29/55 SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS A BRIEF RECORD OF MY OWN EXPERIENCES By Sir WM. EARNSHAW COOPER, CIE.

SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS A BRIEF RECORD OF MY OWN EXPERIENCES By Sir WM. EARNSHAW COOPER, CIE.
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My father’s nature was unsympathetic, selfish and hard. He had a large family and rarely did he ever speak to his children or say a kind, loving word to them. There was no bond tying father and children together, either of love, goodwill, affection, or confidence, nor did he take interest either in his children’s welfare or their future. His attitude to his wife was no less cold, unsympathetic and hard,

and outwardly his children could discern no little acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, consideration or affection. Added to these forbidding characteristics was the predisposition to drink. Although not an habitual drunkard he would, nevertheless, yield to the vice sometimes for weeks together, drinking hard during the day and coming home drunk at night. At times he would be in the grip of delirium tremens, and on such occasions he was not infrequently unkind to my dear mother.

One way and another my father was not persona grata with his sons and daughters, and I went, perhaps, further than the rest and contended that a man of such a nature, who would repudiate all duties to both wife and children, had no right to marry. Then his unkindness to my mother, chiefly I admit during his drunken fits, induced me to adopt a watchful,

hostile attitude towards him, which culminated in my making him understand that if he showed further unkindness to my mother, he would do so at his own peril, as I should, in that case, take the law into my own hands. I would add that never after this was my father violent towards my mother. Such a condition was, however, obviously conducive to a feeling of hostility to my father,

and, although I never positively hated him or even wished him harm, I nevertheless assumed an unforgiving attitude which I never altered, even after his death, because I hold that death does not, and cannot, sever undesirable ties, or wipe out the evil effects of a misdirected life.

This, then, is the meaning of the gratitude which my mother wished conveyed to me for—” having removed from her life a haunting dread,” referred to on page 25. The expression of gratitude for—” having rendered the last year or two of her life less hard ” referred to some alteration in the domestic arrangements of my home which I had suggested, thus rendering her own household duties less onerous.

Briefly, these are the facts connected with this particular episode of my life, and those who seek the truth, in this as in all things else in this existence, will be struck by the fact that ” everything changes and evolves by the continual play of life and death, but nothing perishes.” Not only does the good word or deed live on in the Hereafter, and its effects return to us as a reward, but the evil or thoughtless act also endures to confound us with its punishment.