Epes Sargent via the mediumship of Cora L. V. Richmond
1,554 words, 8 minutes read time.
I am here to testify to death. As I once testified to humanity, as feebly and faintly as one human being might who hoped for the best and strove always to find the truth, so now with a greater strength, and with this born not alone of thought but of being, I am here to testify of death. It is the living splendour of the universe. Without it there is no spring time blossom; without it there is no rare transmutation of things that changes night into day; without it there is rid struggling of the atom toward diviner possibilities of being; without it there is no removal of the relentless curse of nature, which is a hardened form, and dull tune, and space, and sense. Without it the ebb and flow of human affairs would become solidified and crystallised, and man today would be petrified the midst of all his sin and crime, forever to remain a solemn mockery in the great book of eternity. Without death you could never rid yourselves of your errors; without it you could not grow into diviner manhood and womanhood. Without it love would be voiceless—there would be no clasping, of immortal hands, and no tremblings of immortal thoughts along the corridors of being. Without it all life would be meaningless, for there would be no love; you would be immured in sepulchres; your bodily existence would be a bane and mockery. The breath of the spirit taken away, there could be no time and no eternity.
In the midst of this solemn splendour, where all of life throngs around one, and where that which is basest and meanest departs and slinks away into the shadows, fain would hide itself from the light of the surpassing power of the spirit—in the midst of this splendour, where every good thing survives and every base thing perishes by its own inactivity and inanition, where gradually the shadows, the infirmities, of time and the deformities of sense give place to the perfections of spirit and mind,—in the midst of this I testify that that which has come to me has come through death; I am transfigured; the being that was seen and known on earth is me; and I am more than this, I am all that I hoped to be, I am all that I aspired to be; I was not wicked nor sinful; I was imperfect as human beings usually are below, as they sometimes are, struggling for higher possibilities. But I am more than I dared to dream; I am better than I dared to hope; I am the humblest in the kingdom of the spirit, but I am greater than the greatest aspires to be. So are you unveiled from your mortal elements, the worst side of which reveals itself in human life, you become also transfigured; you are no longer the weaklings that you seem; humanity is no longer that which through time, and pain, and sense, bears the mocking image of the divine, but humanity becomes divine. Even the slave—I do not mean him who wears the shackles in form—but even the slave in soul; who comes cringing into the world of spirit by the gateway of death, even he who creeps fend crawls with terror toward the tomb; is greater in spirit than he seems, greater than you would dare to dream that he might be.
Oh, what a revelator is death! I Stand before you this night, not of you, but perceiving that which is highest and best in every soul, knowing that every thought and feeling and aspiration toward goodness has its prototype in splendour in the spiritual being; and I could show how to you your other selves; that which is the possession of your immortal part, its grand; as divine, as glorious as you dream, and the best of it is that death makes all this possible to be known; that it gives you the key to the temple of your own life, that there is but one other way that you can know it, and that way dimly; I mean by inspiration; I mean by spiritual perception; It was denied me to have the direct inspiration that many have; I was obliged to take the testimony of others largely; but when I know that there are those endowed with windows that look heavenward; and know that they cannot begin to see the glory that is mine, I wonder sometimes that they do not burst the barrier and be free. But the restraining hand of life is upon them, and the higher restraint of that wisdom that forbids the bursting of a bond until you have won your freedom. He who seeks to avoid any difficulty in life by hurrying into the world of spirit, finds the same impenetrable barrier before him, namely himself; he has not escaped, from himself, nor from any weakness that was within him. He must now meet it face to face; it comes nearer and nearer; it crowds upon him; he must overcome it in spirit as he failed to overcome it in earthly life.
Ah, do not think that death will lead you to escape any responsibilities. It brings you all your treasures; it yields to you all your possessions; it restores to you all your faded hopes; it gives back every blessed and good promise of life, but it will not relieve you from responsibility. These are yours; you inherit them; they belong to you as a part of the infinite plan, and sooner or later, in one world or another, in one state of being or another, you must meet and vanquish them, one by one.
Sublime is death! Beautiful is the gateway! Intense as is the rapture of the spirit when conscious of being, and of form, and of life, there is nothing to allure one to the neglect of any duty, or the fulfilment of any purpose, for your poverty of spirit is revealed by death, as is your riches, and you must bear the test which the divine scrutiny brings.
Again I encompass you with this life; again I stretch out the hands of my spirit in greeting to all who have known me; again I say that which I believed I know, that which I testified to is now mine; that which I bore evidence of through human intellect and brain, and such power as was given me, I now bear evidence of in the over sweeping and overwhelming power of spiritual existence. Through whatever brain I may best speak, in whatever form I may best manifest, I will come and speak to those on earth, to those whom I love; there is no need of the added voice; I must speak to their hearts in any way; they must hear my voice audibly in their souls; they must make room for me in their lives; for I should cry aloud and make them hear though they were in the midst of the thunders of Niagara. To the world there shall be a voice; not one, but many; not feeble and faint, as of one man crying in the wilderness, but the voice of multitudes, millions upon millions of souls speaking audibly by the gateway of life, and speaking to the hearts of humanity. You will hear them, they cry father; you will hear them, they cry mother, husband, wife, and child, and you pause in your daily career and wonder what voice resembles one long silent in death. I tell you they will crowd upon you until you must hear. They will speak to you until you cease to put them afar off: they will look into your eye from the spiritual world until you see that they live and recognise them; they will people your streets; they will image themselves in every form that is possible; they will manifest by signs and tokens to the senses; they will grapple with your understanding; they will make you aware of the philosophies of being; they will solve to you the mighty mysteries that you have put far from you and will not listen to; they will have you know that life, not death, is the destiny of man, and that the sweet thing you have named death is no longer noxious, dark and terrible, but the beauty of all existence, the crown of all being, the freedom of all slavery, the triumph of all vanquishment, the gateway beyond the walls of human limitations in which you live, leading to the celestial and eternal city where all are free in the light of their wisdom and love.
Oh, voiceless yet audible sounds! Oh, millions of souls that come thronging out of space! Ye speak with a sound more mighty than the surging of the sea, more vocal than the voice of the thunder of Niagara, more potent than the sweeping winds over myriads of forests, more divine than the rushing melodies of the many mighty masters attuning their harps in sublime oratorios of existence. Death and life are one, and these voices are the voices of your loved ones.
I was known upon earth as Epes Sargent.
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