Invisible Helpers

also affirmed that she saw a lovely lady in the water dragging the two children to the bank.

Without fuller particulars than the story provides, it is impossible to say with certainty from what class of helpers this “angel” was drawn. However, the probabilities are in favor of it having been a developed human being functioning in the astral body A subtle body distinct from the physical, often associated in Theosophy with the capacity for travel and activity independent of the physical form., as will be seen when we later deal with this subject from the other side—from the point of view of the helpers rather than the helped.

A case in which the agency is somewhat more definitely distinguishable is related by the well-known clergyman, Dr. John Mason Neale. He states that a man who had recently lost his wife was on a visit with his little children at the country house of a friend. It was an old, rambling mansion, and in the lower part of it there were long, dark passages where the children played about with great delight. But presently they came upstairs very gravely, and two of them related that as they were running down one of these passages, they were met by their mother, who told them to go back again and then disappeared. Investigation revealed that if the children had run but a few steps farther, they would have fallen down a deep, uncovered well that yawned full in their path, so that the apparition of their mother had saved them from almost certain death.