The truly receptive mind is least alone when alone. Then it becomes the headland against which beat the waves of thought from every thinking being in the universe. Like the telegraph receiver, it picks out the thoughts to which it is sensitive, and the others go on to those receptive to them. It thus becomes apparent that there can be an education superior to all others; the education of receptivity, or sensitiveness to the thought atmosphere or psychic-ether. Not that this can take the place of the ordinary training of the faculties, for their training, rudely performed as it is, often leads to a high sensitiveness; more often leads away from it. The poet is most sensitive to poetic thought, and in this sense is a medium, not only for individual poets, but, perhaps, unconsciously, for the inseparable thoughts of all. The truly great statesman receives influx from the United Congress of all past leaders. Through the sensitive preacher, all preachers of the past find tongue. The man of science, if successful in research, may be praised for skill and faithfulness, but beyond these qualities are the impressions descending from all who think or ever have thought on their special subjects. There is a sensitiveness of organization, and not of culture, which makes of the possessor a mouth-piece, an instrument, such as it is. There is a sensitiveness, better here called receptivity, which comes of right culture, and is the highest form of mediumship, though its possessor may be wholly unconscious of his gift.

RECEPTIVITY AND GREATNESS.--Here and there are those who by organization are sensitive and ready instruments to bless the world with the light of higher spheres. There have been many in the past fifty years. Centuries have gone by and not one of these barren--centuries during which man remained stationary or retrograded into dense ignorance.

As mountain peaks catch the light of morning when all the valleys and plains below are wrapped in darkness, so these sensitives arise into the atmosphere of spirit, and bathe their foreheads in its glory.

Who should be more sensitive to the urgencies of a threatened state than he who has the responsibilities of government? Whom would the departed statesman, who, loving his country, seek to impress, if not the ones in power, who could make such impressions available? But those in power may not be impressible, and this is most unfortunate for the state. They MAY be, and then it can be truthfully said that the forces of heaven fight its battles.

Such an one was Lincoln. His receptive mind responded to the thought waves of the psychic atmosphere, and he became the center of a thought-vortex--the concentration of unnumbered intelligences--with the holy spiritual fervor of the sage and prophet. Feeling himself called to a mighty task, and consecrated to its accomplishment, his great and earnest soul responded to the breath of inspiration. He was misunderstood by men because he acted from motives they could not comprehend, and which were uncomprehended by himself; but during the years of darkness, anxiety and care, the cabinet on which he relied was not the executive officers, but one formed of those Fathers of the Republic, who, on the hour of its birth, gave its flag to the breezes of heaven. He failed at times; disasters came, representing the periods when the clouds obscured the clear light of inspiration. He disregarded the impressions of impending danger, and disobedience sealed the record of his labors with his blood!

Then in invention, the contrivances by which the elements are harnessed and become willing servants, we take one man as an ill.u.s.tration. A poor uneducated country lad, with a simple knowledge of telegraphy sufficient to send messages over the wires, that is all--no college learning, no one to a.s.sist, to direct, to advise. He soon entered a field where no mortal could advise, where no mortal had been or knew aught to advise him. He became sensitive, and the secret chambers of the lightning were unlocked to him. What to other men who had devoted a life-time of study was obscure and mysterious, became to him the ABC to higher readings.

He sent his voice across the continent, he recorded the sounds so that the instrument would in all after years give us back the tones of those we love; he prolonged the lightning's lurid flash into a continuous blaze, and converted night into day; he made the current leap from the wire to the pa.s.sing train and over an intangible wire from ship to ship, across leagues of sea.

TRUE INSPIRATION.--OLE BULL.--What is meant by the oft-repeated a.s.sertion that great and exceptional persons are inspired? More especially in music and poetry is the influx from some foreign source distinctly marked. Ole Bull, the king of all violin players, was, by his own confession, subject to an influence beyond himself. When a boy, he was attempting, unaided, to translate into musical sounds the splendor of his ideal, a "voice" encouraged him constantly with "Bravo!" which he accepted as a sign that he was doing well. Unlike Socrates' "demon,"

instead of being always the same, it was that of many celebrated musicians. On one occasion, the voice of Handel murmured in his ear after a rendition of that composer's "Hallelujah Chorus," "Only shadow music sung by shadows." "My soul asked, 'Where, then, is the substance, Master?'" "In my world," the voice replied, "where alone all things are real, and music is the speech."

PAGANINI.--Of Paganini it was said that he not only enchanted his listeners, but played as one enchanted, losing consciousness, and throughout his performances remained as one entranced. So real were musical conceptions flashed on his mind, that they became objective, and danced before him in wild expression of rhythmic motion.

How far the ecstasy of all true musicians may account for their super-normal efforts, depends on the meaning accepted of ecstasy. It really is a state of sensitiveness to harmonious sounds, which at its best differs little from the most exalted form of clairvoyance, or, perhaps better, clair-audience.

BLIND TOM.--All have heard of Blind Tom, an idiotic negro, uncouth, untaught, yet who was able to play the most intricate music, in a manner only attainable to others by years of study and practice. His improvisations were the wonder and delight of the listeners, and were dashed off with the fingers of what might truly have been regarded as an automaton. By what method could his astonishing facility of execution, delicacy of expression, and masterly touch be explained? He was never taught a lesson in music, was incapable of forming a continuous train of thought; yet no conservatory ever graduated a superior performer. We are forced to accept one of two conclusions: either that he was of himself superior to any one in musical ability, or that he derived this gift from an outside source. The first, on the face of it, appears an absurdity. He was no more the cause of the music he produced than was the piano on which he played. Both were instruments, he standing between the force and its effect.

HANDEL.--In the sphere of sacred music, perhaps Handel stands without a peer. So far above the ordinary level is his sublime work, that he receives not his full mead of praise; for we applaud most that which echoes some part of ourselves, and with his strains we are bowed in humility and awe. In twenty-three days he produced "The Messiah," a work which, for vastness of conception and exquisite finish, is the grandest and most perfect choral work the world has ever known. He belonged to no school, has no imitators, for he is too far removed for imitation to be attempted. Well has it been said that the power of such souls baffles criticism. That they tower so far above the common level, and possess such exceptional mental and moral powers, leads to the supposition that they touch a thought-sphere not touched by those less sensitively endowed.

BEECHER.--This great preacher, who left Plymouth pulpit vacant, a vacancy which never can be filled, is a fine ill.u.s.tration of these views.

The man and his inspiration were constantly struggling for mastery. He would advance, on the tide of that inspiration, to the very brink of the precipice of heterodoxy; his large heart and enthusiasm carrying him and his hearers far beyond the limits of their narrow creeds, and then recovering himself he would recoil, restate, explain and hedge against the severity of the criticism provoked. But constantly he gained ground, and carried his hearers with him. He never retreated quite as far as he advanced, and in later years the inspiring power had educated the man to its level, and he bravely and boldly stood by his words. For an entire generation he stood in his pulpit, a divine oracle, every Sunday having an audience of the entire country, and as an elevating, educating power, was immeasurable. He broke the fetters from the slave; he broke the fetters of superst.i.tion from millions, more bondsmen than the negro slave. If you were to gather up all that he has written it would make a library of itself, and yet there is little of all that he has written or spoken that has permanent value, or will endure. Its value consisted not in its enduring qualities; rather in its _being tentative_; steps leading upward, and of no use after once being pa.s.sed over. He did not, he could not, preach the ultimate truth. The laity, as a conservative force, restrained him. Like an eagle burdened with a great weight, he carried his church and the world forward, and with every new wave of inspiration the burden grew lighter, but he never was quite free.

The limitation of the individual always stands in the path of perfect inspiration. He was forced to speak after the forms of the creeds and beliefs which he inherited, and believed by those he would instruct.

Those beliefs were perishing, and his modifications did not quite grasp the whole truth, and hence must disappear. But through him a mighty influence was exerted; not such as may be likened to the avalanche which plunges down the mountain, but like the breath of spring, melting the snow and ice of winter, warming the indurated soil, and making possible the bursting forth of flowers, the prophecies of autumn fruitage.

It is remarkable that few writers have given the world more than one master-piece, and often a single short poem, out of a ma.s.s of composition, is all that remains of permanent value. Gray's "Elegy" and "Sweet Home" are examples. The genius which could write these wonderful poems ought to have been able to write others equally perfect; yet only once did the authors touch the pure fount of inspiration. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in such a moment wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic,"

which, unlike anything ever before written, and unlike anything else she ever wrote, became the marching song of a nation along the pathway of justice.

MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE wrote before and after the production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," works of some merit, but nothing that approached the wonderful story that did more to arouse the nation to the wrongs of slavery than all other influences combined. According to her own words, she composed in a state in which she was overwhelmed with the subject and forced to write as she did.

d.i.c.kENS entered the same state, and with such distinctness were his characters brought before him, that he heard their voices, and his dialogues were the work of a reporter rather than of a composer.

BUNYAN.--Perhaps no book ever exerted a greater influence than "Pilgrim's Progress," written by one who in his youth was wild and G.o.dless, a tramping tinker and rough soldier, uneducated and unversed in literary invention. He possessed in a prominent degree the sensitive temperament, as his portrait shows, and a fine mental endowment, however uncultivated it might have been. So long as Bunyan was a part of the jostling world, he was like other men. His sensitiveness could only be made valuable by isolation, and that came to him in an unlooked for manner by his incarceration in jail. There his spirit gained freedom. It became susceptible to the thoughts of another sphere, and he wrote that remarkable book, which has pleased and strengthened millions of struggling souls. Afterwards, when liberated, he became one of the fanatics among whom he was cast, and his writings and speech were of no value, except as they faintly echoed what he had written in his "Pilgrim." Once only had the conditions essential to sensitiveness been his, and then it was forced upon him, and the result was one book of value, and no more. The success of that book destroyed the conditions for the reception of anything as pure, bringing around him the jarring conflict of religious fanaticism.

TENNYSON.--The sensitive condition of Tennyson has been graphically described by himself, in words which leave no misunderstanding. In a letter written in 1874 to a friend, he says: "I have never had any revelation through anesthetics, but a kind of waking trance (this for want of a better term) I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of the individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and this is not a composed state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where Death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality, (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state was utterly beyond words?"

Ill.u.s.trations to an unlimited extent might be drawn from the lives of authors, artists, inventors, statesmen and warriors, in confirmation of the views expressed.

In fact, scarcely a single one of all the brilliant names that head the list on the scroll of fame but might be taken as an example.

THE GREAT LEADERS in history, statesmanship, war, literature, the arts, in science and in invention, few in number, appear like centers on whom the thoughts of their time converge, and from whom they are radiated.

They are moved by forces beyond themselves, and plan wiser than they know. Napoleon schemed for his own aggrandizement, but above him was a power which directed his efforts. The art of war was an open book to him, and his tactics, the fresh product of his teeming brain, were a constant surprise and menace to his enemies. Until his mission was accomplished he was invincible. When he transcended that, which was to break down the absurd distinctions of feudalism, and make the serf a man, and in arrogant pride looked on the nations as his prey, the conditions of his receptivity were destroyed and his defeat a.s.sured.

These great minds have no ancestral lineage, they rarely transmit their talent to their offspring. For a brief moment, that of their great achievement, they gain the heights never before reached, and not again to be reached by their posterity.

CONCENTRATION.--It has been said that great concentration of mind--the ability to exclude all objects and subjects except the one under consideration--is the prime factor of genius, and an adequate explanation of its achievements. In other words, concentration is another name for sensitiveness. What is concentration? Is it not a mental state in which one idea, a group of ideas, dominate; and where is the difference between this state and the hypnotic? Is it not a condition of exceeding sensitiveness to ideas related to the dominating?

There really is slight distinguishing difference between the concentration of writer, speaker, or inventor, and the mesmeric, or hypnotic state of the sensitive. All the difference observable is from the side on which the subject is approached.

This concentration has been called attention to by some authors, who would make genius itself dependent entirely on attention, which Buffon speaks of as protracted patience. The mind that can take hold of the thread of a subject, and hold fast to it in all its intricacies to the end, is enabled to do so by superior attention. Concentration is more expressive, and under whatever name, the same mental state is designated. The profound student always falls into it when absorbed in his work, and becomes "absent-minded," which is an expression commonly used to explain one of the most inexplicable mental states. When under control of the will, such concentration of mental power becomes priceless to its possessor. It is similar to the hypnotic state, with none of its disadvantages, and removed to a higher plane. The mind in this highly sensitive condition is impressible to the thought waves in the psychic-ether. On the other hand, when this concentration or attention is not controllable by the will, the condition of the unfortunate individual is most deplorable. He is lost in reverie, a dreamy, misty state of mind which unfits him for the duties of practical life. The difference is that between forgetfulness of duty, which has been the b.u.t.t of endless ridicule by the world and of burlesque on the stage, and the reaches of thought attained by the philosopher, and the divine songs of the poet. The first essential requisite of profound thought is abstraction from the distractions of all matters except the one in hand. Ability to thus concentrate the mind at pleasure may be inherited or the product of education. In fact, correct education may be said to consist mainly in the control of the attention, and the ability to concentrate the mind on the one subject presented.

The higher education of the future will recognize and give prominence to the cultivation of this. .h.i.therto ignored faculty.

It is one of the possibilities of the future to encourage the culture of the sensitive faculty, and the results will be far more wonderful in normal education than now arises from what seems abnormal, and the product of chance.

Sensitiveness, as has been shown in the preceding pages, is possessed by all in greater or less degree, and may be cultivated like any other mental quality. As its laws and conditions are more thoroughly understood and its inestimable value realized, it will become a part of all substantial educational training.

THE EXTENSION OF THIS THEORY INTO THE LIFE BEYOND.--This theory, without calling to its aid spiritual beings, marks out the laws by which such beings may control the sensitive and become cognizant of the thoughts of each other. Man being a spirit, limited by a physical body, through the sensitive state, under certain conditions, he breaks away from his limitations and feels the waves of thought created by others through the psychic-ether.

When freed from the physical body the spirit must possess the same power in larger degree and impress its thoughts on the sensitive in the same manner. Sensitive beyond mortal conception in its most exalted state, it is in connection with all spiritual intelligences, and a converging and diverging center of telegraphic communication. As it advances in this sensitiveness, distance becomes a less and less factor, until eliminated, and a thought sent forth wings its way until it meets the one for whom it was intended.

Thus, what has been made the toy of a leisure hour, the imperfect attempts at thought-reading, mesmeric control of the will, and the mystery of communion of minds sympathetic, are really the crude manifestations of an undeveloped faculty, which, after the evolution wrought by death, becomes the glory of spirit-existence.

Prayer in the Light of Sensitiveness and Thought Waves.

When President Garfield was lying tortured by the wound which caused his death, the prayers of a whole nation arose as one united voice for his recovery. From sixty thousand pulpits pet.i.tions to the throne of grace ascended. There were days set apart for united appeal to G.o.d. He was eminent in the church as in war and politics, and if prayer ever received answer, it would seem that it should be in his case. Yet the good man, the scholar, the statesman and theologian died, just as he would have died had no pet.i.tion been sent to the throne of grace. The ocean ship, freighted with pa.s.sengers, is broken through by an iceberg, and slowly filling, settles down into the waves. Wildly the best and purest men and women pray to G.o.d for help, but the ship is not thereby sustained, or delayed a single moment in her final plunge into the abysses of the sea.

On occasions of great public calamity, where drought blasts the harvest, locusts devour the fields, or pestilence rages, days are set apart for prayer. Every minister of the gospel and every layman daily prays with utmost fervor. Yet the rain falls not, the locusts devour, and the pestilence pursues its way without shadow of turning. Prayer in such cases is as hopeless as it would be if the maker should stand on a railroad track, and, when he saw a train approaching, pray to G.o.d to stop it. It is a pet.i.tion for the impossible.

In one way it yields results, often of an astonishing character. If the makers are sincere, the att.i.tude of prayer harmonizes and strengthens their faculties, and enables them to bear with greater fort.i.tude the vicissitudes of time; to bear, but not avert, impending fate. How many captives chained in dungeons have, in imitation of the apostle, prayed fervently with perfect faith that their chains might fall off, and the bars of their prison door be drawn aside, and met with no response. How many zealous martyrs have been led to the stake, praying to Jesus for deliverance which came not; and Jesus himself, in the hour of his mortal agony, prayed to the Father, to be answered by silence, and to find bitterness and mockery; a cross and a crown of thorns, where he had expected a throne and the glittering scepter of the nations.

The once all-powerful belief in the ability of delegated men to control events and elements by supplication to the Deity, which made the "medicine men," the priests and jugglers, the tyrants of mankind, has now, in civilized countries, dwindled into the intercessions for moral help, and an occasional prayer for physical changes, as for rain in times of drought, the staying of gra.s.shoppers, or the approach of disease.

It is difficult for the gospel minister to give up entirely the role of the "medicine man," and cease to pray for the sick in the misty hope that G.o.d will answer. It is almost as troublesome for the preacher to let go his hold on the weather, and not follow the Indian's rattling gourd, shaken at the sky, with prayer for the same object.

This is the degradation of prayer, and the preacher clasps hands with the juggler. That this pretense is yet maintained, is made most remarkably apparent in a work on prayer recently published. An incident in the life of President Finney, of Oberlin College, copied from its pages, will amply suffice to ill.u.s.trate this anachronism, a belief of savage man forced into the highest civilized thought.