A Progressed Spirit-Bowles Visits a Progressed Spirit-Sprague
Contrasts in Spirit Life, and Recent Experiences of Samuel Bowles, Late Editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, on the First Five Spheres. Also, A Thrilling Account of the Late President Garfield’s Reception in the Spirit World. Written through the hand of Carrie E. S. Twing, Westfield, N. Y. Springfield, MA: Star Publishing Company, 1881:134-135.
The late editor Bowles, sending reports back from the Spirit World, here visits former spiritualist trance lecturer Achsa Sprague, who has now changed her views on whether spiritualists on Earth should organize separately, independent of the Christian churches.—JB
October 20.
I visited ACHSA SPRAGUE’s HOME while in the fifth sphere and found her description of it fell far behind the reality. The home and surroundings are a picture of perfect beauty and comfort, and the lady, known and loved by many on earth and in the spheres, bade me welcome. I asked her something of her manner of controlling the medium through whom her late book* was written, and she informed me that it was merely a beginning, that, though true, she hoped soon, through the same medium, to continue her work for further publications, and to surround this medium by such strong forces as to enable her for a little time each day to teach a school, at which spirits might learn how to control mediums. As she conversed a dreamy look came into her eyes, and the exact change that often overspreads the faces of earth mediums came to her face, and for a few moments she was not the risen spirit, the happy sojourner in the fifth sphere, but the weary, working medium of earth life. “Oh, the long, rough road I passed over,” she said, “and yet I came to spirit life young, as the world calls it, but I was old so old in suffering old in experiences. My memory goes unbidden to those friends who proved so false when they really knew my mission, and gladly my memory reverts to the dear ones who upheld me. Would that in my little book I had sent word after word to those tender and true to me, that they might know I love them still.”
“What is your idea of the future of spiritualism for the world as a separate religion, calling for its own organization?” I asked.
“Oh,” said she, “I see you have the same hope that buoyed me up so long, which was that our knowledge would be understood my many, and I saw in fancy, buildings in every city and town where our people could convene. Now I see that this would not be the most blessed mission of spiritualism. It will be, I think, the design of the spirit world to permeate the masses, to give light to the believer in Christ and to the infidel; not to tear down the churches, but gradually to show the clergy that the people will no longer feed on husks, and do away with the one man, priest power, and show the congregations that there may be many in their numbers who might instruct under the beautiful inspirations of the angels; and thus gradually make these millions of untaxed property in church edifices more useful to the people. I believe it will yet be generally understood that there is seldom a family of six persons in which one or more is not a medium, and this fact be universally admitted, that what comes after death will not be guessed at, but known.”
“Are you now content in this home,” I asked? She smiled and said, “Yes. Contentment means heaven. I am in heaven.” As I left this sister, whose past had been so prolific of good to the world, and at a time when it required great courage to admit that she was a spiritualist, I could but contrast her past with my own, and feel that people on earth had a right to wonder how it was that I had so soon become interested in topics on which while in the body I never expressed an opinion. I feel like warning all journalists to hide nothing under a bushel for fear of “Public opinion,” for if right, after a little darkness, that great bugbear can be conquered.
SAMUEL BOWLES.
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