well-timed bath a baptism, in every day a Sabbath, in every house a living temple, and in every heart an altar of worship whereon the fires of love and devotion are kept as incense continually burning, making all life's hours precious like the Eastern fig-tree that bears in its bosom at once the beauty of the early bloom and the matured glory of most delicious fruitage— who are full of warm blood, deep sympathies, and great moral independence, whose arguments against home-sins hit, whose shots tell, eyes flash, words convince, lips persuade, and inspirations touch the heart's best affections, calling down sweet love-baptisms from on high-who will speak the whole truth, as they see it, and actualize it in lives consecrated to divine uses, though the fire, the faggot, and cross are in full view-who, holy and rapt and mystic at times, as John of Patmos filled with ode, rhapsody and lyric, uttering from the depths of the inner consciousness divine principles, as with tongues of fire, causing them to sing through the corridors of the soul's memory-chambers, awakening to resurrectional beatitude all those finer impulses of kindness, forgiveness, and devotion to the right, the just, the true, and the beautiful, that slumber in the sacred heart of our common brotherhood. Then will the kingdom of God, so long the burden of prophecy and prayer, become as prac tical an institution as it is progressive on earth-the ideal then being realized now-all to the glory of our divine humanity. "The new is old, the old is new, The Infinite Spirit is the infinite substance of the universe, the only absolute reality, and Nature, as a garment, is the manifestation of this reality to the senses. The conscious human spirit, as the innermost of man, is an essential portion of the Infinite, pure and eternal-a divine center-a celestial compass with an infinitude of points, bearing fixed relations, when in conjunction with grosser matter, to time past, present, and future. Time is not a thing per se, but only the record of a series of impressions made upon the spiritual sensorium. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Each thus connected with all, and human nature the same in all ages, the present generation has much to do in turning to good account the gathered experiences of the past, in finding the "lost arts," and measuring the folly and wisdom of those ancient eras, though grayed with countless decades. Waves of progress, moving in cycles, continually overlap― the highest reaching the shores, and there writing their thoughts on crystal reams and defiant rocks. The past, then, with its long shadows-symbols, hieroglyphics, poetry, paintings, proverbs and rabbinical lore-converges in the present. Aye, the grand old past!-it reaches down its multitudinous hands to us from the Atlantis, from India and Egypt, from Syria, Greece and Rome; from bannered cities long sanded from sight; from ancient temples whose golden gates dazzled like suns; from old Gothic cathedrals and Norman castles magnificent even in ruins. Unto us, from all surrounding zones, worlds and realms, have poured the streams of eternal life. Rock and ocean, storm and stars, light and darkness, saint and savage, god and demon, with the boundless and fathomless deeps of undying love, have all contributed to make up our physical, mental and spiritual organizations. To every point of the compass in the infinite domain of space, may souls send out their feelers and meet a glad response. Our particled bodies may exchange with the minerals, the soils, the fruits; our spiritual structures, with the fine etherealized essences and ultimates that infill the surrounding regions; while the deific within, through aspiration and effort, may continually come into diviner rapport with the great, beating, throbbing, loving heart-the Infinite Soul of the universe-God. This true, the past, with its deep rich veins of experience, its half-buried yet glittering treasures, and its inexhaustible tomes of classic riches, is to us in value above what human speech can express, painter transfer to canvas, or author describe. The legitimate work of the historian is to unveil and present to the people of to-day a speaking panorama of the extinguished ages. This measureless period termed the past, when organized and comprehended in its broadest sense, rounds up as the great drama of humanity-as the living epic of human progress-the forecourt of a more transcendent futurity. The historian, however, is not the bare fact-gatherer. Mere facts may be as devoid of scientific value as fictions. To reach truth there must be a selection of well-attested facts, with their just moral value affixed. These, put into the crucible of reason, systematized, grouped in order, and organized in accordance with the best methods of philosophic research, must also be critically weighed with reference to their producing causes. This done, they naturally crystalize into, harmonize with, and help constitute truth. While many spirit ripples have danced upon the sea of progress, three mighty waves have loomed up on the ocean of the ages ancient, mediæval and modern Spiritualism. The first, shedding its kindling glories in India, Egypt, China and adjoining nations, threw such an effulgence of baptismal beauty over the more cultured of those earlier civilizations, that all the subsequent declining eras were illuminated even down to the birth of the Nazarene. Medieval Spiritualism, dating from the advent of Jesus, that eminent Judean Spiritualist, enriched the Platonic thinkers of Alexandria, ennobled the statesmen of Greece, quickened the orators of Rome, encircled in light the footsteps of seers and martyrs, pierced with scattered sunbeams the gloom of the dark ages, inspired those old reformers, and tinged with a divine brightness the progressive movements that marked nearly twenty centuries preceding the "Rochester Rappings!" This last spiritual wave is familiar to us all. |