SILVER BIRCH ANTHOLOGY

                     EDITED BY

                Wm. NAYLOR

　　　　　First published 1955

　　　　　　This edition 1960

　　　　TO SILVER BIRCH

　Though we have never met on earthly plane He is my friend, my counsellor and guide, My strength and comfort in the days of pain, The unseen presence constant by my sideー He understands life's problems and its needs, (By facing trials does noble status grow!) He points the way of conduct in all deeds, Knowing we do but reap the seeds we sowーIn words of simple wisdom he will say That service is the Spirit's only coin, The paths of love and kindness lead the way To the true Source wherein all roads conjoin.

                               SYLVIA BARBANELL.

　　　　INTRODUCTION

　OF all those great and famous discarnate beings who have mastered the uncertain art of continuous spirit communication none has been so widely loved and justly honoured as Silver Birch, the unfailingly wise and eloquent yet ever humble spirit guide of Hannen Swaffer's home circle.

　It is the purpose of this anthology to select, from the vast recorded store of his memorable utterances, a few of those views, declarations and pronouncements that have permanent significance for a mankind still painfully evolving to a greater realisation of spiritual realities.

　I had originally intended taking the six Silver Birch books and selecting passages on a variety of subjects. A kind of Bedside Silver Birch is what I had envisaged.

　But he is not quite that easy. I found that like the master artist, dramatist and composer he is either con-stantly grappling with the major themes of human experience or interpreting abiding universal truths. Ask him a question on a comparatively minor issue and time and time again he will use it as a tributary through which to return to the mainstream of his philosophy.

　What I have tried to do then is to dip into this main-stream and show what he has to say about truth, death, fear, love, immortality, the laws of life, the Great White Spiritーhis name for Godーand a few other ever-relevant subjects.

　Of Silver Birch's eloquence there can be no question. In the words of an experienced journalist:

　"The teaching of Silver Birch is an example of spirit alchemy, the ability to take the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and transmute them into words of shimmering beauty. As one who spends the whole of his working life in writing, I can appreciate that the faculty of being able to deliver, week after week, words of wisdom, full of eloquent simplicity, in this spontaneous fashion, is in itself evidence of supernormality.

　"Like other journalists who live by their

pen, I know that simple English is the most difficult to write. I know how you have to polish and repolish, alter words, delete others, change sentences, consult the dictionary and the thesaurus, before you are satisfied. Yet, here is a dead man who, without hesitation, can produce perfect prose. Everything he says is full of common sense, inspiring, uplifting and ennobling.

　"He reduces religion to the fundamental of service to one another. He reveals a God of natural law, not a personal, tribal deity, subject to caprice, wrath or vengeance. Silver Birch's words glisten like diamonds. You visualise an evolved being, full of love for all humanity, striving to teach truths that are hidden from the worldly wise but revealed to minds which are simple, like those of children. He has the one message of service to offer a bewildered mankind, but he seems to have an infinite number of ways of expressing his gospel.

　"As one who has read his teaching for years, I salute a master of English, a great literary craftsman whom I have grown to love and admire."

　In a letter to Hannen Swaffer, after reading a copy of Teachings of Silver Birch, the first in the series of this guide's utterances, no less a Press lord than Lord Beaverbrook wrote, "It contains passages of great beauty and I was struck by the simplicity of the work."

　The Natal Daily News, reviewing More Teachings of Silver Birch, the second book in the series said, "Rare-ly has the English language been so gently, so simply and so beautifully used." Selecting it as "The Book of the Week," the review commended it, "if as nothing else, as a masterly exposition of the English language." One passage in the book earned the praise, "That beats the drama of a Churchill."

　A similar tribute, this time to Wisdom of Silver Birch, the third in the series, was paid by the Aberdeen Press and Journal, which declared, "Many of this guide's utterances provide almost Churchillian prose in some of their flights."

　A loftier, yet at the same time, less complicated philosophy could not be found outside the teachings of the great religious leaders. Yet even among these Silver Birch is unique, for he teaches and speaks as one who hails from another realm of existence.

　Pantheistic, in the highest sense of the word, permeated with altruism, simplicity and wisdom, his lucid teachings never cease to stress the supreme importance of the spiritual life and the necessity for compassion in our dealings with our fellow-men. And always he advocates a life of service to what he calls the "Great White Spirit."

　In Silver Birch is to be found the same supreme dedication to suffering humanity and reverence for all life that is the hall-mark of that greatest saint of modern times, Albert Schweitzer. Here, too, is the purity of vision and acknowledgment of one spirit in all things that radiates through the inspired poetry of Shelley. But unlike these two supremely gifted men, whose philosophical speculations, if not their works and deeds, are sometimes above the comprehension of the masses, Silver Birch is no intellectual. He has but one theme, repeatedly and unequivocally stressed, adherence to the Law.

　What is this Law? Let Silver Birch answer that for himself. . .