The Memory of Past Births
by Charles Johnston
1899

AUTHOR'S NOTE

By reading the title, The Memory of Past Births, you have already taken the first step towards remembering, for you have sowed in your mind the seed of an idea which will germinate and grow till at last it blossoms into full knowledge. Of those who receive this thought of endless life through many births, most accept it at once with a conviction which runs ahead of evidence; many hold it tentatively with gradually growing credence; none altogether reject or forget it. The thought remains, the seed stirs and grows, and as rebirth is a true law of life, every turn and incident of life gives it new force, till at last belief ripens into certainty. That certainty of the larger life wherein the lives and deaths of this our world are but as days and nights, lightens the burden of death, dulls the edge of sorrow, takes away the terror of separation. Immortality, the dearest hope in every human heart, becomes once more credible and intelligible; nay more, demands and compels our belief. We begin to catch the light of our immortal selves, the gleam from beyond the heavens which shall illumine our hidden past, and, still greater boon, bring clear vision of the path before us, winding through the mists and shadows of the valley, till it rises at last into the everlasting sunshine.

C. J.