Samuel Smith, an old Friend of James Padgett, Writes That He Was a Fool and Has Since Began Receiving Instruction by the Higher Spirits

August 23, 1915
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here - the man who had the ponderous mind as you called him.

Since writing to you last I have had a great experience and the result is, I see what a damned fool I must have appeared to all of you at the time. I wrote, and because of the manner I wrote in, I now see that I was really an ignorant man, and that I was learned in only what I didn't know, that is in my egregious conceit that what I didn't know was not worth learning. But since that time I have really had my eyes opened and my mental powers awakened to the fact that I was just on the border land of learning what is here for me to learn.

I have had the benefit of association with members of your band and with many other intelligent spirits, and I have learned that there are several spheres higher than that in which I live, and that they can be obtained only by progress in knowledge and mental acquirements. Some of these spirits have shown me truths of the spirit life that I never conceived of and taught me laws governing this spirit world that I never heard of.

I must have been very stupid as well as hide bound and I don't wonder that you all, in a kind of derision, called me the man with the ponderous mind.

I am now in the Second Sphere and am studying the laws of the universe and other needful things under the supervision of competent and learned teachers, and I have studied also those things which tend to enlighten me of things spiritual. Your friends, who first took me in hand, have helped me very much, and especially your grandmother who seems not only so beautiful but to be so filled with knowledge. She is a wonderful spirit, and her teachings have helped me beyond all comprehension.

I have not yet been able to quite believe what she tells me about the New Birth and the Divine Love of the Father, although when I meet these spirits who claim to have received this New Birth, I have to think that there is something in it, for they are all so much more beautiful and bright than are we who have not believed in it. I am seeking the light, though, and that which will show me that there is some reality in this doctrine. I shall not hesitate to seek further and accept it for my own salvation.

I came tonight merely to tell you that I am no longer the man with the ponderous mind in my own conceit, and that I am a very humble student of the many things of which I had no knowledge or experience.

I will not write more tonight, and will say goodnight,

Your friend,
Samuel Smith