Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/134

 of others believed that the doctrine of 'eternal affinities' was true; and that every one would somewhere meet with a congenial partner, in whose society all the coming cycles of Time would be joyously passed. I have outgrown that folly long since. The doctrine is a false one for this brief reason. God alone is infinite. No human being is infinite, save in capacity for acquirement; therefore the human soul must be fed by that alone which is superior in its nature, at every stage of its growth, progress or unfoldment; for which reason no one soul can forever supply the demands of another. No two souls develope in equal or parallel lines, or at the same rate, for which reason one must outgrow its affinities for another; besides which marriage in the Soul-world is an entirely different institution, as to its nature, condition, purpose, result and effect, to what it is on earth. Lust and passion, selfish interests, and ten thousand other things pertain to marriage on the earth, which enter not at all into that of the loftier stages of human existence. On earth, at best, love and affection are plebeian. In the Soul-worlds they are imperial! In the former these things go begging—in the latter, never. On earth the person loving often embalms the loved one in his or her own sphere, and then clings to the worthless thing thus infiltrated, thus loving the self and not another. Being .therefore all on one side, there is no mutuality. Such is not the case in the Sunny Land! The glowing son of the Orient drew near to me, and I to him. Our spheres touched; they blended—and in an instant I knew more of what love and tenderness really meant, than in all the long years I had lived before.