Up, up, up, there in the steep and silent heaven, there shines a radiant sun, more glorious than even a seraph might tell. Its essence is not matter, but spirit; and from its surface there go forth three kinds of light: the one in rays, another in waves. Condensed, the former becomes matter, and the latter is the ocean in which it is upborne - in which the worlds are floating, and in which all things have a being. Ay! All things ride upon the billows of this infinite sea, even as a shallop or an eggshell sails upon the tiny wavelets of a lake. The third substance given off from this great sun goes forth in corruscations. The first kind of light proceeds from the surface, the second from the interior, the third from the very heart of this infinite center - or from Gods body, His spirit, and His Soul. The first is pure fire, the second, pure life, the third is the sea of monads. Every scintilla of that which proceeds from the Soul of this sun (like that which proceeds from a human brain in action) is a thought, shot out into the vast expanse, but destined to return by another pathway, not direct, but circuitous and spiral. (16) Well (says the voice speaking from within to the philosopher who is listening to the revelation), I was one of these monads, and found myself enveloped in a myriad fold and firmly imbedded in a granite rock, where I remained shut up of long ages, pining constantly for deliverance from the thralldom. Even then I found my monad heart pulsing with a divine life, and ardently longed to celebrate the knowledge; for I knew I came from Deity, and longed for my return.
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(16) An illustration of the Law of Action and its Reaction.
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My first recollections are of a fiery character, for my dwelling was in the very nucleus of a comet that had just been whirled into being. How? I cannot now stop to explain. Only this will I say: with me there were myriads of others, for in every molecule of spiritual and material substance was imbedded one of my brethren, all longing to escape and return to the heart of god, whence we had been sent forth to perfect His great design.

The comet cooled, became a world, and finally an earthquake threw the block of granite, wherein was I, to the surface; and, by and by, after waiting many ages, I found room to move, and did so. The result was that we - the other monads and myself - changed our outer shells into moss. The moss died and left us free to try what further we could do; for be it known that our forces had not yet been fairly called into action. The next change was a higher one, and afforded scope for the display of a higher order of power. This time I became a plant; and the next time a plant of a higher character; at each epoch losing one coat, (*) until at last I could be plant no longer, and so was forced by a law within as well as laws without myself, to become the center of an animal.
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(*) An onion is a familiar analogue. As the process went on, the monad lost layer after layer, each one developing higher forms of excellence and beauty than the preceding, yet the same monad still; each layer demanding and creating, so to speak, its proper requirements and conditions. Here is the germ of a grand system.
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And so I ran the gamut of change through countless ages; every new condition being more and more favorable, brought out new properties from within me, and displayed new beauties to the suns bright eye. I was still a monad, and will ever be such in one sense, albeit time, after reaching my human form, will be of no account, only states.  Something whispered me that I should ever advance toward but never reach perfection. I felt that, monad though I was, yet at my heart, my core, my center, I was the germ of an immortal human Soul, and that that Soul itself was destined, after its material career was ended, to throw off form after form, just as I had all along the ages. And thus I passed through countless changes, exhibited a million characteristics, until, at last, I who had at first worn a body of fire, then of granite, then of moss, now put on a higher and nobler dress, and became for the first time self-conscious, intelligent, and, in a degree, intuitive both as to the past, the present, and the future. And all these infinite changes were effected by throwings off, in regular order, just as material suns throw off ring after ring, which in turn resolve themselves into planet after planet. During all these transmigrations my monad body was active, my monad soul quiescent, but ripening all the while; first in plant, then in the lower and higher forms of fish, reptile, bird, beast, and mammal - quadruped and bimanal. Thus I had reached the most distant prophecy of what I was hereafter to become; and, as it may interest you to learn the steps by which I ascended, from the pre-human to the very human, I will recount them in general. The list is, therefore, as follows: the first approach to the man was, when I found myself successively animating, as a central life-point, the forms of Simæ, Satyrili, Troglodyte, the Gobbons, Hylobates, and Cynocephalii, passing through the specific forms of Coluga, Aye-aye, Banca-Tarsier, Maholi, Lemur, Loris, Diadema, Indrus, Marikina, Marmoset, Dourocouli, Salmari, Yarké Saki, Couzio, Cacauou, Sajou, Sakajou, Araquato, Meriki, Cotii, Marimondi, Charneck, Drill, Mandril, Chucma (babon), Wanderoo, Bhunder, Togue, Mona, Quesega, Colubii, Budong, Entellus, Kahaw (developing the human nose), Gibbon, Siamang, the Hylobates, Orangs, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Nschiego, Troglodyte, Kooloo Kamba, Barbeta, Aitcromba, Hamaka (Troglodyte of Mount de Garrow), Neg, Bosjesman, Hottentot, (*)
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(*) this theory must be true, for an astonishing confirmation therefore is not only found in the marvelous resemblances between human and animal features, but in the still more wonderful fact, that the human fStus assumes at various stages of its increment, successively the appearance of moss, lichen, gelatine, reptile, bird, beast, and so on, all the way up to its final human form, and if the gestation in even a perfect female be interrupted at a certain stage, the child is born with the characteristics which distinguish the animal whose natural place upon the ascending plane is that at which the gestation was disturbed. The facial angle of some persons is precisely that of the Lemurs; the human Lusus NaturS, so called invariably resemble some beast, bird, reptile or monkey.  It is but a few years ago that a negro woman of Charleston, South Carolina, was delivered, not only of what looked like a nomkey, but which was a monkey out and out. The woman had never seen a monkey in her life, sot that this was not a case of mere mother-marking but gestation was interrupted in some respects in some way, at about the nineteenth day after conception, while it went on normally in other respects. An additional proof of the truth of this development theory is seen in the fact that ordinary parents often produce extraordinary geniuses; thus another negro woman of the same city produced a boy by a black and ignorant father, who is today one of the most extraordinary musical geniuses the world ever saw.
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Negro, Malay, Knaaka, digger, Indian, Tarter, Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, Arabian, Greek, Turk, German, Gaul, Briton, American! (1)
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(17) This has reference only to the physical body.
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Theres the list in general terms; specific nations are not needed at this point. The last eighteen are strictly human, for at the point(Neg) I ceased to develop animal; and, in passing through that highest form of animal existence, I was impelled one step further, and lo! The first course of transmigrations were ended: I awoke to a consciousness of self, and man, the immortal, stood revealed!
[Note. - The exact order is not stated, for there are many intermediate links connecting the Simiæ with the Lemurs and Troglodytes, or with that portion of the genus of the Quadrumans comprising the Gorilla, higher Orangs, Nschiegos and Chimpanzees; yet the chain itself is, generally speaking, quite correct.]

Thus is completed the outlines of the history and experience of a human soul. Let us return to the awakening....

I now realized that the Soul and Spirit-worlds were far different from each other, for the former is Within, but the latter, like the planetary worlds, is Without; (18) not in the sense of in the house and out of the house, but rather in the sense of in the bed and in a dream - not exactly, but analogous. The fact is, mankind, albeit many know it not, are living upon the confines, at least, if not occasionally full residents, of two or three worlds at the same time - worlds which impinge upon and interlace each other, just as fine spirit contacts rough matter; and yet, while this fact is so, it happens likewise that in many respects these worlds are as wide apart and distant from each other as in Pleiades from Mazaroth or distant sun from twinkling planet; for the reason that states, not miles, separate the denizens of either. Those whose being is in accord with the vast Harmonead move alike upon the shores of each sphere of being, whence they can catch the echoes and footfalls of the pilgrims on both banks. Most people are familiar with the stereotyped assertion that Man is a microcosm - a universe in miniature, than which nothing can be more correct and true. The body is not the man; neither is the nerve-center of his brain that which constitutes his personality, any more than the central spiritual sun around which all material systems revolve is the supreme God Himself; for even as Deity dwells within the centralia of that August luminary, so also does the very man himself hold his court within the bosom of that magic sphere which exists within his skull. In the subjoined description of the student, the sentient and conscious point is spoken of under the similitude and figure of a fiery globe. The likeness is imperfect in some respects, for not only is man a world within himself, but he is an entire system of worlds, each one of which is perfect of its order, full and complete. God is at once a center, a Republic, and a King. So also is man in a finite degree. His faculties may be said to constitute the distinct members or States or nations of the great confederation, whereof the supreme Ego is sovereign Lord and President, one, however, who can, if it so elect, assume and wield despotic power over all within the great domain. So far can this power be carried and exerted, that pain may be overcome, and even death itself be kept at bay. The Will is Lord of mans accidents and incidents, and if his reason guide it well, nothing can withstand its force.
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(18) An illustration of the Law of Hermes: As above, so below; as in the within, so in the without.
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As stated previously, all foregone thoughts and deeds of mine became objectified in my new sphere, for which I can find mo descriptive term so good as that of Memorama, for such it truly was, and the fact of its existence at all ought to become a significant one to mortals, for even as their deeds and thoughts shall be on earth, even so will be the delights or agonies consequent upon their inspection of these memory tables on the other shore, whither all must go, whether the voyage be agreeable or not.(19)   Memory constitutes the basis of mans heaven or his Hell.(20) On it is founded the superstructure of his sorrows or his joys, and woe be to whomsoever shall read and, reading, neglect the caution here imparted. I give it in all love, for I know its immense importance.
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(19) As ye sow, so shall ye reap. The Law is absolute and cannot be evaded. Neither Justification by Faith nor the Vicarious Atonement will avail in the least. Payment is demanded to the last farthing.
(20) That which is, in life, mans memory, is like the printers type which makes an impression on paper which we read. The memory of the mind stamps itself upon the Soul, and this memory proceeds with the Soul through all its experiences in all worlds. It is an ever-conscious impression which cannot be erased except by suffering and service.
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My thoughts and actions - even the minutest - passed before me, across the polished surface of my enclosing sphere, standing out in bold relief. The pictures incessantly altered their aspect, or gave place to new ones, but there was something which did not change, but on the contrary seemed to gather weight and durability all the while. This was the attention point, the focalization of all the Souls observant powers, nor did it undergo any permutation whatever. I stood, as previously intimated, in the center of a crystalline sphere. It was translucent but not transparent. Nothing beyond its glory-tinted walls was discernible, but all within it stood revealed in grand and cryptic light, which, as already observed, appeared to proceed from my own head. The vertical diameter of this sphere was not more than fifty yards, its horizontal one somewhat more, for its form was slightly ellipsoidal. Its floor was as a polished mirror, reflecting not only my own image, but those of all things else within its beautiful walls. In this mirrorlike surface I beheld my  person and features most distinctly; and it was quite a matter of surprise to discover that I was, without the slightest effort on my part, completely and beautifully clothed in garments of a fashion and style which, of all others, I should have selected, had opportunity for so doing been presented. Here is a new mystery of the Soul-world which may well engage the attention of Psychologians. Depending from my neck and shoulders was a long and flowing robe, apparently seamless, and woven of lightest gossamer. The forearms and left shoulder joint were bare, and I noticed that they as well as my hands had lost the sickly cast and shrunken, shriveled appearance formerly characterizing them. Now, to my great delight, they were fair, plump, and of the most dazzling and voluptuous mould and proportions. As I made this happy discovery, there flashed across me something of the deeper meanings slumbering beneath the phrases love, loving, and lovely; and I could comprehend why one person should become so en rapport, so obsessed with and possessed and absorbed by another as to lose not only all self-control, but self altogether. I could now understand why the most loving must ever remain apart, even in the mist interior communion on earth, until there are no dull senses to be bridged, and understand the amazing difference between a love that seeks its solace through sense, and that which brings Souls together. While people are enwrapped in flesh and blood, love is often obliged to express itself in modes distasteful to its higher nature, and unworthy of itself. Not so in the Soul-world; for there the very joy (magnetic, if you please) which one lover feels in the mere presence of the other reaches a point of fulness, completion and intensity that mere nervous filaments are incapable of conveying, mere nervous exhalations can never give. No body is capable either of giving or receiving, even with the strongest efforts of will, even a foretaste of the joys which the Soul, freed therefrom, can and does spontaneously. The keenest Sybarite, the finest-nerved voluptuary, can have no adequate conception, either of the nature or the depth of the joy imparted mutually by two loving Souls in the higher worlds. Love, I have said, I knew but little of, and cared less for, previous to my departure; but now, as I gazed upon myself, and realized for what I was intended, there arose a something within assuring me of my boundless, limitless capacity to and for love. And then the gentle hint of Nellie came back, and had the mate assigned me then appeared, I do not think he would have met a very cold reception. Thereafter all this ended as God decreed it should - rightly.

Around my waist there was a zone of belt of blue, which kept the fronts of my open robe together, and then fell floorward in two knotted tassels on the left side. The throat and upper portions of my bosom were covered with what bore the appearance of finest lace, whiter than the driven snow. The hair hung in luxuriant curl-tresses adown by back and cheeks, which latter, as disclosed by the floor-mirror, were no longer sunken, sallow, or emaciated in the least degree; on the contrary, they were round, full, white, fair as the cheeks of daylight, and suffused with the softest and most delicate tints of the newly-opened blossom of the peach tree. The teeth! - I had teeth - were ivory-hued, large and even. The eyes were larger than they had ever seemed before; their lashes were long, dark and drooping; and they were shaded by a brow far more delicate and finely penciled than they ever wore on earth. My stature was a trifle less, apparently, than when incarnated, and there was a health, vigor, and freshness, which reminded me of the early days, ere womans estate had come with all its cares and toils, its miseries and deep griefs. About my head there was a shining band, like unto the spirit of a silver coronet, pearl and diamond frosted, and flashing back the light from a thousand jeweled points. In the center of this zone was a triangle of ruby hue, surmounted with the cipher R, and in its center was a crystalline globe, winged, and bearing the motto, Try. (21)
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(21) The insignia of the authentic Rose Cross.
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Curiosity is the Soul of advancement; it is a female element almost exclusively; and though all else forsake woman, curiosity never will, either on earth or anywhere else. It prompted me to the investigations above recounted and to others which followed hard thereon. I wondered how my feet and ankles looked! The desire was no sooner formed than gratified. The latter were encased in proper attire, but the former not quite so, fur instead of a shoe as I expected to find, there was only a sort of sandal - a mere sole, light and graceful, fitting perfectly, and seemingly kept in place by narrow red bands, which were laced to the ankles and over the foot and instep. The bands themselves seemed to be of a material no coarser than cords of braided light. Such, in brief, were the revealments of the mirror. Mirror! exclaims the reader, why, mirrors are adapted only to solar light, and that which proceeds from material combustion. They reflect from their polished surfaces, according to the well-known laws of optics, which laws cannot possibly obtain of the strange world of which you were then an occupant, which realm lies above and beyond the sphere of their action or influence; how then could you see the image of yourself? Again; If the first suit of apparel on which you found yourself after death was only mere appearance, of what nature or character were these last? If the spirit of a human being is, as we are led to infer from your narrative, in nowise physical, or even hyper-physical, as the Spiritualists assert - and they claim to know all about the matter, if it is only a phantasmal projection from the very Soul, and out-attachment of the supreme self, how do you reconcile your statements concerning blue-cast hands, wrinkled epidermis, shriveled appearance, and so on, with your subsequent assertions that they afterwards became fair, plump, and beautiful?  Do Shadows grow? Do Phantasms avail themselves of the law of increment? Please explain: clear up, elucidate! Reply: These are the very points concerning which the people need light; for assuredly that which they have heretofore received, instead of illumining the subjects under consideration, have tended directly to increase the already dense obscurity, and only rendered the darkness still more palpable and dense. In order to form a clear conception of what lies before us, it will be well to remind each other that both Soul and body act under the impetus of two distinct codes of law, the one volitional, the other mechanical, and therefore involuntary. An illustration of both is seen in the case of a man who, either reading a book or earnestly conversing as he moves along, takes no notice whatever of passing persons or things, and yet pursues the direct path, not once misses his way. Both laws are operating simultaneously. The bodily powers are under the same government; for the heart beats, digestion proceeds, and all the functions of the physical economy are carried on by a power lying altogether back of will. There is also another law, which from voluntary, at length comes to manifest itself altogether involuntarily, I refer to the law of Habit. Now, that this law governs both soul and body is proved by a simple reference to the swearing man, who also drinks liquor, chews tobacco, falls asleep at a given hour and wakes up at another. Whosoever hums a tune often will at length be haunted by it, and cannot rid himself of the tormenting tune-fiend by even the most strenuous resolve and effort to do so. It, like a fever, must and will run its course. We also habituate ourselves to certain forms of expression and ideal associations. Thus much by way of preface.

Now, it was the involuntary obedience of my soul to the Habit-law that caused it to array itself in the semblance of the old and well-remembered dress. The law of the association of ideas gave the blue cast, the wrinkles, and the emaciation which so surprised me.

Presently, however, I passed under the operation of higher laws of nature, and more interior ones of my own Immortal soul. One of the first, and most important of these last, is the Law of Vastation, whereby the Soul throws off the old loves, preparatory to entering upon new ones. Its first involuntary act, in the second, as in the first case, was to clothe itself; but no longer subject to the old law of association, and coming under a new one, it rejected the things of memory, and assumed the garb corresponding to its new-born loves, all in conformity to a law within itself. [In dreams, the garb and surroundings are typical or symbolic of mental, moral and esthetic states; therefore it is possible to construct an exact science of dream-interpretation.] And the drapery assumed was not merely the result of caprice or an involuntary fantastic taste, pride, or vainness, but was the legitimate and orderly result of the triple law, whose elements are fitness, expression, and correspondence. The white drapery symbolized, if not my absolute purity, at least my aspirations thiterward ( and this explains why all men and women array their breasts in white bosoms, frills and laces). The bandeau, the zone, girdle, jewels, all symbolized an affection, aspiration, or quality of the inner being; and as these latter change, so also do the former. The law is imperative, because it is a thing of the soul itself, whose external manifestations invariably - in the Soul-world - represent its inward states, moral, religious, and intellectual.

In the light of this explanation, therefore, no one need marvel at the radical changes in my personal appearance. We shall throw much more light on the general subject when next we treat of the mysteries of being. The present undertaking being merely prefatory, as a matter of course, confines us to the mere superficialities of a realm whose vastness exceeds all human conception. In reference to the wrinkles of my ands and their sudden disappearance, enough has been said; yet for the information of whoso chooses to profit by it, I will merely add here, that as Time only affects man in his outward relations, it cannot, of course, bring wrinkles on his features, for Souls do not grow old by years; albeit they do grow old by experiences, without reference to duration, but only as to depth and intensity. A single week of mental agony will ripen a Soul more than would fifty centuries of clock-beats, passed free from the sorrows aforesaid.

Let it not be forgotten that there are two distinct and dissimilar worlds beyond the grave, not that I had rapidly crossed from the first to the second stage of my transmundane existence. One of these is the mere external world of Spirits, wherein a life analogous to that of earth is for a period led by the inhabitants thereof. The other is that concerning the mysteries were of I am now treating.

Millions of beings there are who , although disrobed of fleshly garments, are yet pilgrims in search of the Soul-world. The latter is divine and interior, the former natural and merely Spiritual. A man on earth may gaze on the surface of a picture, or mechanically read a book, and yet find nothing therein; whereas either of these may lead another person not only into their own beauty-depths, and into the Soul of the painter or the author; but they may serve as clues which his Soul may seize on and follow into realms never even imagined to exist by the poet-painter, to the painter-poet. So also the mere mortuary fact by no means serves as a free ticket or pass into the grand Temple, at the mere vestibule of which grim Death lands those who take passage in the phantom shallop, whereof himself is pilot and steersman. The mere post-mortem existence does not necessarily entitle one to all the privileges of the Temple, nor make one a resident of, or even spectator of, the worlds of soul. True there will occur a change in all, whereby they can pass the mystic ferry; but his change must be worked out from within, and in no wise depend upon outside influences; it must be volitional, not mechanical. The ferriage must be paid in well-wishing and better doing. The life beyond is a real one, compared to which that of earth is a mere shadow, and the form of government is an isonomous one; equal rights, equal laws, impartial justice, administered, not by external agents of an outward power, but by the very constitutional delegates from the secret Soul itself; for no justice is so very just as that which each Soul, by virtue of its own nature, administers to itself, (22) and through which its lower becomes subordinated to its higher and nobler faculties, qualities and powers. And this is the law that keeps many a one from entering the sacred penetralia until properly disciplined and prepared for the change. (23)
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(22) The reason why none can escape the Law of Retribution or Reaction. That which is written cannot be erased except by the Soul concerned. There can be no intermediary; none to assume the blame or penalty, although sympathetic Souls may help lighten the burden. Thus hast thou written, thus must thou read, is the eternal fiat.
(23) Return good for evil, is based on this Law. We can overcome the evils we have committed and erase them from the records by doing good to the truly needy, by being the Good Samaritan to those in trouble and in sorrow. We are not our brothers keeper in that we have no right to dictate to hm, but we may lend the helping hand in his hour of need.
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I wondered at first why these truths were not more generally known and appreciated by the people, who, because they have an intellectual perception of the fact of Immortality, call themselves Spiritualists; but as the veil was slowly drawn away, and I saw that much that had to me appeared real, proved now to be but seeming, there was no more marveling. There was, still is, and for a long time will be, four sorts of Spiritualism in the world: First, a mere bodily sensitiveness, nervous acuteness, and susceptibility to magnetic emanations and impressions, out of which arises a great deal of the stagnant filth and social corruptions so prevalent, the debaucheries and license, and great evil which pain so greatly the hearts of true men and women. Second, a Spiritualism of the brain alone; a cerebral quickening, a hothouse ripening of faculty, which gives rise to much talking, and sometimes leads to the discovery of many of the elements of the great principia under lying the Sympathiad, and Prophesies the good time that is yet to be. Third, compact Spiritualism, or that wherein and whereby a certain class of sensitives, be they male or female, become the dupes of their own folly and the victims of disembodied maniacs, lunatics, and self-deluded denizens of the middle state; Spirits who wander on the outskirts of three worlds, without a permanent resting place in either. These have been useful, however, inasmuch as they have called, and even compelled, attention to phenomena which they produce, and which cannot be explained away, nor accounted for, save by admitting two things: First, that Immortality is a fixed fact; and second that it is possible to bridge the hitherto impassable chasm which divides earth from regions which lie beyond. The fourth kind, and truest and best, indeed that which only is truly spiritual, is the growing up into a spiritualized, out of the merely physical, self-hood; and this growth of soul necessarily admits the subject of it into the mysteries of being, precisely in accordance with the degree of the persons own unfolding. (24) It is the offspring of good resolutions, well and faithfully carried out; ignores pride, talk, lust, hatred, envy, malice, slander, and all else which characterizes the other three sorts. Immortality is to such not only an acquired, but an intuitive, fact. Such Spiritualists are good, moral, humane, charitable, merciful, kind, and true; religious, Christian in deed as well as name; and such as these are never pulling down, but ever building up the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and when such an one dies, his or her stay in the Middle state is very short, for they have paid their ferriage, and are speedily intromitted to the mysteries and grandeurs of the world of Soul.
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(24) The only safe and logical path toward Spiritualization - a process of transmutation which ends in Soul consciousness and Immortalization. There is no danger in this Path, for the reason that the Aspirant advances only so fast and so far as he has earned the right to by the Law of compensation. There is here neither weakness not hot-house of mushroom growth.
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Such an one is unfolded; and by this term is not meant that state to which a man arrives after packing the contents of two or three libraries on the shelves of his memory; nor the condition of one who has arrived at honor and distinction by dint of mere acquaintance with learned authorities, and the accumulation and piling up of knowledge of various common and popular sorts; for it frequently happens that men and women, who are very ignorant of all these things, and who, so far as they are concerned, are not progressed at all, prove on trial to be far more unfolded than thousands ov those ho have grown gray in the service of Letters, and who have, by persistent assiduity, succeeded in transforming themselves from human beings into locomotive encyclopedias, splendid to look at, interesting to dine with and talk to, but cold, unheartful encyclopedias after all. Education is often a mere mechanical mastery of useless abstrusities; coins, which on the social counters jingle well, but which are not over and above current in the far-off worlds, where a boors earnest prayer weighs far more than the ornate, rhapsodical orisons of scores of learned pendants, pretenders to superior knowledge, who, to judge them by their language, take god to be a school committee rather than a loving, tender parent.

Thus I found true, what had previously been surmised, that a person may know but little, yet approach much nearer the Divine than one who has more brain furniture with a great deal less heart.

It was revealed to my understanding that the great law of Vastation, by whose operation the monad developed moss, threw it off, and brought forth something better and higher, until at last the conscious point - the truly human degree - was, after the lapse of ages, reached, did not cease its functions even after the death of the body, albeit its mode action was somewhat changed and modified; for now it was observed by me, that while the soul may, both prior and subsequent to death, draw in knowledge from without - inspiration, progression, procession, it may also expand from within, and enter consecutively domain after domain in the Soul-deeps of its almost infinite being. This is aspiration, unfolding, development; and ever will the immense, the immortal thing, continue to Vastate the bad, the ill, imperfect, and untrue, so long as any of such remains to be thrown off, as it has been doing ever since the clock of Time struck one upon the bell in Eternitys tower! It will continue the process until that tower itself shall topple and fall with hoary age!

The figure of an onion, though homely, is, nevertheless, a good one, inasmuch as it offers a familiar illustration of the monad; for, first there are the two or three external skins, after which comes layer after layer, until at last we find a center, which center contains an invisible, because a spiritual point, which constitutes the germ or seed-principle, contain, latent in its bosom, countless acres of onions, that are and are not, at the same time, fields of plenty, seeds of mighty harvests, which only need the necessary conditions to prove their power and develop their capacities.

Philosophers have long sought, with their crude plummets, to sound the bottomless abysses of mans Immortal Soul. Spiritualists, in their turn, have tried to do the same, ay! And loudly boasted of their success. Success, forsooth! Why, their lead, even when all the line attached thereto was well run out, rested on one or more of the very topmost ledges of the unfathomable and vast profound, their weights only lodged on the upper crags of one or more of the tiniest mountains, whose heads are upreared from the floor of the great ocean Soul. Proclaiming man to be a world in miniature, they have, in their treatment of him and his, not only belied and stultified themselves, but have shown that, after all, he was to be classed with all other worms of the dust, a semi-voluntary automation - a skip-jack, to be coaxed, wheedled, and driven, just as circumstances might dictate and decree. Theoretically, to them, he is a God; practically, a mere machine, whose office and function it is to eat, drink, be merry, sleep, wake up, labor, and beget his kind, whose destiny, in turn, is to repeat the same identical round, with perhaps a few trifling and unimportant variations, totally forgetful or unconscious of the fact, that when pronouncing him to be a microcosm, they were uttering a sentence brimful of Gods everlasting truth. Philosophers have a bad habit of saying one thing and meaning another; for while loudly declaring, they never yet have fairly believed, that howsoever vast the universes without may be, yet all and each of them grow diminutive and contracted when compared with those that exist within the Soul. Nay, they have never realized that all that has a being outside of man is met, mastered and overmatched by an infinite universe from within.

Crime! folly! - what are they? Philosopher, answer thou me! They are, they are - they are - well, I can hardly tell what they really are. I will tell you: these things frequently mark the career of the Progressed man, never that of the developed or unfolded one, and in all cases are either the result of impulse, Spirit-obsession, or of a bad calculation. When nations merely Progress, every jail-yard has its gibbet; when the people are Unfolded, temples for God-worship take their places. Philosophers try to explain away all crime and evil, knowing it to be real; yet at the same time treat the doers of ill-deeds as if they were not fitter subjects for Soul-hospitals than for thumbscrews and disgrace. They forget that society gains nothing by making a man think less of himself! Instead of pursuing really reformatory methods with those who are vicious or whose souls are sick, they have favored the policy of revenge and atonement, and adopted the lex taliois instead of the lex justitiS, as Common Sense, if nothing else, would ever seem to dictate, counsel, and approve.

The Social Sympathium is yet to be. Discord rules the age. The human soul is unbalanced. Equilibrium and Virtue come together. By and by Philosophers will realize this truth. Men who gaze intently on the wonderful perfection of the outer Sympahium, and realize its vast excellence, constantly fail to recognize the fact that the inner world of man would be the same were but Charity and kindly dealing, in thought as well as act, to take precedence of Suspicion and Punishment. As yet the world is but a baby-realm. There are no real saints therein at present, for the reason that the currents of the time are not adapted to the floating of that species of craft; nor will the social garden produce that sort of fruit until it is well subsoiled by charity-ploughs and common sense. At present, probably but few men or women live on earth, no matter how abstemious they may be, nor how correct and staid their deportment, but in whose hearts lurk many a thistle seed, ready to spring up and pester the world whenever bad conditions shall call them into active life; nor can there be a pure saint, until every one of these seeds shall be deprived of life. Then, the great truth is made apparent to the people, that the greatest sin a person can possibly - taking the future as well as the present into the account - is the sin against him or herself, society will rapidly purge itself of wrong, and there will be fewer bad memories to haunt and terrify them after lifes troublous drama shall end, and far fewer leaden-hued pictures be reflected from the mirror-floors of the world of Soul.

Wealth, the possession of riches, is, on earth and in all human society, the universal passport to honor and distinction. This is one of the fallacies of man, and the greatest; but the good deeds done to the neighbor and the self are hereafter changed into a kind of coin readily current in the lands beyond the tomb.

Now, no one thing yet unaccomplished is more certain to come to pass than that this lesson will yet be learned by the people. When it is mastered, there will be far less strife for the honors and emoluments of office, and the universal cry will be, Whom can we get, whom shall we persuade to be our Ruler, President, or King? Whom can we employ to fill those offices? instead of Vote for me! as now. Mankind on earth do not, as we of the soul-world, seek for joys that are pure, and purely human, too; they do not, as we, drink from chalices at whose bottom no dregs are found after the ruby wine has been sipped. Alas, no! But instead, they seek for such joys as are absolutely sure to leave a sting behind, and Repentance, Agony, and Remorse are the terrible triplet they are obliged to nurse, for oh, how long! This is moral and spiritual suicide - so far as super-mundane joys are concerned, suicide, slow but sure; and such Souls, on entering the middle state, are poor and thin and lean and powerless, for deeds or thoughts either good or great; and memory reflects back but few, if any, pleasant images, but, in lieu thereof, presents for inspection and as food for contemplation, an array of barren mountains, fierce whirlpools, crags toppling over into dreadful darkness, beetling cliffs, from whose bald summits the vulture and the night-owl shriek and scream. No pleasant pasture lands begem the picture, no sweetly-singing rivers of delight; but only things of weirdness, rage and fury, set as centers into pictures representing boisterous and tempestuous seas, cold and dreary ice-islands or desert sands which swallow up the sunshine, the moisture and the rain, but never smile with a single green or lovely thing. These are symbols and smiles of the Souls states, and are the legitimate and inevitable out-creations of itself; but, thank God! Not of its inner deeps, else the universe might well run mad, and every living thing curse its God and  - die. True it is that none of these frightful things is the result of the natural and unbiased choice of any human creature, yet they are none the less real in the second stage of existence, for the reason that Destiny forever compels a man to be himself. Sooner or later he will bring himself voluntarily to acknowledge, bow, and bend before it; and the instant that he does so, the grand Vastatory law comes into play, and he slowly emerges from Hell, and takes the road to Heaven.

So far in human history on the earth the Devil has proved a failure, utter, total and complete. Not so Evil. This latter works out its mission well, even if it does no more than to convince man that his only, best and truest friends are himself and the Infinite god whose child he is.

In the higher realms, to which mankind is destined, his actions are never the result of an applied force from outside himself; but when voluntarily submitting to the pressure from within, he is irresistibly led from bad to better, and from better to Best. Reaching this point, he no longer rebels against God, but against himself, his higher, nobler, better nature, and giving up all of mere self, begins to desire nothing so much as to love and be loved, to serve God and minister unto others good; and at last finds himself standing in the Door of the Dawn, having emerged from the Hades of his own and others making, and stepped into his house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens - house-spheres such as I have partially described, prepared for and in, and of him, from the foundations of the Ages, houses which are indeed builded upon very pleasant spots, on sunny glades and love-tinted hillocks on gods Eternal domain, houses, too, which men often refuse to enter and occupy till after the lapse of years of misery spent in the horrid caves and unsightly huts dug and builded by themselves.

All these things flashed in upon my Soul, as I stood gazing into the Mirror on the floor, and upon the vivographs of Memory gliding by upon the walls, in which ever event of my life, no matter how trivial, was clearly represented. Not a good thought or deed, no matter how private, not a single sin, no matter how venial, but was there reproduced for my inspection and instruction, moving, with all their foregone accessories across the walls of that magic globe. They were living icons, perfect rescripts, of all foredeeds, thoughts, actions, and transcripts, all too faithful, of the volumes of my memory. (25) Soon all this passed along, the last scene being that of my death within the chamber of the house upon the hill. Scarcely had it vanished, whither I knew not, than a blank section moved across the line of vision, almost instantly succeeded by a Phantorama still more wondrous and imposing. Instead of representing myself alone, this second picture revealed the results, both direct and indirect, of my personal influence upon others, whether exerted in a domestic, social, or professional capacity. I could not help being particularly struck with one tableau, which, as it embodies a moral lesson, I will here stop to briefly describe.
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(25) This is the Biblical Book of God and the Lambs Book of Life. The Soul writes its own book, beginning on the day its place of habitation, the body, reaches the age of responsibility, i.e., puberty, and continues until death closes its pages. God, the gods, or the angels of heaven, what ever you will, act as the librarians to file these books of Records and none is ever lost or mislaid. It, the book, is ready and open as soon as the Soul is called to stand before judgement.
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I saw myself in the act of warn disputation with a friend, on a subject well calculated to elicit the best thought of the best thinker. I had the right of the argument, and this was so apparent that my friend with whom I was arguing lost temper. At the time of the occurrence I took but little note of the matter, not deeming it a subject of very great importance. Now, however, I saw, what surprised me greatly, that this mental excitement had reacted physically, and, in running its course, brought on a slight inflammation of the brain, a sort of slow but positive fever, which, while not confining the patient, yet affected both Soul and body to a great extent, and so modified the cerebral constituents that the Immortal Soul, wherein dwelling for a season, could not thereafter manifest itself as formerly. (26) I now realized that chemistry, in the higher sense, was an efficient force in the human mental as well as in the material economy; that changes in the physical cells of the brain could be made by intellectual excitations, and that these in a great measure affect the mental and physical operations, even to the extent of a complete bouleversement. In consequence of the change effected in the individual alluded to, projects of various kinds, previously determined on, had to be given up, for which reason the entire current of a life was turned completely; nor is it for me to say whether greater good or ill will be the ultimate or final result, for the reason that as yet I can neither see the origin nor end. These are only known by the Infinite One above us and beyond. Suffice it, therefore, to observe, that had I known what weight inhered in words whether lightly, harshly or kindly spoken, especially to the sensitive and susceptible natures of many of earths pilgrims, never would I have uttered a syllable without well weighing the possible consequences thereof; especially would I have kept back all which bore the slightest resemblance to heat or anger. Oh, what a wondrous thing is a human Soul! Until now it was not clear to me that, by virtue of both a static and dynamic law of the universe, human happiness is derivative, and ever depends upon the amount and kind bestowed upon or imparted to another. The law is dual; that is, it works both ways; for even as a man or woman finds joy in the act of causing or of bringing joy to others, so also the misery and woe which A may cause B, C, D,  and E to feel or undergo, not only reacts upon A by force and virtue of the Great Sympathia, but it is utterly impossible for A to be happy, so long as the least trace of his or her action mauvaise remains with B, C, D, E, F, and G. Nor is this all; for if these last persons act badly toward H, I, J, and K, said actions being the legitimate result of As, originally, upon B, C, D, E, F, and G, then A cannot escape the consequences, no matter how distant or in whatever corner of Gods universe he may be, or in whatever crevice of the great creation he may seek to hide. A wave or ray of agony from B, C, and the rest of the alphabet, will finally reach him! A lash from the great whip of conscience or remorse will fall on him, when rocks and mountains, though heart-implored, refuse to. Until the law of compensation is satisfied, he shall never fail to hear, pealing into his Soul from the Lacerated hearts of others, the terrific sentence: Thou art the man! Thou hast done it! Pay what thou owest! If the reflections shall prove to have been good instead of evil, then the words which shall be heard will be: Even as thou hast done it unto the least of these, my servants, thou hast done it unto me. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! enter thou into the joy of thy Lord! Take up thine abode in the mansions of bliss, prepared from the foundations of the world! The coin of heaven is ever stamped with the seal of a persons deeds, be they good or evil.
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(26) We should be ever watchful that our influence on our fellow-men be constructive and advance the interests of those with whom we contend.
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This Soul-law is well illustrated by an incident which occurred to me, the writer hereof, Paschal Beverly Randolph.

Many years ago, when a mere lad of ten or a dozen years, I lived in the metropolis of America, where also I was born. One day several lads of us were playing at ball in a street then called Chapel, but since known as West Broadway. In throwing the toy at one of my playmates it missed him and crashed through the window of a shoemenders shop, the proprietor of which became greatly enraged, and in a paroxysm of fury not only cursed and swore most dreadfully at us, but also seized the offending ball, and threw it on his burning grate; we poor mourners, in the meanwhile looking down into the fiery grave of all our sport. Tears, expostulations, entreaties were all so much wasted breath, and proved utterly unavailing. The ball, unfortunate ball, was irrevocably doomed to an igneous tomb; nor could all our prayers, joined as they were, to abundant offers on our part, and that of several pitying onlookers, to doubly pay the cost of the demolished glass, soften the obdurate heart of the revengeful cobbler in the least degree. Burn that ball he swore to; utterly consume it he vowed to; and most religiously he kept his promise.

The ball was burned, but as the smoke of its substance - the remains of two worn-out stockings and an India-rubber shoe, and of our torment, went up towards heaven, there accompanied it a most dire threat of vengeance from out my boyish heart, proud, indignant little human heart, which then, for the first time, swelled almost to bursting with vindictiveness and rage. In my paroxysm of fury I swore a vendetta more fierce and terrible than that of the Orsini against their mortal foes, the Borglas of sunny Italia. I resolved to kill, slay, totally extinguish the whole race of cobblers, but that one in particular. His doom was to be killed, slain, cut to pieces remorselessly and cruelly murdered, after which his Soul was to be eternally damned, roasted, stewed, broiled, and grilled forevermore, upon the gridirons of the infernal pit, all for burning a sixpenny ball! For ten long days and nights I pondered on the subject and sought to contrive means whereby to carry out my philanthropic design. Having heard and read of battles, bloodshed and gory fields of human slaughter, wherein he who did the most murder was the greatest hero; having heard and read of human butchers and butchery, my heart had turned from the one, and I shuddered at the picture of the other. Now, however, all these images of horror returned. I still hate them, but of all others it seemed to me that that ball-burning shoemender was the most atrocious fiend that ever the earth. In my boyish frenzy I vowed he was an ogre, giant, demon, and all else that was horrible and bad, to rid the earth of whom would be doing an especial and particular favor to God, nature and human kind. Amidst all the scourges and pests who had ever trod the earth from Ghengis Khan to Lord Jeffries, not one loomed up who was half so criminal, half so deserving of the intensest scorn and maledictions of the human race, as was that unfortunate and guilty cobbler. We resolved that he must die, and die by powder and fire; but in consequence of the fact that the explosive grains were rather unpopular just then, while guns, pistol, firecrackers, doubleheaders and torpedoes were strictly prohibited by the constable round the corner, we concluded to defer the execution of the malefactor, till the ensuing Fourth of July, then a matter of some eight months distant. But, at last, it came. Our revenge had sleep, but was by no means extinguished. The ogre dwelt in the same place still. The hour for dire retribution drew fearfully near, and at length arrived, The cobblers doom was sealed. Our maleficent congress, boys, all under twelve, had resolved that he must die, then or never, so far as we were concerned. Pistols and powder being still as scarce as ever, we assailed the enemy with a large string of ignited Chinese crackers in lieu of guns and bullets - articles de campaign, not procurable, owning to the limited resources of our combined exchequer.

We suffered a defeat, a rout, total and complete, not did one of us escape what the cobbler called a welting, for our shoulders tingled many and hour thereafter from the application of a strip of leather, wielded by the stalwart right arm of the vindictive man. Now it so happened that, nearly opposite the scene of this farce, there stood a tall flagstaff, Tom Rileys Fifth Ward liberty pole, it was called, and with this pole is associated, not only the moral of my story, but also one of the most singular experiences ever undergone by a human Soul, while incarnated in a tabernacle of flesh and blood, nerve and sinew, muscle and matter. After mutually smarting from the application of the cobblers welt, we took counsel and refuge beneath the liberty pole aforesaid; and the last I remember of the affair is that, while gazing upon his triumphantly retreating figure, it stuck me that the very quintessence of my felicity on earth would be achieved could I have the exquisite joy and unsurpassable pleasure of hanging him to the weathercock on the summit of that flagstaff. This would be to me - to us, a very heavenly state indeed. And so I humg him, in fancy, to the north corner of the vane, enjoyed his imaginary struggles for a while, and then went home. Years passed. My childhoods troubles were forgotten and mans estate had come, with all its griefs, cares, and strifes, and, from a student of the revenge I became one of the science of Forgiveness. During one of these latter years I became interested in the question, Has man a death-surviving Soul or not? and to the solution of this great problem I bent the entire force and energy of my mind, not hesitating to make all sorts of experiments that held out a hope or possibility of my reaching a definite conclusion in regard to the subject. In pursuance of this grand object I one day made an experiment which, in some respects, was but too successful; it was not by means of drugs or potions, magnetism or spiritual circles. At the end of one of these experiments I became totally lost to the external world, its surroundings and influences, and found myself in the world of Spirit, in the midst of a vast and boundless Chaos, in which no sound struck upon me save the rattling of the bones of a huge and ghastly skeleton which swayed and swing to and from in the bleak air from the point of a vane on top of a vast pole, itself the very specter of the one on which, mentally, I had hung my mortal foe.

Attracted irresistibly by the ominous sounds, I turned my gaze toward it, when instantly the horrible, ghastly thing became endowed with life and speech - ventriloquial power of speech, and it shrieked into my startled ears these terrible, these ominous words: Wretch, look upon the work of thy hands! Here didst thou place me in the years now gone, and here have I hum and swung; here must I hang and swing during many and many a coming age! Gaze upon this cord - look on it; think of it - placed around my neck by you - by you!  The flesh once with these bones which now rattle in your ears - your ears! - has, by the elements, been changed and dissolved into atoms - do you hear? - into atoms finer than the flecks of light in a sunbeam - ay, finer than the scintillations of yonder star, the point of the buckle of Orions belt; and that star is an eye, and it watches you - watches you; and, as you see, is the only one in your horizon from zenith to nadir. That star is the sentinel appointed by Him to see to it that you escape not the doom - the doom! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! And that soul must burn and keep on burning, in its own self kindled flames, until their fiery tongues shall have licked your joints - your joints, your marrow - your very marrow, and keep licking them until-----

In Gods name, what, and when? I tremblingly inquired. And, from between the chattering, clattering, horrible jaws of that ghastly thing there hissed back this answer: Atom by atom, the elements whereof my body was formed shall once again cleave to these bare bones; and, of their own volition, persuaded thereto by the spectacle of thy agony, softened by thy prayers, quit their gambols in space, their festive sport amongst the star=beams, and rearrange themselves into the original flesh, and blood, and nerve, and cartilage, and lymph, and muscle, wherewith these bones were clothed once upon a time in the dead years of an infinite Past! But, I cried, as the sweat of agony seemed to ooze even out of my spectral cheeks, there must be some mistake. The crime imputed was never committed by me. I never slew you, not anyone else. Grue, I remember you, but I only---- Wished and willed to do it! shrieked my tormentor, from the gibbet; and what ever the Soul strongly wills is done, so far as human responsibility is concerned. You wished and willed me to be here; and here I am, by virtue of a great and mighty law. Hast thou not heard the law laid down, by the sufferer of Calvary, whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery in his heart, and must pay the penalty therefor? And thinkest thou that this is the only application of the great law of justice and compensation? Fool! Know that thy crime is just as great as if thou hadst, with thine own fingers, ;ut the cord of murder about my neck - about my neck! The crime-thought is as grat as the crime-act. So it is with thee, thou murderer! Man is judged from the desires and motives of his heart, whether these be for good or ill, and never from or for his act alone; for the reason that actions are often the result of an instantaneous impulse, external pressure and circumstance; but motives are the creatures of will, the perfect offspring of desire! I groaned in agony, an agony so great that it burst the bonds of sleep, and I awoke from that which was not all a dream. It was an awful lesson, and taught me how to become a wiser and a better man.*
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(*) This fearful apocalyptic vision occurred on the night of February 3, 1861, and was the means of inducing a train of thought and feeling in my mind that resulted in conversion from all sorts of philosophism to a belief in the pure and sweet religion as taught by Christ. -P.B.R.
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Still the phantorama glided past upon the wall, revealing many a new mystery, and showing me that every human being is more or less responsible fro the result of personal influence exerted upon others.

Much rare and valuable knowledge flowed in while I stood there, in the center of the magic sphere, gazing on the second vivorama, or living picture, delineating the results of my influence on others. Many and many a strange scene passed athwart that globes interior; and I was not only what the result of my influence had been, but also what would have resulted had y action, in a given instance, been different from what it really was. Thus, I saw that had a cross word been spoken to a child, whom I had endeavored to soothe by kindness, that child would have been led to restrain himself, instead of, as happened, taking advantage, and attributing by complaisance to fear or something akin thereto. I saw, on that mystic scroll, the simulacræ of every person I had ever known, and found that there, in the Sou-world, people and things passed at their true, and by no means at a fictitious value, as men and money do on the earth.

All mankind are divisible into seven great Orders, to each of which there are three sub-orders or classes. I shall speak of the Orders, not of the classes. Many of those who, when found, in this place, where the secrets of all hearts are in very deed laid open, really belonged to a far lower plane, anc vice versa; for many a civilizee and aristocrat was now found to belong to the order of barbarians; whereas, not a few of those usually considered low were seen to be better unfolded than thousands with loftier pretensions. Will it be credited, I even found the purist virtue in one whose occupation was harlotry! Once upon a time, long before I passed through deaths cold river, I was walking rough a beautiful grove, hard by my dwelling-place, the house upon the hill. It was a gala day, and hundreds had gathered there to celebrate the noon of summer. Mirth, gayety, and sport ruled the hour, and my Soul was very glad.

Amongst the rest who had gathered there, were several females, whose trade was Sin, and who I supposed came there for their horrid purpose. How mistaken was I! At that time it did not strike me that beings so lost could have a pure thought, or in any way be tempted to quit the hot pavements of the city to spend an hour in Gods great Temple, amidst its living columns, the stately forest trees, without mischief and wrong-doing in view. I looked upon them, especially her with the pale, thin lips and large, drooping eyelids, with utter loathing. And thus I passed them by. (27) Years fled; never again did I think of them - much less that such creatures could have aught of goodness in them, or feel the need of Gods sunshine, or of a bath in his pure ocean of fresh air. In life they were forgotten, but how, as that mystic diorama moved forward, I saw that very scene in the grove reproduced in every minute detail. There sat the courtesans, there walked I past them; and as she of the large blue eye looked up toward me, with a mute demand for one sympathetic glance - one kind word - only one kind word - I turned heedlessly away; and, in doing so, I now saw that a wrong thing had taken place; for had I spoken kindly they might have been saved from ruin, so far as the world is concerned - utter and complete. Then, when it was, alas! too late, I saw how very easily I might have melted and won the heart of the woman with the thin, pale cheek, and she would have become a ministering spirit for good to many and many a lost and degraded one. I now saw her antecedents - a young girl, a tender, loving daughter - fair, beautiful, and sensitive to the last degree. In her home misery reigned; no work for the father, no bread for her little sisters, a sick mother, and the storms of winter howling in the streets, and the cold wind, sleet-laden, searching for nooks and crannies, that it might freeze the little hands and make the pale lips blue.
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(27) It was the consistent practice of the great Paracelsus not to differentiate between men because of their status in Society. He firmly believed that he could learn a lesson from all; from the beggar as from the rich man; the outcast as readily as from the scion of society. He refrained from passing the drunkard in the gutter for fear he might be the loser. No man can know what is written in the heart of another, whether that other be high or low, until he has taken the time and the trouble to read that heart. Judge not that ye may not be judged, is golden wisdom.
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And then the father took to drinking, and the pampered servants of the rich lordlings of the great city drove her with the large blue eye from their doors; and she was hungry, very hungry; and then the foul fiend tempted her to accept a handful of silver from a - male! for men never do such things - things so infernal, so hideous, so ineffably mean, in exchange for her body! And so she sold it - again, and again, and again! Great God! She was obliged to sell it or starve in the midst of the granaries of Plenty! Starve herself? Yes, but not only herself - that were easy, but the mother who bore her in agony; the father, whose reason had for a time deserted its throne; the little ones, clustering about the scanty fire in the little tin stove - these, all these, must eat or die! The Poorhouse! A poor refuge indeed! For although they may have been better off therein, would she? Doubtful! for - well, never mind what! She sold herself for bread!

Presently work came, but the stain was n her. She had run down a declivity so steep that she could never clamber up again, unless some friendly hand be stretched forth to help her. And such hands are very scarce. And now I saw what good might have been done, in the days gone by, had I only thought.      (28)
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(28)there is many a potent sermon in the few words: Judge not that ye may not be judged. The true Neophyte accepts not merely the words as fundamentally true, but likewise the spirit of the dictum. It would almost be a truism to say that no man is able to know the underlying cause of a certain act. How then can he judge? How does he (or she) know that he would do in a like circumstance? It is permissible to condemn and preach against an act which is evil or destructive in itself, but one should be slow to condemn the person unless that person is professedly acting with deliberate intent.
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This scene passed across the walls of my sphere. And then there came after it a large blank space, and this taught me that it indicated that somewhere in my life there had been a corresponding omission. What can it have been? Scarce had this query been framed, than there appeared a picture, which need not be described, but the sum of whose teachings may briefly be stated thus: I had never married - had never been hailed by the dear titles Wife and Mother. I had therefore failed in the one supreme womanly duty. Nor can any Soul be fully filled with joy who neglects those great commands of God and Nature. Children are the crowns of Heaven; nor can anyone - man or woman - taste the serener and the sweeter joys of Being, who has failed to love and be loved, wed and be wedded for this is one and the chiefest of means whereby the Soul becomes mellowed and fit for higher uses in the Soul-home. For these reasons, my joys, though great, were not equal to what they might have been; and yet, take it all in all, provided the entrance into the upper land is made with a clear and healthy conscience and a fair record be left behind, no sense of clearness, lightness and joy can equal that which is experienced subsequent to the first awakening after Azraels decree has severed the marriage between matter and Soul. The Senses! Roses emit sweet odors, grateful to the nostrils; yet not all the perfumes of the Gulistan are worth one inhalation of the celestial aroma in which the spirit of the good man or woman floats when one fairly over the barriers which separate the worlds. Color! I never knew the music of hues before I passed away - never conceived of the sublime mysteries, nor realized the great glory whose temple is the chalice of a flower. Touch! Ah, what language, what pen, what tongue can describe the deep raptures of a Soul, when Gods sublime atmosphere first laves the immortal being! The highest, keenest nerve-joy the body can experience must be very, very dull and tame in comparison. And so on through the Sense-gamuts of Earth and the hyper ones of Spirit. Yet only the good enjoy these pleasures. Sin and pollution, whether of thought, whether of thought or overt act, detract from the senses and susceptibility to pleasure in both worlds alike; and so absolutely true is this, that sin and folly ought to be shunned by the people, if for no other than the selfish desire of being happy from ones self. It is better to live right, die right, and be right after death than it is to purchase transient pleasures on earth by drawing too largely on the bank of life, to find ones drafts dishonored at the counters of the world above. Suicides and voluptuaries are on an equality up there. Both are only half-men, half-children, half-women; nor can they taste of the higher raptures, unless they grow to holiness.

After a while there ceased to be any more pictures, and I became aware of the fact that an unseen force was at work on the outside of the globe, evidently endeavoring to break it down or in some way force a passage through its walls. What this something could be was a mystery, just so long as I vehemently desired to know, which of course I, like others under similar circumstances, did. I could not, while thus endeavoring, obtain my desire, and therefore I naturally began to wish that Nellie or the old man would come, because, in spite of my matchless surroundings, I felt quite human in the midst of Spirituality, and the sight even of another than myself would have been a solace and a consolation. No sooner had my mind placed itself upon a new object than I made two new and important discoveries: First, that loneliness or solitude is one of the most terrible punishments to which either God or man could ever possibly condemn a sinful human being. (29) God pity the lonely man or woman! Oh, it is very dreadful to be compelled to exist alone! Oh, it is very dreadful to be compelled to exist alone! And there are thousands who walk the great worlds streets, who move along in the very midst of a Solitude as deep, silent and fearful as that which prevails in Zaharas desert wastes, where human footfalls never disturb the awful stillness of the hour. There are those who travel up and down the worlds highways, upon whose Soul no glad sounds ever fall, and who appear to be condemned to loneliness, as if they were thus expiating some awful penalty as an atonement for great and undreamed-of crimes, committed either by themselves in some pre-existent state, or by their ancestors when the very world was young. There are those who, while all about and around them are merry and jocund as the bees on a May day, are themselves as far removed from the pale of human sympathy, and as utterly alone, as if they were shut up in some rock-ribbed cave in the heart of Mont Blanc or the Mountains of the Moon. Oh, it is a fearful thing to be shut out from the great Sympathia, whose function is to blend in one the chords of all human hearts! It is a sad fate indeed to be obliged to live amidst the clamor and the clang of discord, when all other Souls are dancing to the glorious sounds of the great Harmonead; yet many such, ay, far too many such there be, who are thus cut off, shut up, barred out. They might have been let in, had the father given the mother a smile, a caress, a blessing, at the proper moment, instead of a frown, a rudeness, and a secret curse, as is, alas! Too often the case; and yet nothing is more positively certain than that somebody must answer to their own Souls, their own consciences, for this most fearful entailment of misery, loneliness and woe. See! Yonder is a woman - a wife - big with a man-child, who will ere long see the light; but she is miserable - is lonely; is perchance cursed for becoming a mother; and so she frets and mopes and pines, all the while paining to be delivered of her misery and child. At length it sees the day, the suns bright laugh meets no responsive smile from its pale, thin, tiny lips. It mopes and grows, but is prematurely old at ten years, a man at fifteen, a mournful pilgrim at twenty-five, and an old veteran at thirty years! Whos to blame? Somebody! Else Gods justice is, like mans a mockery!
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(29) Read Hargrave Jennings One of the Thirty.
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Brother or sister, who readest these pages, wouldst thou know one of the grand secrets underlying the constitution of the great Brotherhood of Crime? It is because man is a social being, has a mortal and invincible hatred and repugnance to solitude, feels the meed of associates and sympathy, and will have both is possible, even though obliged to seek them in the very midst of hell itself. Didst thou ever observe that the majority of spiritual mediums are men and women who are sensitive, lonely, bereft, and forsaken? Well, look around, and thou shalt find it so. And these, failing to find sympathy on earth amidst their fellows, search for it in the awful labyrinths that underlie the tomb, and from the Middle States vast hordes of semi-infernals come trooping at the heart-calls of these wretched ones, who are thus preyed on by vampires from both Eternity and Time; for embodied wonder-mongers sap them dry, and wear them out, while disembodied demi-devils delude them, until the fair Soul-garden either becomes an arid waste, or teems with thistles, thorns, and all unsightly and unseemly things. When such victims cry aloud unto god, and keep crying. He will send His good angels to comfort, save, cheer, and protect.

Reader, wouldst thou know why millions of women, fair, lovable, and good as ever Gods sun shone upon, yearly rush down the mountains side and plunge neck-deep into the swamps of prostitution and infamy? It is because their human hearts yearn for sympathy, pine for love, long for something good and kind; which failing to discover and obtain where hope has told them such things were, they seek for it, at last, in the horrid belly of social damnation. Their motto, A short life and a merry is better than a long and lonely one! tells too truly the story of many a poor girls heart. My God, my God, have mercy on the lonely ones! For Thou alone knowest that many and many a sin against society and Thee is committed by such and others, not of settled purpose of ill-doing, but because urged on by sheer despair. Many a crime has been committed from a mental aberration caused by the horrors of loneliness. Human tribunals take but little, if any, account of a criminals antecedents and surroundings. He or she is judged too harshly, in the main; and thus it will be until mankind learns a deeper lesson of wisdom than yet presides over its courts and councils. Only god can truly know a heart; (30) and whilst this fact is so clear, it is better to err on charitys side, if error must enter into the account at all.
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(30) Only God and I know what is in my heart. _Moslem.
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In prison there is at least a community of punishment, and the sense of this goes far to relieve the tedium of incarceration; for, bad though it be, many a one has found it preferable to the perpetual and dreadful solitude to which liberty condemned him.

Why are there such vast numbers of deserted wives and husbands? - so many ruined and cheerless hearths and homes?  The answer is, because neither of the heads of the household has even dreamed that the companion had rights which the other was bound to respect; and the greatest of these rights, and the one most disregarded, is the right of being loved by the other - loved tenderly, truly, kindly, humanly. The parties to the domestic compact have severally failed to realize what common sense ought to have suggested from the first, that human happiness is never direct, but is always reflected. When the married find out this great law, and practically apply it, society will redeem itself from all hatred and harlotry, license and libertinism, free-love and folly, madness, murder and meanness. Ah! Friendly reader, it is a fearful state, that wherein a womans or a mans true and generous love and sympathies are driven down and beaten away by those to whom they naturally cling. It is hard to have their human kindness misconstrued, and to have his or her affection crushed by the heedlessness or lack of generosity of those who ought to leap, and hail it with all true human thankfulness. God knows that there is too little real affection in the world, and it is very hard to have that little forced back upon the full, true heart from which it was sent forth on a mission of goodness. This sort of thing it is that freezes up the spirit and makes man and woman lonely hermits in the very midst of the teeming hives of human life, society, and effort.

It is a terrible thing to be compelled to eat your own heart - to be forced to consume ones self - to hear the harsh, brutal and unfeeling tone, when one should listen to the dulcet notes of generous affections; for they freeze and chill the spirit, and warp the very ligaments of Soul. These sad things must be atoned; the vicarious sacrifice must be self-made by the doers thereof - persons who unthinkingly tear down and wreck their fellows, every Soul of whom might be builded up, made strong for the Right, and emulous of all great and good and noble thoughts and deeds which Gods human children have ever done, and all by kindness, open-hearted conduct and friendly cheer. Heaven! How much misery and crime might be stayed by one kind and loving word! How many are at this day wading through Perdition, as they tread the pavements of the worlds broad streets, and all for want of one kind word! Wrote Milton:

    ...Devil with devils damned
    Firm concord hold. Men only disagree.

There is much pith in this couplet, which is far from being all poetry; that is, if a judgment must be predicated upon what the worlds have witnessed of warfare, robbery, slaughter, and rapine, all along the track of ages. Earth is, then, something worse than hell itself! It ought to be better, for hell cannot be purged nor the Middle State become pure, until earth is purified, and the daily delegations sent across the dark River be of a better, purer, and nobler mould than now.

I remember to have dearly loved the Apostles Dreed, especially my own rendering thereof:

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Church; . . . the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection; . . . the communion of saints; the life everlasting. Glorious creed of glorious fishermen, repeated daily by millions! But do these millions really believe the words of freely spoken? Go ask their conduct in the worlds busy market-places, where human bodies and human Souls are as so many counters in the scale, not negro bodies and Souls, but hose of lordly bankers and moneyed magnates, who serve as waiters in Molochs temples on the four shores of the two great seas. Pity it is that people do not believe their own religious creeds, for if they did there would be fewer lonely ones on either side of the grave.

Sung a poet, quite as good, if not so great, as Milton:

    If men cared less for wealth and fame,
    and less for battlefields of glory;
    If writ in human hearts, a name
    Seemed better than in song or story:
    If men, instead of nursing pride,
    Would learn to hate it and abhor it;
    If more relied on Love to guide,
    The world wold be the better for it.
   
    If men dealt less in stocks and lands,
    And more in bonds and deeds fraternal;
    If Loves work had more willing hands
    To link this world to the supernal:
    If men stored up Loves oil and wine,
    And on bruised human hearts would pour it,
    If yours and mine would once combine,
    The world would be the better for it.
   
    If more wold ACT the play of Life,
    And fewer spoil it by rehearsal;
    If bigotry would sheathe its knife,
    Till good became more universal:
    If custom, gray with ages grown,
    Had fewer blind men to adore it;
    If talent shone in truth alone,
    The world wold be the better for it.
   
    If men were wise in little things,
    Affecting less in all their dealings;
    If hearts had fewer rusted strings,
    To violate their kindly feelings:
    If Men, when Wrong beats down the Right,
    Would strike together and restore it;
    If Right made Right in every fight,
    The world would be the better for it.

Ay! That it would and shall, brave lover of they race, when more shall live the spirit thou has breathed. But Faith is not yet dead; Hope still lives in human hearts; Charity is beginning to be a power in the world, and these three - blessed three, will yet work out the worlds salvation. Strong hands, clear intellects, willing minds, are all that is needed to develop true human individuality, a thing of the future; and then a man and a woman will pass for the self-displayed value, the intrinsic worth manifested by Action. It is not I they hate and ill-use; it is the fictitious personality they have given me. They will not take me as I am, but insist that I shall be what themselves desire I should be; and in crushing, slaying, killing this phantom which they choose to attach to my name they are, alas, crushing, slaying, killing me!

In the days when common sense shall reign, the diseases of the social body will be eradicated, and then the loneliness of talent and genius will be eradicated, and then the loneliness of talent and genius will be exceptional to the rule, instead of the reverse, as I these lonesome latter years. If men could but realize that every human groan echoes up through all the starry vaults, even to the eternal throne itself, they would not cause so many as they do, especially when they discover that every one of these groans must be expiated by the causer thereof. If men knew that every pang endured by a human being on earth sweeps like a whirlwind of agony along the telegraphic lines of infinite space, and that not a soul in Gods vast domain but must feel the effects thereof in accordance with the Great Sympathia - itself the nervous system alike of God, Nature, and human kind, they would heartily strive to lessen the amount, and banish all anguish and its producing cause from their midst.

The human race is a mighty harp; touch one string rudely and all the others vibrate; and the finer the cord the more it responds to the shock. When Jesus groaned on Calvary, the pain of His body and Soul was shared in by every creature beneath Gods Infinite heaven; and the agony thrills still go sweeping through the worlds, and will until all mankind shall go its way and sin no more. No human body is healthy so long as a single atom of disease lurks between the granules of a bone, or between the cells of the most unimportant viscus; neither can society be calm, or the race be happy on either shore of eternity, so long as one unholy man or woman lives to mare the harmony, and be a discordant note in the Great Sympathia. (31) Thus we dwellers of the Soul-worlds are impelled to action in behalf of our brethren below, by the first and greatest law of the universe, self-preservation. For in making man abjure his errors and turn toward the Right, we lay the surest and firmest foundation whereon to erect the great Temple of Purity, wherein all alike shall worship God, do well, and think no evil. The discovery of this great principle of unity, the acquisition of the positive knowledge that every sensation, painful or pleasant, experienced by any, even the most distant, low, and degraded of the species, was necessarily shared in by all the rest, surprised me greatly; and from finding that the finest-nerved and most sensitive were also the most unhappy, I was led to infer the existence of a great Vicarious law, whose elements were Sympathy, Compensation, Distribution. True, some may pass through life, and apparently escape its action, but not forever. God has said substantially, Bear ye one anothers burdens; and borne they must be. Sensitives bear the greatest portion of misery, and their fate seems at first sight to be a hard one, a life all full of tears, groans, and sorrows; yet the law of Compensation is operative in all stages, phases, and planes of being:

    And he who the weariest path has trod
    Shall nearest stand to the throne of God.
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(31) One of the most mighty of the Laws underlying human happiness and one that is especially germaine in this year of our Lord, 1931, and period of universal depression. If the potentate, magnate and banker would recognize this Law and discontinue to exploit the mass, and if the members of the mass would cease to exploit each other by refusing to act like parasites on each other and, instead, render fair service for the compensation given, then justice would begin to reign and the depression forever end. Thus far in our present unhappy state, the men with money, irrespective of their position, alone have been condemned. They are in the vst minority. As men suffer they usually begin to think, and if they now think, they will not fail to see that during the period of inflation almost every worker took advantage of his position and utterly failed to render even fairly good service for the remuneration he received. Contrary to the usual opinion, the rich - manufacturer, banker and magnate - do not employ services of men for themselves, but act as middlemen between worker and worker, exacting a percentage. The worker who fails to render full service is not robbing the rich, but his own fellow-workers. This, and the immense profits demanded by the few, has been the cause of the present depression. It is neither more mor less than the reaction of an almost universal exploitation of man by man. And the problem will not be solved, nor the remedy found, until all men, rich and poor, come into a recognition of this Law.
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There are seasons when men and women of certain mould, without the least apparent cause, are plunged into the very midst of the blackest barathrum of misery and woe, and who ten times a year pass through the body of a death too fearful in its agonies to be even faintly imagined by those of a different make-up. They complain, and are met with the stereotyped: Fancy! Hypochondrias! Delusion! Delusion, forsooth! Is that pale and haggard cheek, that pain-thrilled sea of nerve, those drops of almost bloody sweat, that utter prostration of Soul, a mere delusion? Will the hypothesis of diseased nerves, liver, heart, or stomach account for these things? To the looker-on of surface, Yes; to the student of the Soul and its mysteries, No! There is a deeper cause, a higher power in operation. Will the theory of physical disease account for the instantaneous plunging of a man or woman into the deepest anguish who, scarce ten seconds before, was in the enjoyment of perfect health of spirit, Soul and body? Never! What mens the terrible weight of woe which suddenly leaps upon the Soul of the sensitive? Whence comes this ocean of mental pain and half-sense of retribution, knowing themselves innocent and spotless of all wrong? I will answer. At that moment someone, somewhere, is undergoing all these pangs from apparent cause. The wave of pain has gone out, and, like the needle to the pole, flies directly to those whose position on the plane of the great sympathetic nerve of the universe fits them to receive it. Someone wlse receives it in turn; but it becomes less intense, degree after degree, until at last only a faint and tiny wave reaches the foot of the throne.

Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabacthani!s groaned the dying Jesus; and the throes of his agony went pulsing through the universal human heart, till the most majestic prince of Seraphim quailed with agony. Even so, still, as in the days of yore, is operative the same great vicarious law.

When the suffering Soul turns itself to God, relief comes, but not an instant before. This latter law - for it is one - was well known in ancient times, and amongst the higher classes of the Orient is so still. It and its operation is well set forth by a modern poet of Islam: