"As touching the resurrection (Greek 
,
i. e.,
the advancement) of 'the dead,' have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying—'I
am
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.'"—MATT. 22: 3I, 32.
St. Matthew, in commenting upon the utterance of the Saviour as embodied in the second of the above passages, states—"the multitude were astonished at His doctrine."
That fact, in view of the ordinary interpretation given to these words of Jesus is in itself astonishing.
"Were astonished"!—but at what? If His words constitute, as we have been so often assured they do, an argument for the resuscitation of the dead physical bodies of the Departed on some future day, why were the Jews astonished at what He said? He was, it is true, speaking directly to those who denied the fact of spirit and of life after death—the materialistic Sadducees; but the greater part of that crowd listening to Him believed in a future resurrection. They held the idea that the earthly body, which is disintegrated in the grave, and whose constituent particles are requisitioned for the building up of other physical bodies, will some day be restored to a particular one of the beings or material objects that have held a temporary proprietorship of it. It never seemed to strike them, that inasmuch as the particles composing the physical body of any person are constantly changing, and becoming the particles of the body of some one, or something, else, it would be impossible to assign a final proprietorship of them to one person without depriving others of the same right. They believed—did those Jews—that physical death involved a complete, or a very disastrous, interruption of life. With it would come an interval of nonentity—a blank—an oblivion, or at best, a trance-like condition, or semi-consciousness—and afterward, in the far future, a resurrection, or a return to bodily organization.
Not grasping the truth concerning the life Behind the Veil, they spoke of the departed, as many Christians and the Church herself have spoken of them—as "the dead," "the holy dead"; and resurrection was viewed as God's call to these dead ones to rejoin the ranks of the living.
That was the idea concerning Resurrection held by the Jews in the time of Jesus, and it is the idea which has colored the theology of Western Christendom all through succeeding centuries.
Is it the right idea? Was our Saviour Christ referring to a distant resurrection at all, when in the words to which we are alluding He spoke about an anastasis? If He were—if in those words He was presenting no new thought, and only voicing the commonly-accepted notion of Resurrection—as expressed, e. g., by Martha, when she said—"I know that he (Lazarus) shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day"—then how comes it—we ask—that "the multitude were astonished at His doctrine"?
We contend that the astonishment on the part of Christ's hearers was a proof that His idea of Resurrection was not theirs, and that He was teaching something variant from accepted ideas.
Granting, then, that Jesus was not endorsing the crude and popular notion, but was proclaiming an unrealized truth, one may perceive the cause of those Jews' astonishment.
He speaks of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who had departed this life, as they were always spoken of— "the dead," and a moment afterward asserts— "God is not the God of the dead."
I can imagine an indignant rabbi in that listening crowd turning to those beside him, and saying— "Did you hear what that heretic said? He asserts that God is not the dead patriarchs' God."
And yet the Master was right.
In considering the great truth about which our Saviour was speaking on this occasion, it may be well to show how unsatisfactory and illogical is His utterance, if it be made to apply to the subject of a future resurrection.
Those who so apply it convict the Christ of arguing inconsequentially. From two correct premises they make Him deduce an illogical conclusion.
If these words of Jesus be taken, as they are commonly, but mistakenly, taken, as an argument for future physical resurrection, they prove nothing. Our Lord is made to reason inconclusively—as follows—
God is not the God of dead persons:
Of dead Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He says, "I am (i. e., I still am) their God": Therefore—These three patriarchs will some day be resurrected to life.
But suppose our Lord was not referring at all to a future event, but to that which takes place at the death of man's physical body, then His reasoning becomes perfectly clear and consistent.
This was the argument of Jesus—"Now as touching the anastasis (the advancement) of those whom you, in your ignorance, term 'the dead,' have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying—'I am (not I was, or shall be) the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob '? Now, God is not the God of dead persons, but of the living, and this statement of God is not true unless those three men were alive after death."
Put into the syllogistic form, our Lord's argument was perfectly logical.
God is not the God of dead persons:
After their physical dissolution. He said of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 'I am their God": Therefore—Those three men must have been alive when that statement of God was made.
The Saviour's utterance is logical in regard to continued life at physical dissolution: it is hopelessly illogical in regard to a not-as-yet accomplished resurrection.
Further, it is noteworthy that the
anastasis
of which our Lord spoke is represented not as an event of the future, but as something that is taking place now and continuously. St. Luke, in recording this utterance of Jesus, writes—"Now that 'the dead'
are being
advanced." (Greek, 
.) The verb is not in the future tense, but in the present, and denotes present continued action. That is a very important point, because so many who expound this passage treat the sentence as if Christ had said—"Now that 'the dead'
shall be
raised."
Moreover, the adoption of the Latin word "resurrection" as a translation of the Greek word
(anastasis) is most unfortunate, and has caused mankind to lose sight of a great truth. The two words are not of like significance. The preposition ana, in the word anastasis, denotes
upward
or forward, while "re," in the word "resurrection," signifies backward.
Anastasis
suggests the idea of an advance or an ascent, and as the Fathers of the early Eastern Church described it— the passage of a being from a lower to a higher plane of life and experience. From the Latin word "Resurrection" has come the materialistic notion of the soul's return to the physical body—a resuscitated dead body rising up out of its grave: an idea not contained in the Greek word anastasis.
There is an anastasis, or advancement, that comes at physical death, when the "inner-man"— the spirit encased in its spirit-body, leaves the earthly tabernacle, and rises into a higher phase of existence. We do not think that this is the only anastasis. There may be many goings-forward in the Spiritual World, and we believe there will be one great consummating anastasis when the perfected man-spirit shall be made in spiritual bodily presence like his redeeming Saviour.
But it is not of this final anastasis that Jesus was speaking when He said—''Now that 'the dead' are being advanced." He was speaking of that raising that takes place at death; of the condition of those who have gone Behind the Veil.
It is of them we wish to speak—those "raised men and women" (to make use of a well-known Hebrew idiom), who in vacating their earthly "tabernacle" have been transported to higher life and greater possibilities.
Those Behind the Veil! Those who have lived out, worked out, played out, sobbed out, in some cases, their brief earth-life, and passed hence! We think of them in their inconceivable number. It is computed that at every tick of the clock by night and day a human soul passes from the world of the Physical to that of the Spiritual. We think of them tenderly and regretfully (if we be Christians in spirit as well as in name), because, alas! millions of them have lived this life and gone out of it without God, without Christ, and without hope; and the Christ has told us of a "darkness without," and many of them will have to grope in that miserable darkness before they find their way to God.
Poor, handicapped ones! whose earthly environment was such that it would have been the marvel of marvels if they had known God and goodness in this life. Poor, unfavored ones! as much loved by the All-Father as you and I, and who yet, for some reason, that the theologians cannot explain, were never permitted in the earth-life even to know the Name of the saving Jesus; or if they heard of Him, could not understand His message of salvation amid the wranglings and doctrinal mystifications of the religious ones. Poor, unsaved souls! who would, in all probability, have been ever so much better than we are, had God but given them half our privileges. Poor ignorant souls! who died with no idea except of death, and in the very act of dying, awoke to the realization that "there is no death: what seems so is transition."
Poor astonished, dumbfounded souls! who, because of the crude way in which it had been presented to them, had thought religion to be nonsense, and then had been confronted with the vastness and wonder of a World of Spirit. Poor, lost sheep! who thoughtlessly wandered from the Good Shepherd. Poor, lost pieces of Divine coinage! who because of their helplessness became the victims of the attracting forces of evil, and lay hidden for a while in the darkness and defilement. Poor, wretched prodigals! who in their life on earth deliberately turned their back upon their Father, and in that Other Country have to face the loneliness, the shame, the beggary, the spiritual hunger and the rags, before they can arise and go to Him. Millions of all such are there among the number of those Behind the Veil.
Yes, and millions of others, too; souls who must be differently classed. Those who, when living in the flesh, realized their relationship to God, and lived in communion with Him and tried to serve Him. Those who had grown into Christ-likeness on earth, and then went to be God's ministering angels to those unsaved Beyond. Some who had been believers in the Christ, but had left the "lower-school" before the warps and twists and imperfections of their character had been put right, and the spiritual cavities filled up. Others, poor, bruised reeds! who long ago might have given forth sweet music among the perfect organ-pipes of Divine Harmony, but somehow or another got out of tune, and have gone where the Master Christ will bring them into God-adjustment.
We think of all these Behind the Veil—that vast aggregation of human entities, who have thought and felt, and lived and sinned, and sorrowed and suffered as we are doing, and then passed away out of sight; that mighty unceasingly-flowing stream of Human-Consciousness that has been sweeping across the sands of Time for hundreds of centuries and has discharged itself into God's great ocean of Eternity.
All Souls! What of them? Does the great All-Father think and care about the unsaved ones among them now? Is the atmosphere of His love still enwrapping them? Are there any possibilities of blessing in regard to them? Is the Saviour Christ, "the Same yesterday, and to-day, and all through the aeons,"—still doing as He did in the lower earth-life—going after the lost sheep? There have been many who have told us that the All-Father is only concerned about unsaved souls as long as they are in this life, and that when death ends their physical existence, His concern is extinguished. We have been told that Infinite Love enwraps God's human creatures as long as the material life is in them, but that afterward, that Love is turned to Vengeance and relentless Hate. We have been told by learned expounders of Religion, certain of their own salvation, that there is no possibility of recovery after death for any unblessed ones; that the unchangeable Jesus is not the Seeker of the lost souls through the aeons, but only as long as those lost souls are on this side of the frontier-line of Time. The Christian Church, on the part of some of her members, has inculcated the practice of praying for the ones Behind the Veil; but not for all, and not for those who most want the prayers. She has set aside a day of the year for the Commemoration of "All Souls"; but she did not mean all; she only meant the ''faithful" departed. She has not gauged the full significance of the Saviour's words—"God so loved the world." And so as we think of that vast multitude on the Other Side, we are dissatisfied with what has been thought and taught concerning them. We betake ourselves to our Bible, and when we have rejected the mistranslations in it, and read it as the early Eastern Fathers read it, and as the later Latin Fathers failed to read it, a glorious hope in regard to all Behind the Veil takes possession of us. Not as "the dead," but as the living, do we think of them. The words of the Son of God ring in our ears—"He is not a God of the dead; for all live unto Him." Not as creatures outside the love of God and the possibilities of salvation do we picture them. Whether on this side of the Borderline or on the other side, all souls are the property of God and come within His "Purpose of the ages." The words of David—the man who lived in the twilight of revelation, come to us—"The Lord is good to all; and His tender mercies are over all His works."
The words of the truth-revealing Jesus cast a glorious hope upon the future of the human race—"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." The prophetic utterance of St. Paul confirms these words of the Christ, and points to a "restitution," foreseen by prophet and poet, but lost sight of by the theologian; when at the end of the aeons God shall be "all in all." Thus, in the light of the real Gospel of God, in contradistinction to what has been called "Gospel," we get a total reversal of our ideas in regard to the Departed. Instead of terming them "the dead," "the blessed (or unblessed) dead," we call them, on the Master's authority, "the living." Instead of regarding them as having been injured by death, we believe they were benefited by it. It ushered them into a higher phase of life and experience. It was an anastasis—a going forward. The Master said so. Their thoughts did not perish in the grave, as David in his unenlightenment supposed. Bodily dissolution freed the mind from physical restrictions, to act more vigorously on another plane. Instead of supposing that at dying they completed their education, we believe that then they only moved on to a "higher school." The "kindergarten " of the Physical was left behind for the more advanced training of the Spiritual. Instead of imagining that death, which stripped them of their earthly encasement, left them as bodiless entities, we believe that it did but liberate an interior spiritual self clothed with a spirit-body, and that in this spirit-body, after dying, men and women are as real and manlike and womanlike as before. Instead of thinking of them as those whose condition has been unalterably fixed for good or bad, we believe that the condition of no soul, saint or sinner, is stereotyped at death. Both alike, in obedience to the law of God's universe, must move onward to the higher. Instead of supposing that death has placed any man or woman, however fallen and debased, outside the pale of God's love and mercy, and beyond the possibility of recovery, we believe that no soul is so placed. Sin and alienation from God entail awful experiences upon a human spirit; but behind those experiences lie the love and power of God and His Purpose in regard to "His offspring." That purpose is to recover and save by grace, or by judgment, that which is lost. It cannot be frustrated by evil. If, at the end of the aeons, but one soul were irremedially ruined, the statement of St. Paul that Christ is "the Saviour of all men" would not be true; nor would Jesus' prophecy be fulfilled, that He will draw all men unto Himself; nor would that foretold by prophet and apostle and poet ever come to pass—"the restitution of all things."
There can be no logical compromise in regard to this matter. Every soul Beyond the Veil, howsoever circumstanced, is within the embrace of Almighty Love, and, sooner or later, pleasantly or painfully, must find its way to the Home of the All-Father's Bosom; or the Christ claimed to do more than He would be able to accomplish, and the Bible ascribes to Him an all-extensive Saviourship to which He is not entitled.
In the light of the teaching of Western Theology we dare only think about the favored ones in the World Beyond. In the light of the better teaching of the early Eastern Church, and in accordance with the Gospel of a Bible correctly translated and rightly understood, we dare think hopefully and trustfully about all in that World. "All souls are Mine," has God said—and like the Eastern Fathers, we shudder at the bare supposition that there is any power in the universe that can finally alienate God's possessions from Him. As one by one our fellow-creatures pass from the Seen to the Unseen, we read over their mortal bodies, in the Burial-lesson, those magnificent words which half the Christian world does not believe—"Then cometh the end (the fulfilment of the saving Purpose of God) . . . that God may be all in ALL."
Of course, the realization of these truths concerning those who have passed Beyond the Veil, will completely alter our mental attitude and conduct in regard to the Departed. With the acceptance of the teaching of the Saviour and a better understanding of the scope of His redeeming work, will come the conviction that an unbroken relationship still exists between us and them, and that communion, in a very real sense, is a possibility.
The mental attitude of the ordinary Christian toward the Departed is a very cheerless one. Like Martha, he believes in a resurrection ''at the last day,'' but that thought brings no more comfort to him than it did to her. In the presence of death, the mourning heart cries out for a living dear one, and no doctrine of a future restoration to life can possibly remove the horrors of the grave. Nothing but the absolute conviction that the dear one is not dead, but living, can do that. The fact that the Departed are now living is admitted by Christians; but it is not realized. If it were realized, the departure of a dear one would be viewed in a very different light from what it generally is. Had the Christian world really grasped the Saviour's teaching of "Advancement and Life," our funeral ceremonies would not have assumed the character of symbolizations of pagan hopelessness and despair, nor would our churchyards have been made hideous by the emblems of perishable mortality. Instead of the Gospelless inscriptions we put on our grave stones, we should inscribe the words of the angel—"He is not here: he is risen."
Yes, the ordinary conception concerning the Departed is a truly depressing one. The thoughts of the bereaved focus themselves on a dead body lying in a grave, and not upon a living being whose life is infinitely more intense than it was before. Death seems to open a gulf, a separation between us and those we love, and the religious teaching that has obtained currency as "orthodoxy," has done little or nothing to bridge that gulf. Multitudes of Christians who, Sunday after Sunday, profess their belief in "the communion of saints," have not the least idea what that communion means. Tell them that between us and those Behind the Veil a vital and energizing relationship still exists: they will not understand you. Speak to them of the possibility of a discarnate spirit and mind communicating with an incarnate spirit and mind, and they will stare at you in blank amazement. Inform them that there exists a world-wide testimony to the fact that thousands of men and women, after they had passed hence, have been seen and spoken to by those whom they have left behind on earth: they will tell you plainly it is incredible. Suggest to them that they should pray for the Departed: they will assure you that such prayers, if not downright wicked, are utterly useless, and that your suggestion of them is a sure indication that you have been deceived by Satan.
It is true that some Christians pray for those who are gone, but their prayers are only for the "faithful Departed," and so the vast majority of those Behind the Veil are left unprayed for by the Christian Church—that Instrument which exists for furthering the Purpose of the Christ to draw all men unto Himself.
Again, the ordinary Christian teaching concerning the unsaved ones in that vast aggregation of human souls Beyond the Veil is an appallingly cheerless and hopeless one. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," is the motto that so-called "Orthodoxy" has set up over the portals of the Spiritual World for all except the "faithful"; and it means that the greater proportion of the human race is doomed at death to irremedial loss and ruin.
Fortunately, no one logically and really believes in the doctrine that at death a person's condition is stereotyped and his destiny unalterably fixed for all eternity. Many suppose it is the correct thing to believe it, and try to persuade themselves that they believe it. But all the time it is not believed. If men and women, in whom is existing a particle of the Spirit of Christ, did believe it, they would become insane.
No loving man or woman, whose wife, or child, or dear one has passed hence in a condition which could not be called "saved," could possibly retain his or her reason, if it were really believed that death places a human soul beyond the reach of God's redeeming Love.
Thank God!—for the happiness of humanity— man's intuitive instincts are better than his formulated creeds. The hope is secretly cherished that the grace of God, because it is the grace of an Infinite Being, must and will operate beyond the limits defined by a narrow theology. No Christian, however staunch to the pitiless teaching of the school to which he belongs, ever brings himself really to think that any one beloved by him in the World Beyond is irretrievably lost. His creed, perhaps, gives him no hope in regard to that one who died without religion; but his own heart refuses to surrender its hope; and so he keeps his reason and his faith in God.
How different become our thoughts and our conduct in respect to the Departed, when we accept Christ's teaching and understand His Gospel! How the exclusiveness, the heartlessness and the selfishness in our Religion fall away, and leave us nobler-minded men and women! How the Gospel, then, really becomes a Gospel, and not merely good news for the few, and very bad news for the many!
In the light of the words of Jesus, the world Beyond the Veil becomes a World of enhanced life and unbounded hope. Not peopled is it by human entities who are drowsily existing in expectation of a summons at a distant day to renewed powers and activity; but by men and women whose mental and spiritual faculties have been quickened by that touch of death, which has set them free from the restricting and obscuring influences of physical environment. Nor, in that World, do we picture these beings of quickened life as constituting two great and opposite classes—the one embracing those whom the Almighty is keeping for ages in the miserable anticipation of that stroke of Divine vengeance which shall hurl them into irretrievable ruin; the other, that class of expectantly blissful ones, who are so unlike the Christ that the knowledge of their fellows' intolerable woes does not mar their happiness.
No, with the words of Jesus ringing in our ears —" They all live unto God," and those other words which strike the key-note of the real Gospel—"God so loved the world," and "I will draw all men unto Me," our thoughts of those Beyond the Veil become irradiated with all-glorious hope. It is obvious that the acceptance of the views expressed above will have an important bearing (as we have said) upon our sense of the communion that can exist between us and those who have passed into risen-life.
One of the greatest achievements of the present age has been the scientific demonstration of the possibilities of Mind. Telepathy has opened up to us a new world of thought in regard to a power inherent in man, independent of the physical side of his constitution. The investigation of the subject by scientific men has established the fact that, in spite of all conditions of Time and Space, one person can communicate to another distinct thoughts, feelings and impressions, and can even transmit from his mind a mental picture which can be received by another mind.
The writer, himself, has proved this.
Leading scientific men have gone farther than this, and have admitted that there exists sufficient evidence to warrant them in believing that a telepathic communication is possible between those who have passed out of this life and us who are still on the earth-plane.
The Christian world ought to be profoundly grateful to science for lifting the doctrine of the " Communion of Saints " out of the region of mere abstraction, in which it has lain so long, into that domain of thought which presents it as something real and practical.
If the Mind in us—handicapped as it is by its close association with a restricting material body—is, nevertheless, capable of establishing a communication with another mind similarly circumstanced, what may we not predicate as to the possibilities of Mind when set free from the restrictions of the flesh?
The mind of the Departed is functioning on a higher plane, and more vigorously than it did when they were in earth-life. Its powers have become enhanced. Its telepathic capabilities are far greater than they were. Given a person in the earth-life in a condition of receptiveness, and in affinity with one Beyond the Veil, and you can affix no limit to the influence which the latter may be able to exert upon the mind of the former.
That makes communion between us and the Departed a reality—an all-important factor in our experience.
We believe that our dear ones Beyond, who have carried with them their love and concern for us whom they have left behind, help us to an extent of which we are only partly conscious.
A poor, bereaved heart is very sad and very despondent, because the shadow of death has fallen upon it. The inexpressible yearning for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still" is an agony to it. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there comes a lightening of that awful heart-ache, and the gleam of an indefinable hope breaks in upon the night of that experience. He knows not why it should be so; there is no change in his outward circumstances to account for it. He knows not,—and popular religious teaching has not helped him to know,—that that surcease from hopeless sorrow is the direct outcome of the action of that dear one Beyond the Veil. The vibrations of that grief and yearning have been felt by that discarnate spirit. The "deep" of a human soul "has called unto the deep" of a kindred human soul, and the answering touch has been vouchsafed. From the mental-self of that yearned-for one, there has been projected, at the ordering of the Father God of consolation, a thought-wave—a telepathic message of comfort and relief.
Take another experience which comes to many who mourn for the Departed—that sense of irreparable loss and helplessness, when the trusted counselor and guide of one's life is taken away. "Without the directing hand of that wise and good father of mine, how can I ever rightly shape my course in life?" asks the grieving son. "Without that loving and sympathetic mother, how can I ever be the woman I meant to be?" asks the timid and bereaved daughter. "Without that husband to bear with me the troubles and difficulties of life, how can I ever face them?" And yet the course in life becomes rightly shaped, and the good and noble woman is developed, and the troubles and difficulties do not crush the poor widow. These ones have acted in relation to the experiences of life as those who are gone would have counseled and helped them to act.
They do not realize that the father, the mother, the husband, or the friend has been helping them from the World of Spirit; that telepathic communication has been maintained; that the ones who loved and were concerned about us when they were on earth, are still loving us and are still concerned about us in their risen life; and that many of the impulses that cause us to think rightly, will rightly and act rightly, are impulses transmitted to us from the mind of those whom we love Beyond the Veil.
Oh! believe me, the Church's doctrine of the "Communion of Saints" can never be anything more to us than a bare ecclesiastical dogma, until we realize this. Lastly, our realization of communication between ourselves and the Departed will express itself in action. We shall pray for our dear ones Beyond the Veil.
Why not? Those who have lately passed over are as imperfect as we are; none whom we have known have advanced beyond the benefit of our prayers for them. Our prayers will help all such to higher life and attainments, and will cement the bond that links them to us. Why pray for them here, and omit to pray for them there? Is the neglect of Prayer for the Departed reasonable? Is it compatible with the truest Christian instincts? Is it not a mark that we have failed— utterly failed—in grasping the full import of the Gospel of Jesus? Can we, if we do not pray for them, say we believe in the "Communion of Saints"?
How can I be in communion with any one, here or Beyond, unless between myself and that one some kind of contact be established? Telepathy and Prayer constitute that contact between us and the Departed.
To talk of the "Communion of Saints," and to deny the possibility of vital communication between us and those who have gone hence is an absurdity—a contradiction in terms. We may repeat this particular clause of the Christian Creed all our life, and convince ourselves that we believe the truth enshrined in the beautiful and time-honoured words; but we do not really believe it, unless we realize that the Seen and Unseen are allied, and that we in this world are affected by spiritual and mental influences that stream to us from those en rapport with us in Another World.
Our Prayers for the Departed will be the outcome of this realization. In spite of all that a loveless, hopeless and comfortless theology may have said to the contrary, we shall pray for them. In the light of a better-understood Gospel than that which Western Christendom has taught for centuries, we shall plead with the Heavenly Father for those Behind the Veil, as earnestly and as naturally as we were wont to plead for them when they were here.
For the sinful and lost ones in that great World we shall pray; knowing that in the very act we are placing our mind in adjustment with the mind of the all-saving Christ, who said He would go after that which was lost until He find it.
For the faulty and undeveloped ones who have passed thence, we shall pray; conscious that every such prayer is felt by its object, and stimulates to nobler thought and higher aim.
Yes, and for those saintly ones, who have brightened and blessed the lot of ourselves and of others here on earth, and have gone to Another World to continue their mission of helping and blessing; for them, also, we shall pray. There are heights of moral excellence and summits of spiritual attainment to which as yet they have not climbed. The prayers of those they love and have left behind will stimulate their spirit as they move onward to the goal of Perfection.
And they—the ones Beyond for whom we pray? Well, their spiritual "deep" is answering to our spiritual "deep." They are praying for us; and so a mighty wave of mental and spiritual influence is passing between the two worlds—from us to them, and from them to us.
Conscious of this, our Religion will become an intenser reality to us, the Article of our Creed will appear pregnant with comforting significance, and on that darkest of all clouds that overshadow human experience will appear those rainbow-colors, whose birthplace is in that sun of glorious truth, proclaimed by Jesus—"God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ... for all live unto Him."
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