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DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD
101

whose agency God had incarnated the lonely one, was of an ambitious, affectionate, but passionate and passional nature. The son thus congenitally biased and tainted had grown to man's estate, and from various social and other causes, he being a sang melee, had suffered to such a degree that his soul was driven in upon itself to a great extent; which, while rendering him still more sensitive and morbid, also caused his soul to expand knowledge-ward, become wonderfully intuitive and aspiring, yet bound up by the affectional nature within his own personal or individual sphere. But such souls resist this damming up; hence occasionally the banks overflowed, and he became passional; forgot his dignity; was led to believe that whoever said love, meant love; was beset with temptation, and yielded, until at last his heart was torn to pieces, and his enveloping sphere became so tender and weak, that it could not withstand any determined attack thereon; and thus he, like thousands more whose spheres are thus invalidated and relaxed, became very sensitive to influences of all sorts and characters, and a ready tool and subject for the exploitations and experiments of disembodied inhabitants of the Middle State. He became a medium! Of course this circumstance and qualification necessarily threw him into the society of those who accept the modern theurgy.

In proportion to the self-abandonment and personal abnegation, the degree to which the will is vacated, do such persons become good mediums. The more immersed in the theurgic studies and novelties they are, the more they lose themselves, and their value ceases to be individual, but only representative. In the last