Read Ebook: Strange Visitors A series of original papers embracing philosophy science government religion poetry art fiction satire humor narrative and prophecy by the spirits of Irving Willis Thackeray Brontë Richter Byron Humboldt Hawthorne Wesley Browning and oth by Horn Henry J

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Ebook has 1224 lines and 59257 words, and 25 pages

"Yes; why not? Have you any you'd like to lose?"

I shook my head and walked on absorbed in thought. And are all our paraphernalia for funerals, our solemn black, and our long prayers but useless ceremonies? Why, according to this, the beliefs of the Chinese, Hottentot, African, and Indian are nearer the truth than our civilized creeds!

I find that there are few things in which society in this world so much differs from that of earth as in its social and political arrangements.

All the great system of living for appearances, and the habit of self-deception whereby men live outwardly what their secret lives disavow, are here entirely done away with.

In the first place the marriage relations differ materially from those of earth, and no false sentiment nor custom, nor religious belief, holds together as companions those who are dissimilar in their nature. Neither do men crucify their tastes and feelings from a mistaken idea of duty.

The miseries and disasters which are attendant on a life on earth they view as a parent would view the whooping-cough or scarlatina which afflict the body of his child--as necessary steps toward his growth and progress from youth to manhood.

A remarkable instance of this came under my own observation. You remember that the singular and sudden death of Abraham Lincoln was a matter of surprise to us. We could not see the purpose of an all-wise Providence in this sudden closing of an eventful career. It was discussed in every newspaper in the land, and the conclusion was that the Creator had some special purpose in his removal, and this we all believed.

But here the enigma is solved.

Standing face to face and walking side by side, as I have done for the last few days with this man, raised as some suppose for the special purpose of freeing the slave--a martyr for principle--I find that he enjoys as a good joke, this martyrdom, and I have also ascertained the solemn fact that he was removed, not by God, but by spirit politicians, God's agents.

And the state of the case is this: the Southern rebels, hot-blooded and revengeful, who were arriving daily by scores and hundreds, in the spirit world, finding their cause discomfited and worsted, became mutinous. They were too raw and new to fall into the harmony of the spirit life, and they threatened a second war in Heaven; a war which those young Lucifers would have waged with terrific power.

To quell this disturbance and produce a counteraction, it was necessary that one whom they looked upon as the great leader of the Northern cohorts should be withdrawn from the post which he occupied.

A man of calm, dispassionate judgment, not vindictive, who could hold the reins with a firm hand, yet look with a lenient eye on the follies which he did not share, was needed in the spirit world, and that man was Abraham Lincoln.

The liberal party in the spirit world, friends to humanity and progress, could have prevented his removal had they wished; but not desiring to do so, they prepared his mind by dreams and visions for what was about to take place.

For a short time in the spirit world he held the position of Pacificator and chief ruler over that portion of the American, spirit world represented by the North and South.

But after averting this peril, which would have involved the States in anarchy and war such as they had not yet experienced, he retired to private life.

Another instance, proving that the inhabitants of the spirit world, like their great prototype, the Creator, do not look at immediate distress, but at the advantages that may accrue therefrom, presents itself in my removal from the sphere in which I had probably worked out all that would be useful to humanity.

I have one thing to say to my brother journalist, Horace Greeley, and that is that the Utopian ideas which have for so many years formed the principal topic of his radical sheet are here put in operation.

Each one seems desirous of cooperating with his neighbor, and people of like tastes and feelings associate together and live in vast communities or cities. They do not settle down to one routine, as they do with you. The cost of travelling depending chiefly on the will and energy of the individual, the inhabitants are ever in motion, ever ready for a change, if wisdom or pleasure should dictate it. The condition of the common people is vastly improved, and America has been the chief agent in placing the lower classes in a condition which adapts them to a higher spiritualized life. I say lower classes, because under the system of monarchical governments, the peasants and laborers of Europe have been kept in a state of besotted ignorance, developing chiefly in the animal propensities, and not fitting themselves for the higher enjoyments of the spirit life.

Finding that the spirit world was likely to be overrun by this class of ignorant and superstitions people, its wise rulers have instigated the legislators of the United States to provide means for the education and development of these lower classes of society.

It is only by assimilating with those of a higher intellectual development that the ignorant become enlightened, and America, in throwing down all barriers to political and social advancement, has been the chief instrument of lifting the great mass of humanity to a position of power in the spirit world; still there are crowds of beings, ignorant and superstitious, who enter the spirit world, and their intellects can only be unfolded by the labor and guidance of some master mind.

I was surprised to find that physical labor here, as on earth, was one of the chief means employed to assist in mental growth; and I found swarms of English, Irish, and German people happily at work, cultivating the land and erecting houses for themselves and others, and assisting in the great machinery of life, which here, as in the other world, revolves its constant round.

It appears that every particle in nature throws off a gaseous emanation, partaking of its particular shape. These gaseous particles are not discernible with the material eye, excepting when by chance they coalesce, and then a phosphorescent light ensues, which renders them apparent.

A similar effect to this is seen in electricity, which lies latent and viewless till by a sudden coalescing of its parts it manifests itself in zigzag lines and flashes of light which illuminate the heavens.

Now certain material bodies have the power of drawing those atoms in close affinity, and when they are thus drawn, the shapes alluded to are clearly discernible by the human eye.

I discovered another fact, and that is that every human being emits a light, and in the case of those called "mediums," it is intense like the Drummond light, and a spirit standing in its rays will become visible to mortal sight.

These experiments interested me highly, as they had been heretofore inexplicable to my mind.

If she had waited until she had resided a little longer in spirit life she would not have pursued so foolish a course. But I must bring this long letter to a close, assuring my friends that I have the prospect of as active a life before me as the one I have just closed on earth.

MARGARET FULLER.

To a mind familiar with the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which has studied the Scandinavian Edda, and is intimate with the more modern German, French, and English authors, the literature of the spirit world opens up a mine of interminable wealth.

The libraries in this world are vast catacombs or repositories of buried knowledge. Here are found histories of decayed races, dynasties, and nations which have vanished from earth, leaving scarce a monument of their progress in art, science, and mental culture. In these libraries the student of history will find the exploits of ancient peoples recorded, and a description of their cities, with the temples and towers which they built and the colossal images which they created.

I own to the surprise which I experienced when I discovered that printed books were a part of the treasures of the spirit world. But the scholar will rejoice as I did to find the literary productions of remotest ages garnered in the spacious halls of science that adorn our cities.

It is a principle of being--a condition of immortality--as inseparable from spirit existence as from earth life, that thought should express itself in external forms. Even the Great Spirit, the Creator of all, gives shape to his thoughts in the formation of trees, flowers, men, beasts, and myriad worlds with their constant motion, their sound and song.

It has been aptly said that the "stars are the poetry of God." He, the Great Spirit of all, writes his thoughts legibly; and so man, like his originator, whether living in the natural body or existing as a spirit, gives outward shape to his ideas; hence books become a necessity of spirit existence, and the writers from earth have still a desire to perpetuate their thoughts.

Oral communication is too evanescent, and therefore the dear old books still find a place in the spheres.

There are various modes of making these volumes, and the writer may become his own printer.

Some authors prefer to dictate, and a little instrument marks off the variations of sound which make the word, and thus, as he speaks, the word is impressed on the sheet.

Others, if the thought be clear and distinct enough, and the will sufficiently under abeyance, act through the mind upon a conductor, which dots down the thought in a manner somewhat similar to telegraphic printing.

The material used to receive the impression is of a soft, vellum-like nature, which can be folded up in any manner without destroying its form; it is very light and thin, but opaque, like the creamy petals of a lily.

The phonetic alphabet is used extensively, though we have many books printed in the mode usually adopted on earth.

All nature is constantly changing and progressing. The bards who sang upon the earth centuries ago--Homer, Virgil, the Greek and Roman, the Celtic and Saxon writers of old--have passed beyond the spirit sphere which I inhabit to a spirit planet still more refined, and have left behind only the records of their strange experience.

The eighteenth century cannot walk side by side with the third or fourth century more readily in the spirit world than on earth.

The character of the spirit literature of the present day is essentially scientific and explorative. We have in our world, as you have in yours, intrepid travellers--learned men, who make voyages to almost inaccessible planets--and they return even as those of earth, with sketches and graphic outlines of the strange sights they have witnessed; and those less venturesome who remain at home are as anxious as your citizens might be to hear accounts of wonderful regions that have been visited. And such books of travel are sought eagerly.

We have but few works on theology; the nature and essence of God is discussed with us, but not so elaborately as with you.

Spirits who have passed into a second life have so nearly approached the mystery of a Divine Being that they do not desire to debate the subject.

A large proportion of our writers are devoted to what you would here term transcendental thought, a kind of literature which lies between poetry and music, which awakens a feeling of ecstasy, and gives, as it were, wings to the soul.

The poets who sang upon earth during the last century, of whom Shelly, Keats, and Byron are an English type, and Halleck, Pierrepont, Dana, and Willis the American representatives, are among the most inspired and far-reaching of our present writers of poetry and song.

Our literature has one great advantage over that of earth, in that our separate nationalities become merged in one grand unit. We do not need translators, as we have adopted a universal written language. There are some writers who still retain, as I have said, the modes adopted on earth, but those who have been resident any length of time in the spirit sphere employ the plan of writing by signs, which are understood and acknowledged by every nationality.

I should like, in closing, to introduce an extract from an old volume which I found in a library in the city of Spring Garden.

It was written by Addison during his sojourn in that city, in the year 1720, and is in the form of a letter, supposed to be written to a friend on earth. In it he essays to portray the expansion of mind he has experienced in his new home through the magnetic influence of thought language:

"Behold the far off luminary suspended millions and billions and trillions of miles in space; then turn the eye yonder and see that infinitesimal point of vegetation, earth--a speck, countless multitudes of which heaped and piled together would form but a point compared with that majestic sun!

"Yet behold it move and expand beneath the long fibrous rays which that effulgent orb sends down through so many billions of miles to the place of its minute existence. Even as that poor little existence shoots out its fibres to meet those rays which have travelled such great lengths, so a spirit in the spheres feels the quickening, effulgent rays thrown out by the brain of some prophet or poet existing millions and billions and trillions of miles away on some distant spirit planet, and his thought expands and enlarges beneath the warming action of that far-off brain, until it assumes a shape and form which its own emulation never prophesied."

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