November 21st, 1915.Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Your old Professor Salyards.
I merely want to say that I am very happy, and want you to know that I am progressing in my condition of soul development and in my knowledge of the truths that pertain to the spirit world. I have not written you for a long time, and would like to tell you of certain truths that I have learned since last I wrote you.
Well, I find that I am now in a condition of soul development that enables me to see the truth of what the Master has told us in reference to the real existence of God, who knows what His creatures are doing and in what way they are making use of their souls and bodies. I mean that this God is one having all the faculties that you would suppose only a being would have who had a personality and form; but can hardly understand how a mere essence or formless existence could have such powers and qualities.
I never, until recently, could comprehend the real truth and meaning of God (I believing him to be mere essence, void of form or personality), who could have the wisdom and love and power that I was taught such God possessed. Such comprehension is beyond the finite mind, and can only be accepted as a realization of an existing condition or truth by means of faith. Yet now I have more than faith to enable me to understand the fact that this God, whom we call our Father, for He is, has all these qualities and powers; and such understanding is to me a wonderful and unexpected addition to my knowledge of God.
This understanding, of course, is not a thing that arises from any exercise of the mind, or the result of any mental power or quality which I may never have realized that I possessed, but is the result of the exercise of my soul perceptions, which have become so great and in such condition of unison or harmony with our Father's qualities of soul that He and all these attributes appear to me as real, perceptible existences, having a certainty of comprehensible being, as do the existence of spirits and their attributes. So you see what soul development may mean and what its possibilities are.
No mere development of the intellectual qualities or attributes could ever lead to a comprehension of the personality of God as I have described it. I never in all my life, natural or spiritual, conceived or expected that it were possible for any soul of mortal or spirit to see God as I now see Him, and I never could understand what was meant by the beatitude, "the pure in heart shall see God", except in this sense, that as we became pure in heart those qualities that were ascribed to God would become a part of us, and as such possessors, we could see God, or rather the result of those attributes of God in our souls.
I don't know whether you can fully comprehend what I intend to convey to you, but I have tried my best to put the idea in such language that your mind may understand, to some extent, what my meaning is. I know that you will never fully know what this great soul perception is, until you have experienced what this development is in your own soul, which is necessary to enable it to see with the clearness that I now see.
I thought that I would tell you of this progress of my soul, so that you might have some faint idea of what the development of the soul means in a way other than an addition to the development of the love principle. But really all phases of its development are part of or dependent upon and resultant from the development of this love principle; for Divine Love is the fulfilling of the law, and law includes that which enables us to perceive that God is a personalty, having these qualities that I speak of.
I see that I have written enough for tonight, and if you will carefully read what I have written, you will find much food for thought, and probably some help to a correct, concrete comprehension of who and what God is.
So expressing to you my gratification and pleasure in being able to come to you again and having you take down my ideas of who our Father is, and also for the opportunity to declare that God is a being, having an existence of His own, comprehensible by the soul perceptions of the redeemed of His creatures, I will say, good night.
Your old professor and brother in Christ,
Joseph H. Salyards
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