CHAPTER XXI

SPIRITUALISM IN ALL LANDS AND TIMES

Selected from the Writings of Dr. J. M. Peebles.

" I exist as I am, that is enough.
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content.
And if each and all be aware, I sit content."
—WALT WHITMAN.

CONSCIOUSLY do I feel that this life, with all its shadows and struggles, is really worth the living. And such, I think, is the general testimony of human experience. During many wanderings in savage, semi-civilized, and enlightened lands, I have seen a thousand smiles for a single tear, and I have heard ten thousand merry peals of laughter for a single groan of suffering. Surely, God is good.

But if death, as the atheist contends, "ends all," then this life is a little more than a tempest-tossed, tantalizing dream. If men rich in possibilities become, in dying, only dust and drifting gases, then hope, sympathy, aspiration for immortality, and all the soul's transcendent attributes, are nothing but heartless, pitiless mockeries.

This world is of very little importance unless there is another and a higher with equal opportunities and vastly better facilities for unfoldment; another world or worlds to look forward to in the future. And the word "future" implies faith. The inspired soul feeds in a measure upon faith. It is faith in Infinite Wisdom, in Nature's laws and faith in man, that moves the wheels of enterprise. And it is faith in a future existence that, during all the ancient ages, gave energy and public spirit to earth's teeming millions.

Navigators sailing, Columbus-like, under the inspiration of a lofty faith, have discovered new islands and continents. Hardy toilers plow and sow and plant in a trusting faith that the sun will shine and the harvests come in due season. Tradesmen transact business with a confiding faith in their fellow-men. Faith is an all-inspiring force in the international relations of foreign commerce and in all the higher walks of social and intellectual life. Faith in the great, throbbing heart of humanity is sublime, and faith in God—the tender, loving, "Our Father who art in heaven,"—is the divinest, most restful, satisfying emotion of the human soul.

But man cannot live by faith alone any more than by bread alone. Faith, while the substance of things hoped for, looks towards the mountain top of the ideal and cries for light—more light. "Add," said the apostle, "to your faith knowledge." This he himself personally did, exclaiming, "For we know that if this our earthly house were dissolved, we have a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." With the true Spiritualist, as with the great apostle, faith buds and blossoms, and has its fruition in the absolute knowledge of a future conscious existence.

How did Paul know of "a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens," or of those higher spheres of immortality? He knew because he had visions; because he was caught up to the third heaven, and because, when entranced, he heard a voice—a spirit—speaking to him out of the unseen. In brief, he knew of a future existence in the heavens because he was a Spiritualist—a spiritualistic medium. The disciples were all mediums. That is the reason why Jesus selected them. His clairvoyant eye saw in them the outputting potencies of marvelous spiritual gifts. This period in Jewish history was the opening of a new cycle—a new and more spiritual dispensation.

“God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime and race of men.”

Spiritualism, in some form, has obtained through all the ages and among all races. When a maiden died among the Senecas of the North American Indians, the heart-stricken mourners imprisoned a young bird until it began to sing; then, loading it with caresses and loving messages, they released it over the maiden’s grave, bidding it not to fold its wings nor close its eyes until it had reached “the happy hunting grounds” of heaven; and then, feasting in silence under some mossy rock or moaning pine for three days, these sad-hearted Indians expected responses from the loved one by dreams or visions or in the low murmuring songs of the night-bird of the forest.

If Spiritualism means simply converse with departed mortals, then it is as ancient as remotest antiquity. Professor Boscowen, the noted archæologist, says in his “Records of the Monuments”: “In dream and visions the primitive Akkadians no doubt saw, as they declared, the shadowy forms of departed human beings, which led them to regard them not as simply vanished, but still existing as shades in some dark, far distant, subterranean place.” He further adds: “The inscriptions, as early as B. C. 3800, on the tablets show belief in ghosts and a worship of a ghost god, ancestral ghosts, the nisi, or spirits, the anunas, the friends they once knew, sitting upon their thrones as master spirits, or traversing the vaporous underworld, hailing each newcomer with the cry, “Didst thou become weak as we, and dost thou realize life as now do we? Welcome—welcome to our abodes.” This is almost the exact phraseology of one of the lately discovered Babylonian tablets.

I repeat, if Spiritualism means simply belief in converse with departed mortals, then India’s throbbing three hundred millions of to-day are Spiritualists. Their whole religious literature abounds in communications with gods, devas and pitris—their departed ancestors. These latter they propitiate. Every household has its familiars. The voluminous Sanskrit manuscripts, the Vedas and the Upanishads, frequently mention the Bhutas, Pritas, and Pisachas—especially the Pritas—as familiar ancestral spirits. Their sacred books describe their abodes, their obsessing influences, their general characteristics, and how to avert their control by mantras and invocations.

During my several visits to India, I never conversed with an intelligent Hindoo Pundit who did not believe that the invisible regions were filled with different gradations of conscious intelligence, and that certain classes of spirits had the power to communicate with and infest humanity. They do not encourage spirit communications—they fear them. I spent days in Southern India in casting out demons—that is, in demagnetizing the Hindoo mediums who were obsessed by undeveloped spirits.

In Ancient Egypt, Spiritualism was the very foundation for the national religion. Their hierophants taught the initiated that the soul is immortal; that during several lives it passed through several zœther zones, all of which were processes of purification. Hermes taught that the visible is but a picture of the invisible world—that this earth was surrounded by circles of ether, and that in these ether circles the souls of the dead lived and guarded mortals. Strabo states that in the temple of Serapis at Canopus, "great worship was performed and many miraculous works wrought, which the most eminent men believed and practiced, while others devoted themselves to the sacred sleep" that is, the unconscious trance. The consecrated temple at Alexandria was still more famous for its oracles, consecrated sleep, and the healing of invalids.

Berosus, in transcribing the early legends of Babylonia and Chaldea, describes the gods of heaven and the lower elementaries who were in sympathy with them, and often influenced the inhabitants of earth both for good and ill. They had magical directions for dispossessing disturbing demons and for inviting the protection of the good genii —in other words, the more exalted spirits.

A tablet in the library at Nineveh describes seven supreme gods, fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred spirits of the lower heavens, and six hundred of the earth. These latter were invoked to bring messages from the invisible shores of immortality.

The master minds of Greece, such as Thales, who lived some six hundred years B. C., thought that the universe was peopled with daimons, who were the spiritual guides of human beings and the invisible witnesses of all their thoughts and actions.

Epimenides, the cotemporary of Solon, frequently received divine revelations from the spiritual heavens.

Zeno declared that tutelary, or guardian, spirits inspired his speech and directed his actions.

Socrates was constantly attended, as every reader of history knows, by his demon guide, with whom he conversed, and whose advice he was proud to receive and acknowledge.

Apuleius, the Roman historian, assured the people that the souls of men, when detached from their bodies and freed from their physical functions, became a species of daimon, or lemurs, who gratified their beneficence in watchfully guarding individuals, families, and cities.

Homer, in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, describes the spirit of Patroclus as appearing to Achilles, and adjuring him to bestow the last funeral rites upon the body of his friend, that he might the sooner commence his spiritual advancement.

In the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses is depicted as visiting the underworld regions of the Cimmerians, and as conversing with the spirit of Tyresius Elpenor and his own mother, from whom he received most encouraging tidings.

The poet Hesiod, whose verses were so prized by the old Greeks that they committed them to memory, believed that each conscious soul was a potential portion of God, the "Oversoul." Recognizing the conscious existence of these souls, or spirits, he thought they were drawn earthward from the higher regions by the desires of their friends.

Plutarch informs us that those who aspired to be brought into sympathetic communion with the higher intelligences of the shadowlands were expected to renounce the follies of the world and to practice self-denial, and to bring the lower functions and faculties of their natures into complete subjection to the spiritual.

Cicero tells us that the mysteries, which were symbolically allied to spiritual invisible presences, enkindled and inspired a knowledge of the future life, and made this life more pleasant by filling the mind of the dying with beautiful ideas of cheerfulness and resignation.

Pythagoras, who visited India, Persia, and Egypt, and who had been initiated into the inner court of Isis, was one of the most astonishing mediums of antiquity. His psychic powers were attested by Claudius Ælian, Porphyry of Tyre, and Jamblichus, the Neo-Platonist.

Plato, the favorite pupil of Socrates, and prince of philosophers, held precisely the same ideas in regard to spirits and their communion with mortals as did his great teacher. “There are,” he said, “daimons, the souls of those who have died; and each human being has a particular spirit with him, to be his tutelary and guiding genius during his mortal lifetime; and when the physical life is ended this spirit receives and accompanies the enfranchised one to its future destiny, the Elysian Fields of immortality.

The Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha, and the Talmudic writings—all abound, more or less, in angel ministries, spirit communications, trances, visions, and apparitions.

Origen, a celebrated bishop, and one of the most learned and illustrious that graced the early Christian centuries, wrote thus in his “De Principiis”: “What shall we say of the Diviners, from whom—by the working of those spirits (demons) who have the mastery over them—answers are given (to those who consult them) in carefully-constructed verses? Those persons, too, whom they term Magi (magicians) frequently, by invoking demons over boys of tender years, have made them repeat poetical compositions and give poetical improvisations which were the admiration and amazement of all. Now these effects, we suppose, are brought about in the following manner: As holy and immaculate souls after devoting themselves to God with all perfection and purity, and preserving themselves from the contagion of evil spirits, and purifying themselves by long abstinence, by these means they assume a portion of divinity and earn the grace of prophecy and other divine gifts. The result of this is that they are filled with the working of those spirits to whose service they have subjected themselves.”

This erudite Christian Father, Origen, in writing against his atheist antagonist, Celsus (200 A. D.), says: “Celsus has compared the miracles (spiritual manifestations) of Jesus to the tricks of jugglers and the magic of Egyptians, and there would indeed be a resemblance between them if Jesus, like the practitioners of magic arts, had performed his works only for show or worldly gain.”

In his celebrated work, “De Anima,” Tertullian says: “We had a right to anticipate prophecies and the continuance of spiritual gifts, and we are now permitted to enjoy the gift of a prophetess. There is a sister among us who possesses the faculty of revelation. Commonly, during religious service, she falls into a trance, holding then communion with angels, beholding Jesus himself, hearing divine mysteries explained, reading the hearts of some persons, and administering to such as require it. When the Scriptures are read, or psalms sung, spiritual beings minister visions to her. We were speaking of the soul once when our sister was in the spirit (entranced), and, the people departing, she then communicated to us what she had seen in her ecstasy, which was afterwards closely inquired into and tested. She declared she ‘had seen a soul in bodily shape, which appeared to be a spirit, neither empty nor formless, but so real and substantial that it might be touched. It was tender, shining, of the color of the air, but in everything resembling the human form.’ ”

For three hundred years after the apostles, visions, apparitions, healing gifts and spiritual marvels abounded in all Christian countries. Believers, in the name of Christ, cast out demons, made the lame to walk and the blind to see. And all along down the centuries to the Reformation there were rifts in the clouds, lights from above, and messages from the invisible world.

The Roman Catholic Church has never denied the miracles—the spiritual manifestations of the ages. All the religious movements of the past originated in spiritual manifestations. Take as a sample, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism; Ann Lee, the founder of Shakerism; the Wesleys, founders of Methodism, and Swedenborg, the founder of the Swedenborgian or New Church. Swedenborg held open intercourse with the spiritual world during a period of twenty-seven years. The world’s religious epoch-builders were all possessed of marvelous spiritual gifts. Elder Frederick Evans, a distinguished American Shaker preacher, used to often say, “Quakerism began in the spirit, but is ending in the flesh and in the worldliness of the world.” Sir James Macintosh says of Fox’s Journal: “It is one of the most extraordinary and instructive narratives in the world—which no reader of competent judgment can peruse without revering the eminent virtue of the writer.”

This Journal reminds us of, and is a fitting companion to, Swedenborg’s Diary. The following statements are condensed from it:

Born in July, 1624, Fox was naturally, when young, of a rather grave deportment. When about nineteen he became annoyed by the frivolous and profane conversation of the young, and spending a night in prayer, he heard a voice saying: “Thou seest how young people go together in vanity and old people into their graves; thou must forsake, be a stranger to, all, and be guided by the spirit.”

Traveling to London, and listening by the way to many preachers, he remarks: “I was afraid of them, for I was sensible that they did not possess what they professed.” After relating to the clergymen that at times he “heard voices and felt the presence of spirits,” one of these jolly old clergymen of the Anglican Church told him to “smoke tobacco and sing psalms.” Another advised him to “go to a surgeon and lose some blood.” Turning to the Dissenters, he “found them also blind guides.”

Wandering often in quiet places; fasting frequently with Bible in hand; meditating and battling with doubts and temptations, he at last “fell into a trance that lasted fourteen days, and many who came to see him during that time wondered to see his countenance so changed, for he not only had the appearance of a dead man, but seemed to them to be really dead. But after this his mind was relieved of its sorrows, so that he could have wept night and day with tears of joy, in humility and brokenness of heart. In this state,” he says, “I saw into that which is without end, and things which cannot be uttered; and of the greatness and infiniteness of the love of God.”

When at Mansfield he “was struck blind,” so that he could not see, after which, he says, “I went to a village and many people accompanied me. And as I was sitting in a house full of people, I cast my eyes upon a woman and discerned in her an unclean (undeveloped) spirit. Moved to speak sharply, I told her she was under the influence of an unclean spirit. Having the gift of discerning spirits, I many times saw the states and conditions of people, and could try their spirits."

He frequently healed the sick by laying on of hands. To Richard Myer, who had long had a very lame, rheumatic arm, he said: "Stand upon thy legs and stretch out thine arm." He did so, and Fox exclaimed: "Be it known unto you and to all people that this day you are healed." Although Macaulay sneers at Fox's casting out devils and performing miracles, many remarkable cases of this kind are recorded in his Journal, and were witnessed by thousands of people. In his "Life Sketches" he uses "Lord," "angels," and "spirits" interchangeably, as do the old biblical writers.

"Coming to within a mile of Litchfield, where shepherds were keeping their sheep, I was commanded," he says, "by the Lord to put off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter, and the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds, and the poor shepherds trembled and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was within the city the word of the Lord came to me again, saying, 'Cry, Woe unto the bloody city of Litchfield!' So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, 'Woe to the bloody city of Litchfield!' It being market day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before, 'Woe to the bloody city of Litchfield!' And no one laid hands on me; but as I went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared what the spirit put upon me, I felt myself clear. I went out of the town in peace, and, returning to the shepherds, gave them some money and took my shoes of them.

“After this a deep consideration came upon me. Why, or for what reason, should I be sent against that city and call it ‘the bloody city’? But afterwards I came to understand that in the Emperor Diocletian’s time a thousand Christians were martyred here in Litchfield. So I was to go without my shoes, through the channel of their blood in the market-place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs which had been shed a thousand years before. The sense of their blood was upon me.”

These were among the common sayings of the inspired George Fox while preaching: “Verily, I heard a voice;” “The spirit was upon me;” “I saw in visions;” “The prophecies were open to me.” “When, at a meeting of Friends in Derby, there was such a mighty power of spirit felt,” says Fox, “that the people were shaken and many mouths were opened to testify that the angels of God do minister unto mortal men.”

The original Quakers, like the post-Apostolic Christians, were Spiritualists; but our latter-day Quakers, denying or deadening their spiritual gifts by selfishness and worldliness, have crystallized, and so are a dying religious sect.

In the old Wesley residence, Epworth, England, marked spiritual manifestations occurred for years. An account of these was written by the Rev. Mr. Hooley, of Haxey, by Dr. Adam Clarke, by a writer in the Arminian Magazine and others. It is pitiable that modern Methodist preachers do not mention them as among the present demonstrations of a future existence. From a large volume by John Wesley, entitled “The Invisible World,” published over a hundred years ago, I make the following quotations:

“It is true that the English in general indeed, most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread throughout the nation; and in direct opposition, not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft (the control of undeveloped spirits) is in effect giving up the Bible. And they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (deism, atheism, and materialism) falls to the ground. One of the capital objections to all the accounts, which I have known urged over and over, is this, ‘Did you ever see an apparition yourself?’ No, nor did I ever see a murder, yet I believe there is such a thing. Yea, and in one place or another murder is committed every day. Therefore I cannot, as a reasonable being, deny the fact, though I never saw it, and perhaps never may. The testimony of unexceptionable witnesses fully convinces me of both the one and the other.”

“Elizabeth Hobson was born in Sunderland in 1774. Her father dying when she was three or four years old, her uncle, Thomas Rea, a pious man, brought her up as his daughter. She was a serious child and grew up in the fear of God; yet she had a deep and sharp conviction of sin until she was about sixteen years of age, when she found peace with God, and from that time the whole tenor of her behavior was suitable to her profession. On Wednesday, May 23d, 1788, and the three following days, I talked with her at large. But it was with difficulty that I could prevail upon her to speak. The substance of what she said was as follows:

"' From my childhood, when any of my neighbors died, whether men, women, or children, I used to see them just before, or when they died, and I was not at all frightened, it was so common; indeed, I did not then know they were dead. I saw many of them by day and many of them by night. Those that came when it was dark brought light with them. I observed that little children and many grown persons had a bright, glorious light around them, but many had a gloomy, dismal light and a dusky cloud over them.' "

"Perhaps the glorified spirits of just men made perfect, may, like the angels, be employed in carrying on the purposes of God in the world. It is said of them, ' His servants shall serve him.' " (Heb. 22.)

"Possibly, as ministering spirits, they may minister unto the heirs of salvation, and watch over the interests of those who on earth were dear to them, either by the ties of nature or religion. One of them was employed to converse with the Apostle John and explain to him the wonderful things he saw in his visions." (Rev. 22.)

"The sentiment for which we are pleading has the sanction of the highest antiquity. Philo speaks of it as a received notion of the Jews that the souls of good men officiate as ministering spirits. The Pagans, in the earliest ages, imagined that the spirits of their deceased friends continued near them, and were frequently engaged in performing acts of kindness, hence the deification of their kings and heroes, and the custom of invoking the names of those who were dear to them."

"Cicero makes a better use of the doctrine, when he endeavors to comfort a father for the loss of a son by the thought that he might still be engaged in performing kind offices for him. And it is not improbable that the idea, though perverted by the heathen for the purpose of idolatry, might, like the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, be derived from a divine source."

"A few years ago, a gentleman of most correct character and serious carriage, who resided near St. James and lived very happily with his wife, was taken sick and died, which so effected his dear left companion that she sickened also and kept her bed.

"In about ten days after her husband's death, as she was sitting upright in bed, and a friend and near relation sitting near her, she looked steadfastly towards the foot of the bed, and said with a cheerful voice, 'My dear, I will be with you in two hours.' The gentlewoman that was with her (and who firmly attested the same as most true) said to her, 'Child, whom do you speak to?' (for she saw nobody). She answered, 'It is my husband, who came to call me hence, and I am going to him;' which surprised her friend very much, who, thinking she was a little light headed, called in some one else, to whom she spoke very cheerfully and told the same story; but before the two hours were expired she went on and up to her dear companion, to be happy together forever, to the great surprise of all present.

“The soul receives not its perfections or activity from the body, but can live and act out of the body; yea, much better, having then its perfect liberty, divested of that heavy incumbrance which only clogged and fettered it. ‘Doubtless,’ saith Tertullian, ‘when the soul is separated from the body it comes out of darkness into its own pure and perfect light, and quickly finds itself a substantial being, able to act freely in that light and participate in heavenly joys.’ ”

The former historical references prove that the facts and the fundamental truths of Spiritualism were in remotest antiquity similar to those of to-day. And why not?—since there is but one God, one law, one Divine purpose, one historical continuity, one brotherhood, “one spirit,” with, as Paul says, “a diversity of gifts.”

A traveler in nearly all latitudes ’neath the northern star, or summering under the Southern Cross, I have seen neither races nor tribes, white, brown-skinned, or black, without sympathy for their kindred—without cemeteries for their dead—without altars, however rude, for their worship, and without dreams, apparitions, visions, and methods of some sort for communicating with the dead. Uncouth, vague, if not rude and vulgar to us, they may have been; yet, they foreshadowed the soul’s immortality, and brought to sorrowing, trusting souls, that peace of mind that passeth understanding.

These spiritual marvels, natural to the plane from which they proceeded, have, through all periods of time, appeared as echoing openings from the silence, as lights from the mountain-tops, necessarily assuming various forms, according to the period, the temperament, and racial development of a people. They were, and are, all in the line of evolution. They were, and are, God’s living witnesses of a future existence. To deny them, to destroy them, is to plunge the world into the thickest darkness of materialism.

The Spiritualism of this age was no modern invention of either spirits or mortals, but rather a discovery—the re-discovery, of a fact, or range of facts, in perfect accord with natural law. It did not spring into birth full grown, like Minerva from Jupiter's brain. It was seemingly feeble at first. It is youthful yet, when compared with Protestantism and its swarming sects. And yet, it is a-fire with truth, and a-flame with infinite possibilities. Atheistic materialists and sectarian priests might quite as well think of dethroning Divinity as of checking the onward march of Spiritualism.

Christianity started from a dream (Matt. 1: 20); Spiritualism from a mystic rap. Angels and spirits were the potent powers behind them both. The mightiest results often follow from the minutest causes. Newton's falling apple pointed to that hidden law that holds suns and stars in their circling orbits. That little puff of steam from Watts’ boiling kettle foretold of railways and steamers girdling the globe. How insignificant to proud, imperial Rome was that Babe cradled in a Bethlehem manger. And yet, there lay concealed mighty causes that in less than three hundred years shook the whole Roman Empire to its very foundations; and later planted the Cross, symbol of life, upon the hills and mountains of every civilized land. So, those little half-muffled sounds, those gentle, telegraphic tickings that came to Hydesville like messengers from the tear-lands of the tombs, came to bring messages—messages of holiest memories. This was the Epiphany, the Easter morning of the thinking, stirring nineteenth century! It was the golden dawn, the opening cycle of a newer and higher dispensation, ringing the death knell of a dreary materialism and a creedal, soul crushing sectarianism.

In the Judæan dust-buried past, women were last at the cross. and first at the grave; so, in this age, women —the Fox sisters—after hearing the sounds, were the first to discover the new alphabet—the first to translate those rappings into intelligent language, thus cabling the ocean of doubt, and bridging the chilling river of death, thereby enabling mortals and immortals to stand consciously face to face, re-clasping hands—the white hands of their dead—and reaffirming their undying loves and affections. As God is the soul, the spirit, interpermeating all nature, Spiritualism is necessarily naturalism. Nature is a divine unity. The chain of causes has no missing links. Law is as continuous as it is immutable. All the good of the old times remains. Principles never die; and so of human beings—there are no dead. The Spiritualism of to-day has absolutely demonstrated this to be a fact. Shout, then, O ye nations, the song of triumph; for Death, the King of Terrors, is conquered! Creeds are doomed. The devil of mythology is defeated, and the fiery scarecrow, hell, is transfigured into lovely Gehenna gardens and vineyards, where purpling grapes grow in richest luxuriance just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

A few years since I was in the Judæa of the ancient Scriptures—in old Bethlehem, near Jerusalem: and recently, on March 31, 1898, I was in the new Bethlehem, at Hydesville, near Rochester, N. Y. This has now become consecrated ground—consecrated and sacred to moral, mental, and spiritual science, to the brotherhood of races, to the immortality of divine truth, to the matchless grandeur and glories of a present angel ministry, and to a sweet converse with those higher, heavenly intelligencies that make radiant the highlands of immortality. Hydesville is America’s Mecca.

The philosophy of modern Spiritualism and the philosophy of Christianity during the first three centuries are in perfect accord. Spiritualists believe in God—a personal God, basing that personality, not upon form, or shape, or mere avoirdupois, but upon consciousness, intelligence, will and purpose. They believe in Jesus Christ, accepting Peter’s definition—“ Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by wonders, and miracles and signs, which God did by him.”* Jesus’ sympathetic character was certainly sweeter, diviner, than that of the masses of men. Angels daily walked and talked with him. Subordinating the earthly to the spiritual, fraternal love with him soon bloomed out into the universal. Quick to feel the sorrows of others, the sensitive tendrils of his loving heart, constantly attuned and tremulously responsive, vibrated to every sound of human suffering. He identified himself with sorrow and disgrace, with humanity in its lowest estate, that he might the more successfully exert the healing, saving, love power of his soul in the redemption of the erring.

Considered with reference to religious cycles, Jesus stood upon the pinnacle of Hebrew Spiritualism, the great

Judæan Spiritualist of that era. As God is Spirit—that is, the Infinite Spirit-presence acting by the law of mediation—an apostle, with a singular clearness of perception, pronounced the Nazarene a “Mediator”—that is, a “medium”—between God and men. The persecuted and martyred mediums of one age become gods in succeeding ages. Such manifest the world’s lack of both justice and wisdom.

But if Jesus was only divine man, elder brother, wherein, then, you will perhaps inquire, consisted his moral superiority over others of that era? If I rightly understand his essential and peculiar characteristics, his preëminent greatness consisted in his fine harmonial organization; in a constant overshadowing of angelic influences; in the depth of his spirituality and love; in the keenness of his moral perceptions; in the expansiveness and warmth of his sympathies; in his unshadowed sincerity of heart; in his deep schooling into the spiritual gifts of Essenian circles; in his soul-pervading spirit of obedience to the mandates of right manifest in himself; in his unwearied, self-forgetting, self-sacrificing devotion to the welfare of universal humanity, and his perfect trust in God.

The leading thoughts ever burning in his being for acceptance and actualization were in the divine Fatherhood of God, the universal brotherhood of man, the perpetual ministry of angels and spirits, and the absolute necessity of toleration, charity, forgiveness, love—in a word, good works. These, crystalizing into action as a reform-force for human education and redemption, I denominate the positive religion, and consider it perfectly synonymous with Spiritualism—Spiritualism as a definition and practical power in its best and highest estate. This pure religion and undefiled, established in men's hearts and lives, and not on "sacred" parchments, would soon be felt in states and kingdoms, promoting peace, justice and charity; rendering legal enactments wise and humanitarian, and causing the sweet waters of concord and good-will to flow over all the earth for the spiritual healing and moral uplifting of the nations.

Few Spiritualists have yet reached the sublime altitudes of that positive or universal religion whose co-assistant is science, whose creed is freedom, whose psalm is love, and whose only prayer is holy work for human good. The best have not yet entered the vestibule of perfection. The ideal stretches afar in the golden distance. That there are extravagances, frauds, wild theories, and moral excrescences sheltering themselves under the wide-spread wing of Spiritualism, is freely admitted. This is common in all new movements involving the activities of the emotional nature. Let only the sinless stone the erring. "Jesus," says the record, "came into the world not to condemn, but to save the world." Because the millennium has not dawned during this first phenomenal cycle of modern Spiritualism; because the temple with its inner glories is as yet only seen in vision; because our fondest hopes are not realized, nor our lofty ideas attained, shall we go back to the beggarly elements of the world, and seek spiritual nourishment from rechewing old sectarian husks? Only in weakness and blindness does human nature seek a return to the flesh-pots of the past. If Spiritualists are not free, generous, tolerant, and prosperous; if they are not above the level of the age in good works in order and fitness, in reform effort and general culture; if they are not the ready recipients of the freshest fruits of science and philosophy; if they are not full-grown, harmonial men and women, the fault is not in Spiritualism, but in themselves. “Examine yourselves,” was a good old apostolic injunction. Spiritualism can gain nothing by aping the ecclesiastical customs of other denominations. Awkward combinations are ever to be avoided. While it is true that master-builders are constructionists, Spiritualism must never adopt any measures for cramping the unfolding intellect, nor strive to utter the shibboleth of any man-made form of faith; for, in the introduction of this modern wave of Spiritualism upon earth, the angels of heaven purposed the formation of no new sect. Their aim, higher and holier, was to educate, enlighten, and spiritualize God’s dear humanity.

These are among the divine enunciations of that positive religion, based upon the immutable principles of justice, goodness, and human rights:

God immanent and active in all things;

Man above all institutions;

The strict equality of the sexes.

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart.”

“By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have loved one another.”

Self-abnegation being the first law of life, the highest good consists in aiding and doing good to others.

“Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; thirsty, and ye gave me drink; a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and ye visited me; in prison, and ye came unto me. . . . Inasmuch as ye have done these things to the least of these my servants, ye have done them unto me.”

This is the religion of Jesus, the religion of the soul, the inborn religion of all men. Its witnesses have been the luminous suns and stars along the ages. When J. G. Whittier, accompanied by an English philanthropist, visited that eminent Unitarian, the Rev. Dr. Channing, for the last time in Rhode Island, their themes of conversation were reform, progress, peace, toleration, and human sympathy. Whittier, referring to it afterwards, wrote these tender lines:

“No bars of sect or clime were felt —
The Babel strife of tongues had ceased —
And at one common altar knelt
The Quaker and the Priest.”

Thus may, thus do, the hearts of the good and erudite ever blend in union. Such fellowship constitutes heaven upon earth. When the white feet of the venerable William Howitt pressed the sunny slopes of the summerland, the angels that make radiant the upper kingdoms of God did not inquire, “Were you on earth Catholic, Protestant, Spiritualist, Materialistic Spiritualist, or Christian Spiritualist?” but “Were you a true man, a lover of humanity, and a brother of mercy?” “Then shall the King say, Come ye blessed of my Father.” Love was the test of discipleship in Christ's time. Purity was and is the test of heavenly acceptance in all spheres of existence. Listen:

“Lovest thou me?”

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.”

“Love worketh no ill to its neighbor.”

“If ye love me keep my commandments.”

“Not every one that saith Lord, Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

If you cannot walk peaceably and religiously with your brother, good reader, go your own way, kindly leaving the road. Heaven, as London, may be reached from different directions.

Made subject to vanity, experimenting and journeying through the world of shadows, all need the staff of prayer and the lamp of faith—need to feel that God is a constant presence; that Christ is the light of truth; and that loving angels are waiting to minister to our spiritual wants. A life without love and trust, even if it be of the strictest morality, or of a continual ascetic struggle after Divine communion, will never bring the individual really into the Inner Temple. Little children symbolize the receptivities of the heavenly life. The humble heart, sheltered from the storms of passion, and all vestured with the fragrant blossoms of sweet human affections, is often nearer in spirit to the angels than the cold philosopher. Love inspires, wisdom guides, faith opens the gate, and self-sacrifice leads the way into the City of Peace—the City of God. Oh, come, let us worship in this temple of Spiritualism—this temple of eternal religion—a temple whose foundations are deep and wide as the nature of man, and whose dome, reaching into the heaven of heavens, shall shelter and overshadow the races with millennial glory.

When genuine Spiritualism—the universal religion of love—shadowed in twilight by Indian sages, seen in increasing sunlight by Syrian seers, and consciously felt to-day by the more highly-inspired—becomes actualized in and outwrought through the personal lives of earth's surging millions, it will no longer be selfishly said, “Mine, mine,” but “Ours, yours, all who appropriate it for holy uses.” Then our country will be the universe, our home the world, and our rest wherever a human heart beats in sympathy with our own, and the highest happiness of each will be found to consist in aiding and blessing others. Then will the soil be as free for all to cultivate as the air they breathe; gardens will blossom and bear fruit for the most humble; orphans will find homes of tenderest sympathy in all houses; the tanned brows of toiling millions will be wreathed with the white roses of peace; and the great family of humanity will be obedient to and trust in love, law, liberty—God! In holiest fellowship with Jesus and the angels, with loved and loving spirits, and upon the tender bosom of the Infinite, is my soul's rest forever!

Probably the best medium that graced the nineteenth century was W. Stainton Moses. Educated at Oxford, and for a time connected with London University College, he was a clairvoyant, trance, clairaudient, automatic-writing medium. His mediumistic superiority consisted largely in living a good life and adding to his mediumship culture and scholarship. He was for years editor of London Light, pages of his automatic writings appearing in its columns. Honored by his friendship, I take pleasure in presenting the following communications from his spirit-friend “Imperator”:

“It is part of our mission to teach the religion of the body as well as of the soul. We proclaim to you and to all that due care of the body is an essential prerequisite to the progress of the soul. Jesus was a physician to both body and soul. Man has gradually built around the teachings of Jesus a wall of deduction, speculation, and material comment similar to that with which the Pharisees had surrounded the Mosaic law. It is our task to do for Christianity what Jesus did for Judaism. We would take the old forms and spiritualize their meanings and infuse into them new life. Resurrection rather than abolition is what we desire. We say again that we would not abolish one jot or tittle of the teachings which the Christ gave to the world. We do but wipe away man’s material gloss and show you the hidden spiritual meaning which he has missed.

“This was the mission of Christ. He claimed for himself that fulfilment of the law, not its abolition or abrogation, was his intent. He pointed out the truth which was at the root of the Mosaic commandment. He stripped off the rags of pharisaical ritual, the glosses of rabbinical speculation, and laid bare the divine truth which was beneath all, the grand principles divinely inspired which man has nearly buried. He was not only a religious but a social reformer, and the grand business of his life was to elevate the people, spirit and body; to expose pretenders, and to strip off the mask of hypocrisy; to take the foot of the despot from the neck of the struggling slave, and make man free by virtue of that truth which he came from God to declare. ‘Ye shall know the truth,' he told his followers, 'and the truth shall make you free; and ye shall be free indeed.'

"He reasoned of life and death and eternity; of the true nobility and dignity of man's nature; of the way to progressive knowledge of God. He came as the Great Fulfiller of the law; the man who showed, as never man showed before, the end for which the law was given—the amelioration of humanity. He taught men to look into the depths of their hearts, to test their lives, to try their motives and to weigh all they did by one ascertained balance—the fruits of life as the test of religion. He told men to be humble, merciful, truthful, pure, self-denying, honest in heart and intent; and he set before them a living example of the life which he preached.

"He was the great social reformer, whose object was at least as much to benefit man corporeally, and to reveal to him a salvation from bigotry, selfishness, and narrow-mindedness in this life, as it was to reveal glimpses of a better life in the hereafter. He preached the religion of daily life, the moral progress of the spirit in the path of daily duty forward to a higher knowledge. Repentance for the past, amendment and progress in the future, summed up most of his teaching. He found a world buried in ignorance, at the mercy of an unscrupulous priesthood in matters religious; under the absolute sway of a tyrant in matters political. He taught liberty in both. He labored to show the dignity of man. He would elevate him to the true dignity of the truth—the truth which should make him free. He was no respecter of persons. He chose his apostles and associates from the mean and poor. He lived among the common people; of them, with them, in their homes, teaching the simple lessons of truth which they needed, and which they could receive. He went but little among those whose eyes were blinded by the mists of orthodoxy, respectability, or so-called human wisdom. He fired the hearts of his listeners with a yearning for something nobler, better, higher, than they yet possessed, and he told them how to get it.

“The gospel of humanity is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the only gospel that man needs; the only one that can reach his wants and minister to his necessities.”

We continue to preach the same evangel. By commission from the same God, by authority from the same source, do we come now as apostles of this heaven-sent gospel. We declare truths, the same as Jesus taught. We preach, through this medium, his gospel, purified from the glosses and misinterpretations which man has gathered around it. We would spiritualize that which man has hidden under the heap of materialism.

“I inquired,” said Stainton Moses, “whether I rightly understood that the work of teaching, a section of which is under the direction of Imperator, derived its mission from Christ.”

“You understand aright. I have before said that I derive my mission, and am influenced in my work, by a spirit who has passed beyond the spheres of work into the higher heaven of contemplation. . . . Jesus Christ is now arranging his plans for the gathering of his people, for the further revelation of the truth as well as for the purging away of the erroneous beliefs which have accumulated in the past.

“This is the second coming—a coming in power and glory—a coming of ministering angels and spirits—a coming to morally and spiritually enlighten all conscious intelligences. It is the overshadowing return of the living Christ. There will be no such personal return as theologians have taught. This will be, and is, the spiritual return to his people, by the voice of his messengers speaking to those whose ears are open; even as he said, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; and he that is able to receive it, let him receive it.’”

Spiritualism is the opposite of, and strongly antagonistic to, materialism. When scientists talk of the potencies in matter, of co-relations and polarities, they are talking all unwittingly of spirit; for all potency as a finality belongs to the almost incomprehensible realm of Spirit, which is a factor in every phenomenon of nature, and is essential to the ascertainment and record of every natural law; and the knightly champions of science are just beginning to understand it.

The Kosmos is a unity, threefold in manifestation. Substance is the One, the All Spirit, Soul, matter! We are spirits now—spirits vestured in material, everchanging substances. We are spirits with souls vibrating in touch with the Universal Soul—with Immortality. A man can no more help being immortal than the buds can help unfolding and blowing beneath spring's refreshing showers and the sun's genial rays. Who that has drunk from this fountain of eternal life—who that has held an hour's communion with departed loved ones does not say to the world, “I am glad, oh! so glad, that I am a Spiritualist!” And who does not say, “Blessed, ever blessed be this divine truth of Spiritualism!”

Spiritualists! the eyes of the civilized world and of the angels above are upon you! Conduct yourselves, then, like men. So guide your barques that, though they founder in the tempestuous seas of temptation, they may soon right themselves for a better, safer, voyage. Live to-day for to-morrow, for eternity. Be above the commission of an unworthy act; indulge in no ignoble insinuations; take no selfish advantages of the weaknesses of your fellow men; sacrifice coveted comforts for the good of others; seek no praise nor fulsome flattery; intrigue for no office; partake of the bread of honest labor only; administer reproof in gentleness and love; forgive as you would be forgiven; be kind to the poor, the unfortunate, the sick, the dying; live to lift them to higher planes of health and happiness; live to brighten the chain of human friendships; live to educate mind, heart, and soul for the realization of a heaven on earth; plant gardens of love in unhappy bosoms; scatter gems of good will and roses of kindness along your daily walks of life; think only good thoughts, and ever welcome the angels to your hearts and to your souls as the loved messengers of God. These are the teachings and principles of practical Spiritualism.

The above magnificent address is presented to our readers as a splendid example of the attitude taken to life in general by the most widely traveled of all American Spiritualists, the venerable and gracious “Spiritual Pilgrim.”

During Dr. Peebles’ third trip around the world, he studied and noted the laws, customs and religions of nations and peoples, giving special attention to Spiritualism, Magic, Theosophy, and reform movements. He visited Ceylon, India, Persia, Egypt, Syria, and the continent of Europe, and secured much material, which has been embodied in a large octavo volume, containing thirtyfive chapters, and treating on the following subjects: Home Life in California; My third Voyage; The Sandwich Islands; The Pacific Island Races; Ocean bound towards Aukland, New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia; From New Zealand Onward; A series of Spiritual Seances upon the Ocean; The Chinese Orient; Chinese Religions and Institutions; Cochin China to Singapore; Malacca to India; Spiritual Seances on the Indian Ocean; India: Its History and Treasures; India's Religions, Morals, and Social Characteristics; The Rise of Buddhism in India; The Brahmo-Somaj and Parsees; Spiritualism in India; From India to Arabia; Aden and the Arabs; The City of Cairo, Egypt; Egypt's Catacombs and Pyramids; Appearance of the Egyptians; Study of the Pyramids; Sight of the Great Pyramids; Ancient Science in Egypt; Astronomy of the Egyptians; From Alexandria to Joppa and Jerusalem; the City of Joppa; City of Prophets and Apostles; Jesus and Jerusalem; Present Gospels; the Christianity of the Ages; Plato and Jesus in contrast; Turkey in Asia; Ionia and the Greeks; Athens; Europe and its Cities; Ceylon and its Buddhists; the India of To-day; Hindoo Doctrines of the Dead; the Mediterranean Sea; Egypt and Antiquity. Price, $1.50.

Dr. Peebles' address is Battle Creek, Michigan, where his highly valuable works are published.