The Spiritual Soldier

The Spiritual Soldier

The following communication was given through the mediumship of the eminent author, seer and lecturer, Hudson Tuttle, and gives an account of a soldier's experience on the battlefield, his awakening in spirit life, his death, as presented to the clairvoyant vision and a vivid description of the formation of the spirit—

A darkness came over me. I felt the earth strike hard against me. I had fallen. Where and how I was wounded I could not tell. I was in no pain, but I could not move. After a time, the strange ringing left my ears, the mists cleared from my eyes, I saw dimly, but enough to know my friends were gone and the enemy was all around me. Then keen pains shot through my limbs. I knew I was injured, but not mortally wounded.

After the battle, when the field was searched for the wounded, I should be cared for, kindly tended and then sent home on furlough.

A sunny face would meet me at the gate.

The dear remembered home would shelter me, loving hands would be busy about me and darling little ones climb my wounded knees and cling around "poor papa's" neck.

Ah! what joy―what ecstasy! 

A thousand thoughts like these shot through my mind like gleams of sunlight. 

Then I heard the hoarse voices of fierce combatants―they had made a stand directly over where I lay.

Our soldiers fought desperately as they retreated and many a pursuing enemy fell on their track.

One was aiming his piece directly over me when he was struck dead. 

He fell across me.

I endeavoured to move, so as to shake off the dreadful pressure from my chest, but I was too weak―I could only suffer and think.

Others fell thick around me.

One lay heavily upon my aching feet, but intolerable as was the pain of this added weight, I was only pinned more closely to the earth―I could not move.

The combatants had moved on―their voices had died off in the distance and I lay helpless in the midst of thousands of such wrecks as myself. Thoughts of the dear home far away―the beloved ones who were watching and waiting for me amidst the quiet green hills of Vermont, mingled with the horror of laying there in the midst of that ghastly battlefield with the dead weight that crushed me growing heavier with every breath. It was like some horrid nightmare. 

A corpse resting its cold weight on my breast―a corpse pressing on my bleeding limbs.

Night came on and with it the rain. 

Darkness impenetrable in the physical world and oh! what unutterable darkness in the mental. 

In the great rifts of the black heavens, there were awful flashes of lightning and bursts of thunder in the midst of which I heard the groans of the wounded as they lay in the pitiless rain.

When the morning came I was almost unconscious of life. 

I remember watching the light breaking in the grey east, my head resting on that side and I was too weak to turn it―or else it had become stiff in the rain. 

As it became light, I heard the rolling of artillery, then the fierce booming thunder of the battle renewed. 

I heard the crash of the rumbling wheels and the tramp of the war horses. 

I knew they were coming towards me and the horrible fear came over me lest I should be trampled underfoot, crushed, maimed or ground into the dust!

I endeavoured to shout and tell them I was not dead, but I could not even whisper. 

On they came, maddened and reckless by the spirit of the war. 

The iron footed horses were on me, almost, but no—they passed me, but now the dreadful wheels approached!

I saw them coming―one was directly over my eyes. 

That was the last I remember.

All was perfect silence. 

The sounds of war were all hushed.

I think I must have been in perfect, dreamless slumber, for I felt, heard and saw nothing.

When I awoke I was well, peaceful, happy―John was standing near me, apparently in perfect health. 

"You here?" I asked in astonishment―I thought you were dead!" 

''So I am," he replied, "at least I have lost my mortal body, yet I exist." 

"Surely," I answered, "I have dreamed―or else am dreaming." 

He smiled as he replied, "Not so, but you too are dead."

Our conversation lasted some hours before I was fully convinced I was really dead though free from pain and the horrors of the battlefield over.

Since then I have watched the advent of many spirits on the battlefield. 

The emotions they manifest are as various as the dispositions they bore in life. 

Some arise from the body perfectly bewildered―others filled with unutterable hate and only inspired with the desire of vengeance on the foe. 

Many meet dear friends who await their coming and hover round their departed spirits. 

Guardian spirits stand ready by the side of all to conduct them to the land where wars shall cease forever.