought of Jesus of Nazareth as a great teacher--one of _the_ great teachers of the world--but I had still to learn His unique position as regards our chain of worlds.