And now we well may ask: What is the purpose of all this? Here we appear to have an invisible intelligence, speaking an obsolete language, producing volumes of poetry containing many evidences of profound wisdom. So far as I have been able to find out, no such phenomenon has occurred before since the world began. Do not misunderstand that assertion. There is nothing extraordinary in the manner of its coming, as I have said before. The publications of the Society for Psychical Research are filled with examples of communications received in the same or a similar way. The fact that makes this phenomenon stand out, that altogether isolates it from everything else of an occult nature, is the character and quality of its literature. Literature is something tangible, something that one can lay hands on, so to speak. It is in a sense physical; it can be seen with the eyes. And this literature is the physical evidence which Patience Worth presents of herself as a separate and distinct personality.

But why is it contributed? Is there in it any intimation or assertion of a definite purpose?

If we may assume that Patience is what she seems to be—a voice from another world, then indeed we may discern a purpose. She has a message to deliver, and she gives the impression that she is a messenger.

“Do eat that which I offer thee,” she says. “’Tis o’ Him. I but bear the pack apacked for the carry o’ me by Him.”

Constantly she speaks of herself as bearing food or drink in her words. “I bid thee eat,” she said to one, “and rest ye, and eat amore, for ’tis the wish o’ me that ye be filled.” The seed, the loaf, the cup, are frequently used symbolically when referring to her communications.

“There be a man who buyeth grain and he telleth his neighbor and his neighbor’s neighbor, and lo, they come asacked and clamor for the grain. And what think ye? Some do make price, and yet others bring naught. But I be atelling ye, ’tis not a price I beg. Nay, ’tis that ye drink my cup.”

“’Tis truth o’ earth that ’tis the seed aplanted deep that doth cause the harvester for to watch. For lo, doth he to hold the seed athin (within) his hand, ’tis but a seed. And aplanted he doth watch him in wondering. Verily do I say, ’tis so with me. I be aplanted deep; do thee then to watch.”

And with greater significance she has exclaimed: “Morn hath broke, and ye be the first to see her light. Look ye wide-eyed at His workings. He hath offered ye a cup.”

It is thus she announces herself to be a herald of a new day, a bearer of tidings divinely commissioned.

What, then, is her message? For answer it may be said that it is at once a revelation, a religion and a promise. Whatever we may think of the nature of this phenomenon, Patience herself is a revelation, and there are many revelations in her words. The religion she presents is not a new one. It is as old as that given to the world nineteen centuries ago; for fundamentally it is the same. It is that religion, stripped of all the doctrines and creeds and ceremonials and observances that have grown up about it in all the ages since His coming, and paring it down to the point where it can be expressed by the one word—Love. Love, going out to fellow man, to all nature and overflowing toward God.

In the consideration of this religion let us begin at the beginning, at the ground, so to speak, with this expression of love for the loveless:

Love for everything is the essence of her thought and of her song. And as she thus sings for the loveless, so she sings for the wearied ones and the failures of the earth:

This is the prelude and now comes the song:

The spill of earth, the love that goes unnoticed and unappreciated, the words that are unheard or unheeded, the work that seems to be for naught—none of these is waste. A song it is for the wearied ones, the heart-sick and discouraged, “the loved of Him and brothers of thee and me.”

And yet she calls them waste but to show that they are not. “The waste of earth,” she says, “doth build the Heaven,” and this is the theme of much of her song.

It is to the waste of earth that she speaks in this message of love and sympathy:

And a message of cheer and encouragement she gives to those who sorrow, in this:

“The web o’ sorrow weaveth ’bout the days o’ earth, and ’tis but Folly who plyeth o’ the bobbin. I tell thee more, the bobbins stick and threads o’ day-weave go awry. But list ye; ’tis he who windeth o’ his web ’pon smiles and shuttleth ’twixt smiles and woe who weaveth o’ a day afull and pleantious. And sorrow then wilt rift and show a light athrough.”

Smiles amid sorrows. He who windeth of his web upon smiles not only rifts his own woes but those of others, as she expresses it in this verse:

And she gives measure to the same thought in this:

Both of these last have to do with the hands and with the use of the hands in the expression of love for others, but in the following poem Patience pays a tender and yet somewhat mystical tribute to the hands themselves, empty hands filled with the gifts of Him, the power to build and weave and soothe:

There are no doubt such hands on earth, many of them “ever at a spread of doing in His name,” but not often have their work and their mission been so beautifully and so fittingly expressed as in this strange verse which, to me at least, grows in wonder at every reading. And this not so much because of the quaintness of the words and the singularity of the construction, as for the thought. This, however, is characteristic of all of her work. There is always more in it than appears upon the surface. And yet when one analyzes it, one finds that whatever may be the nature or the subject of the composition, in nearly every instance love is the inspiration.

The love that she expresses is universal. It goes out to nature in all its forms, animate and inanimate, lovely and unlovely. It is manifested in all her references to humanity, from the infant to doddering age; and her compositions are filled with appeals for the application of love to the relations between man and man. But it is when she sings of God that she expresses love with the most tender and passionate fervency—His love for man, her love for Him. “For He knoweth no beginning, no ending to loving,” she says, “and loveth thee and me and me and thee ever and afore ever.” “Sighing but bringeth up heart’s weary; tears but wash the days acleansed; hands abusied for them not thine do work for Him; prayers that fall ’pon but the air and naught, ye deem, sing straight unto Him. Close, close doth He to cradle His own to Him.” She gives poetic expression to this divine love in the song which follows:

She pours out her love for God in many verses of praise and prayer.

Still more ardently does she express her love in these lines:

With equal fervency of devotion and gratitude she sings this tribute to the day:

Her prayers are not appeals for aid; they are not begging petitions. They are outpourings of love and trust and gratitude.

To an old couple, friends of Mr. and Mrs. Curran, who passed a round-eyed evening with Patience, she said:

This was not given for another, but is her own cry:

This one does ask for something, but only to know Him:

That last line presents the most impressive principle of the religion she expresses, and which, we might almost say, she embodies. “Who are you?” she was once asked abruptly.

“I be Him,” she replied; “alike to thee. Ye be o’ Him.”

At another time she said:

“I be all that hath been, and all that is, all that shalt be, for that be He.”

Taken alone this would seem to be a declaration that she herself was God, but when it is read in connection with the previous affirmation it is readily understood.

“Thou art of Him,” she said again, “aye, and I be of Him, and ye be of Him, and He be all and of all.”

In this prayer, where she says “Teach me, O God, no word to pray,” it is evident from her other prayers that she uses the word pray in the sense of “to beg.” Her prayers are merely expressions of love and gratitude.

She herself interprets the line, “Teach me, O God, to waste not word,” in this verse:

In the order in which we have chosen to present these poems, they are more and more mystical as we go on. We trust, then, that the reader meeting them for the first time will feel no impertinence in increasing attempts at elucidation from one who has read them often and pondered them much.

There is another and a very interesting phase of these communications in the place Christ holds in them. Patience’s attitude toward the Savior is one of deep and loving reverence.

“Didst thou then,” she says, “with those drops so worth, buy the throbbing at thy memory set aflutter? And is this love of mine so freely thine by that same purchase, or do I love thee for thy love of me? And do I, then, my father’s tilling for love of Him, like thee to shed my blood and tears for reapers in an age to come, because He wills it so? God grant ’tis so!”

Nor does she hesitate to assert His divinity with definiteness. “Think ye,” she cries, “that He who doth send the earth aspin athrough the blue depth o’ Heaven, be not a wonder-god who springeth up where’er He doth set a wish! Yea, then doth He to spring from out the dust a lily; so also doth He to breathe athin (within) the flesh, and come unto the earth, born from out flesh athout the touch o’ man. ’Tis so, and from off the lute o’ me hath song aflowed that be asweeted o’ the blood o’ Him that shed for thee and me.”

And she puts the same assertion of His divine birth into this tribute to the Virgin: