SPIRITUAL SPHERES

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II
THE SPHERE OF BENEFICENCE

The theme of this evening's discourse, as has been announced, is  "Spiritual Spheres. Number Two. The Sphere of Beneficence."  Those who were present during the opening lecture will remember that we treated of the first or primal sphere of existence,  "The Sphere of Self."  Tonight we pass beyond this sphere.  But for the benefit of those who were not present, and for the constant remembrance of those who are now present, we will state that we employ the word sphere with reference to its application to the quality or growth of the spirit. 

A sphere is the orbit of a planet, a complete circle; or the circumference of anything.  As applied to the spirit of man the sphere is the radius of man's influence either here or hereafter; and kindred spirits occupy the same spheres by reason of the similarity of their atmospheres.  The spherical shape, or spheroid, constitutes not only the shape of the atom, the drop of water, the globe, the starry firmament, but also all spiritual shapes.  The shape defined by the sphere of selfishness is, however, not spherical, but jagged and pointed, full of dark corners and sharp angles,  the result of the selfishness of which we treated in the initial discourse.  Consequently, the first sphere of human existence, as we explained, and the first sphere of spiritual or religious existence, are not in themselves those who have in their innermost natures been conscious of these defects and suffered, but have been unable also to overcome them. 

Ministers in this sphere of healing are those who understand all the subtle and moral and spiritual influences that are brought to bear upon mankind.  There is scarcely any one in the average life on earth who is not capable of administering in some degree to some other suffering soul.  If it be child or parent, friend or brother, still that ministration, though not unselfish, may be commendable; and if it be a stranger soul thrust upon you from the streets or highways of time to whom you can and do offer a word of comfort, or the uplifting of a hand, that is because you are entering the sphere of beneficence and have outgrown the sphere of self, that only sees that which ministers to your own comfort and pleasure, forgetful of others that may be brought in contact with you. 

If you will in your mental vision conceive the first sphere, of which we treated in the opening lecture, as being an atmosphere surrounding the earth, more or less dense, with sharp, jagged points and wastes, masses of spirits pursuing their selfish pleasures attracted to similar souls upon earth, you will have the first sphere of spirit life.  It does not cover the whole earth like a sphere, surrounding it; it is not an atmosphere which envelopes the entire circumference of the earth; but it exists in spots here a dark mass, over there nothing of it whatever.   Wherever human life is most perverse, corrupt and selfish, there this sphere of selfishness is most perceived--a presence and appearance from the spiritual world as palpable as the spots upon the sun, or as any film before the vision that excludes the light.  These shapes of an approaching sphere in the sphere of selfishness are found to consist of individual souls that have no luminous atmosphere, but only the sharp barren points of darkness to which we have referred.  These in turn meet other points of darkness that are upon the earth, and all are souls that are merged in their own atmospheres; and these were the places of torment; these were the pictures of Hades, these the infernal regions that poet and seer have described, being transported in vision above earth and looking down upon the hell that is in the sphere of selfishness around the earth or other planets.

Into that sphere the hard and hardened and selfish nature passes from earthly life;  but, as we say, if there be one luminous point, that one luminous point projects itself upward from the darkened atmosphere, and links, by subtle law of sympathy, that soul with the next sphere of beneficence.  The next state is perhaps just as near the earth in the places where the sphere of selfishness is not so dense, and in those portions where it is so dense the sphere of beneficence rises above it like a cloud over the mountain, or like the sky above the cloud, shaping itself to the darkened mass below, but always superior to it.  From this darkened mass, if there be a solitary link that binds souls to this next sphere, that link evidently becomes the means of lifting them to it;  but no soul can pass from that darkened mass or state, unless there be an impulse, a wish, a desire, or a thought to benefit some other soul. 

No prayer for individual salvation, no worship of Christ or God upon bended knee for their own soul's sake, will suffice.  The prayer must be for another.  The offering must be of self forgetfulness.  There must be something of love, something of kindness in the nature that shall form  even the slightest link with which they are connected to the sphere above.  The bruised souls, however, are received into the sphere of beneficence in its first gradations of healing at once.  We mean those souls that, conscious of their imperfections, are unable to rise above them.  We mean those morally and spiritually blind, who fight the battle of life, and still do not vanquish the foes that are within them.  We mean those even that sometimes go from penitentiary, from the gallows, from criminal execution, whose lives have still at some time been penetrated by a profound abnegation, or neglect and forgetfulness of self.  We mean those that, failing in one direction, still have somewhat in another of spiritual strength; who may perhaps have told a falsehood, and yet whose conscience is always aware of it; who may have committed a thousand sins in life, yet all the time have been aware that something in them was above the deed that they have performed and the lives that they have lived.  We mean the struggling and unfortunate souls that go down in the conflict of life, and not the godly and self righteous that never fall before the eyes of man but are selfish in the sight of heaven. 

These souls that go down in shame sometimes before the vision of man have still a redeeming trait and some point of unselfishness, some wish to rise; and the souls that minister in the sphere of healing--the first stage of the sphere of beneficence--receive them as you would receive soldiers from the battle field, as you would receive a man upon the street who has fallen from his horse, or who, wrecked upon the sea, is deprived for the time being of raiment and shelter.  So upon life's sea, souls passing out into eternity shipwrecked morally and spiritually, but having something to cling to in the divine thought that aspires to something higher--they are received, and here the process of spiritual healing begins.  They are not received as into judgment; they are not taken before court and jury that perhaps have sent them there; they are not treated as criminals, for the very reason that the punishment of criminals in certain stages of criminal disease aggravates instead of cures.  You do not treat a patient in fever, if you are wise, by augmenting the disease.  You do not stab a man that is already mortally wounded.   You do not, when a person is in delirium, add intensity to that state, and expect to cure him.  The criminal has his crime upon him.   He goes out with it stamped upon his outward life.  If the first thing he saw were judge and jury confronting him in the world of souls, he would be driven back to that darker sphere that we have referred to.   He is received first, and there is no sign or token given of his malady.  The spirit having charge understands this.  The soul appointed to receive the spirit is silent, and makes no sign.  It receives him as though there was nothing in his nature to repel.   He is placed in a position of ease and rest mentally.  He is not confronted with his victim at first; he is not strong enough.   He is not upbraided with his sin; he is not able to bear it without being rebellious.  He is received, and when the kindness that is shown him shall have thawed away all the corroding lines of crime and care, and by its very persistence shall have shown the spirit that there is no judgment save that which comes from within, then the soul that is sick becomes its own more positive accuser.   Even then that must be checked, or the violence of the repentance and the severity of self judgment drives the spirit to despair. 

The wisdom of ministering to souls that are thus afflicted outweighs all care that you bestow on physical maladies in earthly life.  These spirits must be led to repentance; must not be stung to madness or despair; but by the falling of the waters of love, by the sunlight that is not too suddenly turned upon them, made to feel that there is still hope.  The criminal entering spirit life may behold, after a time, an angel mother bending above--not at first; the shock would be too sudden.  For how can a soul accused of men, and sent into spiritual existence because of a malady of the moral nature, meet face to face the most loved object on earth?  Not at first.  But after some stranger friend has ministered unto and soothed the spirit--guided the way--then the voice and mind and spirit most healing, that will bring back the childhood memories, that will uplift the spirit gradually to repentance and hope, is summoned to appear beside the soul that enters  that sphere of healing.   Then gradually the spirit, that grows stronger, grows stronger also for self accusation; and when the condemnation and research assume a point that only the soul itself can bear, every other spirit withdraws, leaving that soul alone with its own meditations.  Then from mother, child, sister, friend, or wise and beneficent counselor, comes the first voice of encouragement, when the spirit has purged itself of the crime, drowned its grief and crime in tears of repentance, washed away the stain of human blood or folly.  Then there comes the gradual soothing of pain.  It is not simply by ministering to this soul, but it comes in another form. 

The sin sick soul that is repentant is shown another soul greater in suffering than itself--is introduced without being aware of it into the presence of some spirit in greater agony.   The impulse to speak to that soul, to minister in some way to the suffering, to point out that he or she also has suffered, is the first impulse upon which the spirit rises one degree into healthfulness and strength.  Then the first mentioned spirit becomes a ministrant also in the sphere of beneficence.   Have you ever seen a soldier on a battle field, himself wounded, bearing off a comrade that was more nearly mortally wounded than be, because dear to him, or because engaged in the same conflict, or better still, bearing off a fallen foe?  Have you ever seen in the conflict of life, when the great burden of grief and sorrow was upon one man, or more frequently (you will pardon us) one woman--have you ever seen that woman, rising up out of her own addiction and grief, to minister to some one in greater sorrow, and how the anguish has faded from her face because she could minister to another in greater suffering?  Such is the sphere of healing in the sphere of beneficence.  Such is the soul work that goes on vanquishing its own trouble by assisting others to rise. 

No morbid corners, in which the criminal sits day after day, to pine and ponder over his darkened fate.  No solitary dungeon cells, in which the soul is condemned to sit in punishment for a single offence, without opportunity to aid another.  No healing of moral wounds by allowing the sores to fester and become corrupted with gangrene.  No piercing of the wound that is well nigh fatal, by any other lance than that of kindness and justice tempered by mercy.   Has it not entered your hearts, when at some chosen and appointed hour of happiness in life, when perhaps the supreme moment of your joy of existence had risen--that selfish joy that comes from selfish love or fruition of love--there has risen up in the family or in the social circle some great crying agony, to cast aside your own joy to minister to another's woe?   Then is when you enter the sphere of beneficence.  Every soul, fortunately, that we are aware of in average life, experiences this.  It is only the monster, the exception--and that proves the rule--that enters the sphere of total selfishness and darkness for the time being.  We do not wonder, parenthetically speaking, however, that in that first darkened sphere the shapes assume the shapes of monster wild beasts and dragons of terror, for you do know that these things that are called passions in the human heart, when they run riot become as beasts of prey, tearing away the very life of the spirit.  But, as we say, that is the exception, fortunately.  There are souls that pass from earthly life who are not corrupted with wickedness, that nevertheless have somewhat of it in their natures.  Their first lesson in the sphere of beneficence is to minister to some other soul, and thereby rise from their elsewise darkened state. 

Oh, the great moral healing that is to go on in the world!  And who are these that cure the souls that are sick, and the hearts that are faint, and the eyes that are blind, and the spiritual bodies that will not perform their work aright?  The church going bell chimes every Sabbath day, and the worshipers in gay attire, or with pleasant worldly faces, pass to their appointed worship; and the man of God, or the teacher, speaks words that please the mind, and allure the heart, and uplift the intellectual sentiments of the assembly, and all places of modern worship become pleasant places of intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment during the hours allotted to praise.   But who goes beneath, finds out the sin sick soul, cares for and ministers to yonder darkened one in the corner, or to the very soul that has a smiling outward face, but within is full of sorrow and pain?  Who does this, in all the great circles of self appointed or man appointed spiritual healers?   We say that the man of God must be a healer as well as a teacher.  Christ, who healed the bodies of men, and who taught their souls, also healed their spirits.  The master whose example they are enjoined to follow, visited the sin sick soul as well and more frequently than the bruised and wounded body. 

Let us have spiritual healing.  Teaching is well, but healing comes first.  The sick man cannot be taught how to remain well until he first is restored from his malady.  You do not reprimand him for the cholera or fever until he recovers from it.  Let us have those who will heal the morally infirm before they upbraid them; who will bind up the malady and strive to cure it before they teach the prevention of it.  The prevention may be taught to those who are still comparatively well, but for those who are sick let us have the merciful healing of kindly physicians, skilled in all the subtle lore of the human spirit and its manifold maladies.    Let us have those who are clairvoyant of mind; let us have those who are penetrating of spirit; let us have those who are discerners of souls; let us have those who are gifted with inspiration and prophecy; let us have those who understand beforehand what is needed.  The widow in her weeds, the maid clad in her mourning, the soul hedged around with despair, the quick and sympathetic physician readily understands.  To the eye of the spiritual physician nothing shall be hidden or concealed.  He should know at a glance the state of the spiritual pulse; he should understand by the look of the eye and by the countenance what morbid disease is lurking there.  He should know if disappointment, envy, pride, malice, falsehood, are stamped upon that visage and gnawing away at that heart.  Oh, he should be wise; and the spirits that have charge in the great circle of beneficence that, as you must be aware, receives nearly all souls at first that pass from earthly life--the spirits that have charge in this great circle are those who possess these qualifications--who through sorrow have become sympathetic, who through crime, perhaps, know what criminals suffer, and who have risen free and disenthralled above their crime and above its suffering, who, by study of human thoughts and human weakness, are prepared to administer to all those subtle maladies that afflict the mind, and who understand that no soul comes from earthly life (unless it be an angel or messiah sent as a messenger) that does not in some degree require the administration of spiritual healing. 

These circles of beneficence, stretching, far and far away, are composed of spheroid forms of different companies of souls, reaching from the sphere of immediate spiritual healing that is nearest to the earth unto the one that touches the very threshold of the divine countenance and the very heart of the divine beneficence. 

Such minds as have tried to heal the wounds of nations; such minds as have visited prisons, and endeavored to ameliorate the condition of prisoners on earth; such minds as have visited sin sick souls, and endeavored to soothe them; and more than these, such minds as ever, in their daily walk of life, have, by utter self abnegation, by consciousness only of the love of others and for others, given out their lives like oil inexhaustible for the lamps of others to burn--such as these are the ministrants in the sphere of beneficence.   You perhaps know of some mother, risen from your own household, some one who was the guiding spirit of those who knew her, whose life was one long line of devotion and unselfish expression to those around her.  She has gone out from the fireside, from the accustomed place--she has not forgotten it; but added to that conscious labor and love that still links her sphere with yours as to a golden chain, there is the larger sphere of action in this wonderful beneficent place.  She now rises to her appointed tasks; she now fulfills the work of her hand in a larger degree.  She now hunts out the unfortunate souls that were not within her reach when upon earth, and that she longed to succor and save.  Florence Nightingale, leaving her lovely home in England to administer to souls in the Crimea; Elizabeth Fry, striving to ameliorate the condition of prisoners; Howard, the philanthropist, teaching such wondrous works of love; Wilberforce, uplifting the voice of a nation and a world to a consciousness of the sin of human slavery, and an endeavor to abolish it--all these minds have risen to their appointed circles in the sphere of beneficence, and by well appointed messengers, by those who sympathize, through ministering spirits that gather around them drawn by special attraction to their work, still send hither and thither their messengers to reach the children of care and shame and toil that are beneath and around them--beneath them upon the earth and in the lower strata of their own state, and around them, gathered as if to receive blessing and benediction. 

We know of spirits--and we will use one instance, that of one who passed from earthly life somewhat the victim of his own desires and appetites, which were, engendered by a physical constitution, but within whom there was a spirit of mirth and gladness and drollery under the complications of sorrow and sickness and the madness of intoxication.  This one passed from earth when somewhat of the cloud had risen from his mind, and straightway his soul was received by ministering spirits into the circle of healing.  The consciousness of his own shortcomings at first overpowered him.   He would fain fly from the eyes of all who were kind to him.  After a while this passed away, and he saw other souls that were in agony beneath him and around him, and his first impulse was to say some word of drollery and mirth, some expression that would lure them from their sorrow.  Gradually he succeeded.  He now forms one of a company of souls whose lives are devoted to the luring of spirits from their sorrows.  But their lurement does not remain long a selfish one.  They, too, when sufficiently recovered, minister to others, and he who has been thus wounded upon life's battle-field, becomes the most efficient and sympathetic in the corps of laborers that are leading and guiding that the spirit can have to aid it. 

There are different degrees of this spiritual healing; different states and stages into which spirits enter, and different portions presided over by different central souls.  True physicians who have left the earth--and we mean by true physicians those who were not simply technical, professional, worldly machines, but who loved their profession for the good of mankind, and who followed it oftentimes at their own great self denial and sacrifice; such physicians as Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia--occupy a portion of this sphere of healing in the beneficent circles of spiritual life.  They have well appointed and well chosen ministers.  Dr. Rush has under his administrations souls especially afflicted with certain forms of mental malady, brought on or engendered by physical appetites and depressed circumstances in earthly life.  These souls he successfully administers to, and as carefully and conscientiously raises to a condition of helpful self respect, as he oftentimes did the bodies and minds of those who were upon earth.  All true physicians who have given to the world a system of medicine for the benefit of humanity occupy a portion of the sphere of healing; and these in their turn have gathered around them souls that minister to the spiritual as well as the physical welfare of mankind.  These are those that strive to find expression in outward life, to heal the bodies and the spirits of men by other channels than the arbitrary methods of materia medica.  These are those souls that send perhaps under the generous and genuine Indian guide, or under the form of some simple spirit messenger, the true word and balm of healing.  These are those souls that sit in council far above the councils of earth--the colleges and institutions of learning here--and ferret out the maladies of men with reference to their spiritual and moral bearings; and if there shall come a time when the world shall be free from disease and suffering, it will be brought to bear more through the spiritual than through any system of materia medica the world shall know.  If there shall come a time when aside from proper sanitary measures the human race shall be freed from bodily suffering, it will be by the careful, judicious, spiritual expression given from the sphere of healing through chosen and well developed instruments; so that the spirit and the body shall alike be sustained, fed, sheltered and clothed with the fine raiment of spiritual harmony and bodily expression of perfect health. 

This may seem to be far away; but, you know, if you are familiar with the treatment of disease by mesmerism even, that there is more in the influence of the mind than of the body.  If you are a physician, you know that your personal atmosphere affects far more than any prescription, however skillfully prepared.  It is the doctor, and not the remedy; it is the healer, and not what is given, that the spirit wants.  It is the one trust that you have something to turn to, to give strength, and courage, and hope to the soul.  Ay, it is not a treatise upon moral law; it is not the full decalogue of crime and its remedy that the suffering spirit wants to read; but to feel in the darkness and weakness one strong hand that knows and understands how to guide, and teach, and lead, and shelter.  This is the physician; this the teacher; this the friend and helper of mankind, whether he come in the form of Christ the Saviour, or whether he come in the voice of ministering spirit, guardian angel, kindly mother that intervenes between you and the sublime beneficence--the Christ love.

You do not despise the intervening helps that come between you and the divine light.  Neither should you despise the helping hands that come in to bless you at almost every hour of the day if you will but receive them--some thought of sympathy, some genuine expression of good will, some kindness that would make your life less bare and barren if you would only receive it.  Why, sometimes there are souls so sick that they do not even know that the healer stands at the door.   Shall there not be an angel child, or a mother, or some sweet messenger from Paradise, sent in to let the soul know that the healer is there?   Sometimes above a grave when you turn aside with all sorrow and all despair, as though life itself were immured and buried in that tomb, has not some child with wondering, pitying eyes looked up into your face and asked why you wept?  and has not that been a greater boon than all doctrinal sermons from pulpit, than all theological books written by masterly hands-the one look of pleading love in the child's eyes who begged you not to weep?  So, from the sphere of beneficence, into whatever depth of darkness or despair your soul may be plunged, be assured that there is some ministering angel, some cherub child, some one flitting in and out of the darkened chambers of your spirits trying to tell you that the healer is there; and be assured that the healing will come, if you, too, forgetful of the sorrow, shall turn it aside to aid some other soul that is more suffering than your own. 

Oh, but the stepping stones to the height of glory are through Calvary after all!  The light that shone on the Divine countenance, illumined by self forgetfulness, is the greatest light; and whatsoever paths the soul may tread that lead through gentle ministration, forgetfulness of self and sorrow, to the one divine thought of compassion for others, is in itself a stronger plea for the sufferings of life than all the sophisms of the schools, than all the hard, severe explanations of theology.  It is not that God appoints for men to suffer any punishment for anything; but it is that the only avenue to the sphere of beneficence is, that by knowledge of suffering you learn to be compassionate toward others.   An angel who had never lived upon earth were all unfitted to be a messenger of divine beneficence.   Christ untempted in the wilderness were no Saviour of mankind.  Christ without Gethsemane could give to the world no cup which it could quaff, no promise which could be fulfilled, no hope which it could follow.   Through the wilderness vanquishing temptation, through Gethsemane conquering the tears and the one human sorrow, Christ leads the way to Calvary and to God.  And these souls in their states and stages, in groups and in circles, like globes within globes, or spheres within spheres, passing one above the other, present your friends, your disembodied dear ones, each striving in some way and in their own manner to minister to some other soul, and thus paving the way and pointing the pathway that leads to those heights where the brightness is too intense and the glory too surpassing for mortal vision to behold! 

End Part  II