The Living Presence

IN the last few years I have read in various magazines a number of articles detailing with an honesty that is encouraging, but with a grimness that is disturbing, the reactions of the writers to the loss of one who was very dear to them. One instance that I now recall was that of a child, another that of a husband. Both writers had had what we call the traditional religious background, and yet it did not seem to stand up for them against the shock of loss. I have had all my life the traditional religious background; I have met the same experience that the others spoke of and my background stood by me completely, and I am wondering why this was true for me and not for the other writers.

I do not believe that death means to me what it means to a great many people. I dislike the word and hesitate to use it — not as a word, but because of the connotations which human experience has gathered around it apparently since the dawn of time.

To make my position clear, I state the following facts: —

My only son, a boy in his early teens, was killed in an automobile accident four years ago. At the same time and in the same accident, a niece of whom I was devotedly fond was killed.

A year ago my only grandchild, a particularly fascinating youngster of fifteen months, was found dead in her crib when her nurse went to pick her up after a nap, for which she had been placed in the crib an hour before, apparently in perfect health.

Almost anyone will understand that these incidents were of special poignancy in their suddenness, in their closeness to me, and in the age of the children.

Except for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings in conversation with people who do not know the facts, I dislike very much to speak of any of the children in the past tense. I never think of them in the past tense. They are all three closer to me and more constantly with me than they were in what we call life.

I have mentioned the fact of my traditional religious background. On receiving the news that my son and his cousin had been killed, I drove some miles to the hospital where their bodies had been taken. During that drive I said over and over to myself the first verse of a very well known hymn: —

That was the way I felt about it at the time, and I do not think I have greatly enlarged upon that thought in the intervening years. To me the children have gone home a short while ahead of me. I have every confidence that, despite the shortcomings of my life, I shall at some time go to the same home and find myself even closer to and more intimately associated with the children than I am now.

This is not a recent thing. It was the way I had been brought up to feel. It came to me in my emergency instantaneously; it has never left me and has become, not a belief, but a conviction based upon experience.

In order that there may be no misunderstanding about this, let me say that when I use the word ‘experience’ I am not referring in any way to what is commonly called spiritism or spiritualism. I have consulted no mediums; I have seen no visions; I have heard no voices. I am acutely conscious and certain many times every day of the presence within myself and in my own heart of those three children.

There was one impressive event of some fifteen years ago which I am sure forms a part in the creation of this conviction of experience. An intimate friend of mine suffered the loss of an infant son in his crib under circumstances very similar to the death of my grandchild. The friend and his wife left within an hour or two for the home of their families, where the baby was to be buried. A day or two later I traveled with the baby’s body to that place and attended the very lovely, intimate family service, conducted by a clergyman who was one of my good friends and even closer to the father of the baby. We went to the cemetery on a beautiful summer afternoon, lowered the casket into the grave, helped the cemetery attendants fill the grave, and covered it with flowers. I shall never forget the courage and the agony of that young father and mother. The thought came to me that our funerals were all wrong; that we concentrated on the wrong side of death, and that we did this because of the presence of the casket; that we had made no advance in our attitude over the funeral pomp of the ancient Egyptians. I made up my mind then and there that I would never have a traditional funeral for anyone who was close to me.

When a similar event came so unexpectedly into my life, the body that I loved was cremated. My clergyman and a few others attended a short cremation service with me. Some days later in our village church there was a memorial service of evening prayer — the regular evening service, held in the church where the children had worshiped with their parents. There was a short address by an intimate friend of mine, a clergyman, who came directly from the burial of his only brother and spoke for not over ten minutes on immortality. The service brought great comfort to me and my wife. I have learned from many friends who were there that it brought comfort to them.

We call ourselves a Christian people and we find the life and teachings of Christ embodied in four small pamphlets, any one of which can be read in a little over an hour. Probably few people today question that Christ is a historical personage; that he lived, taught, and was crucified. A large number of people, not professed Christians, regard him as one of the great teachers of the world.

It is impossible to read his life without coming to the conclusion that he was a person of deep spiritual insight, with a great understanding of human needs and a profound awareness of God and the nature of the spiritual life. He states clearly that he is going to his Father, and that where he goes his followers can also go. There was certainly never the slightest question in his mind about that something which we call immortality, or the eternal nature of life. If we can show some of the confidence that he taught and practised, it would seem reasonable that we should come to partake of his conviction.

Almost one hundred years ago a German professor at the University of Nuremberg, who I believe is sometimes called the father of modern psychology, wrote a small pamphlet called Life after Death. The professor’s name was Gustav Theodor Fcchner. The late Lyman Abbott gave his copy to a friend of mine with the statement that it contained all that one needed to know on immortality. The friend, on the occasion of the passing of my son, lent it to me. Professor Fechner’s book is buoyantly simple. It contains little argument but many statements of fact, stated as facts, by a man who obviously believed what he was saying. There was no doubt in his mind about immortal life.

A chapter in the book deals with the subject of communication between what Professor Fechner calls embodied spirits, which are you and me, and disembodied spirits, which are those that have passed on. Professor Fechner says that one is in communication with a disembodied spirit when one thinks of a disembodied spirit; that the disembodied spirit is objectively present within one’s heart. He states that the presence also occurs many times without conscious effort on the part of the embodied spirit. I can say from experience that this is so. In Professor Fechner’s book I believe the statement is made that this presence within one’s heart is the fundamental reason behind the institution of the Communion Service by Jesus Christ; that Christ took the simple everyday act of drinking and eating and asked his followers to remember him when they ate and drank, knowing that by this conscious act of remembrance he would ensure his presence within their hearts throughout their daily life. If this is so, we are certainly concentrating on the wrong side of death, and have been for many thousands of years.

Death inevitably means the dissolution of the body that we loved; it means that the personality we loved is removed from the experience field of our five senses. I have no thought that the soul is limited to five senses. To some people the word ‘religion ‘ is almost synonymous with churchgoing and with active manifestations of outward worship. In this sense, religion to-day certainly uses many outworn images. It is not particularly inspiring to me to think of God as the King of Kings. There have been many good kings, but there have been many kings who were not so good. Christ said, ‘God is Love’; ‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship him shall worship him in spirit and in truth.’

For some years it was a difficult thing for me to feel that, with so much that I loved in what we call the other world, the things in this world were of real importance. I am satisfied that that was mistaken thinking. In a deeper sense there is no ‘other world’ or ‘this world.’ In one of the Epistles of Saint John we are told that we are to-day the children of God; that it does not yet appear what we shall be. In the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, Saint Paul says that now we see through a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face. It is the teaching of my own spirit that tells me they are right.

If life is eternal it is continuous. It does not begin, it does not end. It goes through various phases. Contact between one phase and the other is possible and needs no medium or machinery, except ‘faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.’