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DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD
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the rest, surprised me greatly; and from finding that the finest nerved and most sensitive were also the most unhappy, I was led to infer the existence of a great Vicarious law, whose elements were Sympathy, Compensation, Distribution. True, some may pass through life, and apparently escape its action—but not forever. God has said substantially, "Bear ye one another's burdens;" and borne they must be. Sensitives bear the greatest portion of misery, and their fate seems at first sight to be a hard one—a life all full of tears, groans and sorrows; yet the law of Compensation is operative in all stages, phases, and planes of being:

"And he who the weariest path has trod
Shall nearest stand to the throne of God."

There are seasons when men and women of a certain mould, without the least apparent cause, are plunged into the very midst of the blackest barathrum of misery and woe, and who ten times a year pass through the body of a death too fearful in its agonies to be even faintly imagined by those of a different make-up. They complain, and are met with the stereotyped: "Fancy! Hypochondrias! Delusion!" Delusion, forsooth! Is that pale and haggard cheek, that pain-thrilled sea of nerve, those drops of almost bloody sweat, that utter prostration of soul, a mere delusion? Will the hypothesis of diseased nerves, liver, heart or stomach account for these things? To the looker-on of surface, Yes; to the student of the soul and its mysteries, No! There is a deeper cause, a higher power in operation. Will the theory of physical disease account for the instantaneous plunging of a man or woman into the deepest