When President Garfield was lying tortured by the wound which caused his death, the prayers of a whole nation arose as one united voice for his recovery. From sixty thousand pulpits petitions to the throne of grace ascended. There were days set apart for united appeal to God. He was eminent in the church as in war and politics, and if prayer ever received answer, it would seem that it should be in his case. Yet the good man, the scholar, the statesman and theologian died, just as he would have died had no petition been sent to the throne of grace. The ocean ship, freighted with passengers, is broken through by an iceberg, and slowly filling, settles down into the waves. Wildly the best and purest men and women pray to God for help, but the ship is not thereby sustained, or delayed a single moment in her final plunge into the abysses of the sea.

On occasions of great public calamity, where drought blasts the harvest, locusts devour the fields, or pestilence rages, days are set apart for prayer. Every minister of the gospel and every layman daily prays with utmost fervor. Yet the rain falls not, the locusts devour, and the pestilence pursues its way without shadow of turning. Prayer in such cases is as hopeless as it would be if the maker should stand on a railroad track, and, when he saw a train approaching, pray to God to stop it. It is a petition for the impossible.

In one way it yields results, often of an astonishing character. If the makers are sincere, the attitude of prayer harmonizes and strengthens their faculties, and enables them to bear with greater fortitude the vicissitudes of time; to bear, but not avert, impending fate. How many captives chained in dungeons have, in imitation of the apostle, prayed fervently with perfect faith that their chains might fall off, and the bars of their prison door be drawn aside, and met with no response. How many zealous martyrs have been led to the stake, praying to Jesus for deliverance which came not; and Jesus himself, in the hour of his mortal agony, prayed to the Father, to be answered by silence, and to find bitterness and mockery; a cross and a crown of thorns, where he had expected a throne and the glittering scepter of the nations.

The once all-powerful belief in the ability of delegated men to control events and elements by supplication to the Deity, which made the “medicine men,” the priests and jugglers, the tyrants of mankind, has now, in civilized countries, dwindled into the intercessions for moral help, and an occasional prayer for physical changes, as for rain in times of drought, the staying of grasshoppers, or the approach of disease.

It is difficult for the gospel minister to give up entirely the rôle of the “medicine man,” and cease to pray for the sick in the misty hope that God will answer. It is almost as troublesome for the preacher to let go his hold on the weather, and not follow the Indian’s rattling gourd, shaken at the sky, with prayer for the same object.

This is the degradation of prayer, and the preacher clasps hands with the juggler. That this pretense is yet maintained, is made most remarkably apparent in a work on prayer recently published. An incident in the life of President Finney, of Oberlin College, copied from its pages, will amply suffice to illustrate this anachronism, a belief of savage man forced into the highest civilized thought.

There was drought in Oberlin, and the thin, hard clay soil of that region suffered severely from a total failure for three months, of rain. Clouds promised the desired moisture, but hovered over the lake, and poured out their waters there. This they did day after day, raising the hopes of the anxious, and then drifting away.

Finney, who was an enthusiast, was walking in the street one day, when a friend met him and said: “I should like to know what you mean by preaching that God is always wise and always good, when you see him pouring out that great rain on the lake, where it can do no good, and leaving us to suffer so terribly for want of the wasted water?”

Finney said: “His words cut me to the very heart; I turned and ran home to my closet, fell on my knees, and told the Lord what had been said to me, and besought him, for the honor of his great name, to confound this caviler, and show forth the glory of his power, and the greatness of his love. I pleaded with him that he had encouraged his people to pray for rain, and now the time had come for him to show his power, and his faithfulness as a hearer of prayer. Before I rose from my knees there was a sound of a rushing mighty wind. I looked out, and lo, the heavens were black; clouds were rolling up, and rain soon fell in torrents, continuing for two full hours.”

Those who are acquainted with the lake region know the peculiarity of these storms, and will readily understand the rapidity of their coming. They require no prayer to move them, and that the coincidence of the rain and the prayer should be endorsed by leaders in theology, is a strange instance of mental aberration, or, as Darwin would say, atavism. The absurdity of the representation apparently escapes the notice of those who accept it. The zealous Finney telling an Omnipotent God what he ought to do to show his power and keep his promise for his own interest and reputation, as though the rain was not withheld for some good purpose well known by the Omnipotent! And then by his pleading, this little President of a then obscure college, changed the will and purpose of the Almighty, and brought the rain to a narrow section of country, leaving regions beyond equally suffering without a drop of moisture!

Such instances prove too much. They maintain the changefulness of God, and the power of man to persuade Him to alter the course of the elements. Mr. Finney heralds with ostentatious pride this case when the clouds came at his call; he does not tell us of the prayers he and all the praying people of that region had daily offered for weeks and months for the same object, which brought no moisture!

Rain is sure to come at some time, and if the seasons of prayer be continued long enough, the last one will surely be followed by rain.

This instance is introduced to illustrate the limitation of the power of prayer. The insensible elements can not be influenced. The clouds and the winds, the storm and the earthquake, will not come or go at our bidding, or the invocation, even, of a saint.

Yet earnest prayer, within fixed limitations, may be and has been answered, as is proven by innumerable witnesses. Not by a personal God to whom the appeal is made, but by harmonizing the prayer-giver with subtile spiritual forces, which work in ways not comprehended by a gross view of the world. When we consider human and spiritual beings as laved by an ocean of attenuated substance, elastic and receptive beyond comprehension, and that each being is a vortex of vibrations, we understand how from an intensely wrought mind vibrant thoughts go forth, and although they strike an infinite number of individuals who are not sensitive to them, they find others in mortal bodies or spiritual, as harps like attuned set each other in vibration, and move those thus receptive to answer their appeals. The power and strength given by prayer arise from this harmonizing of their being by spiritual aspiration, which lift the mind into the realm of superior spiritual forces. It is then that the appeal to God goes forth in vibrations, to be recognized by spirit friends, and by them conveyed to mortals who have the ability to respond, or directly reach some responsive mind in the mortal body.

The following narrative of Dr. Joseph Smith, of Warrington, England, which is accredited by the journal of the Society for Psychological Research, May, 1885, is a fine illustration of what is popularly known as God’s answer to prayer:

“I was sitting one evening reading when a voice came to me, saying:

“‘Send a loaf to James Grady’s.’ I continued reading, and the voice continued with greater emphasis, and this time it was accompanied with an irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed, and went into the village and bought a loaf of bread, and seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he knew James Grady. He said he did, so I had him carry it, and say that a gentleman sent it. Mrs. Grady was a member of my class, and I went down next morning to see what came of it, when she told me that a strange thing had happened to her last night. She said she wished to put the children to bed, but they began to cry for want of food, and she had nothing to give them. She then went to prayer, to ask God to give them something, soon after which the lad came to the door with the loaf. I calculated on inquiry that the prayer and the voice I heard exactly coincided in point of time.”

As a member of his class, a close connection existed between Dr. Smith and Mrs. Grady, and he was thereby receptive to the eager appeal she made, incited by her children’s cry for bread.

The case of Henry Young Stilling has become a text in most orthodox books on the subject of prayer. He was a physician at the court of the Grand Duke of Baden, the intimate friend of Gœthe, who, impressed with his remarkable experiences, urged him to write an account of his life.

Stilling desired to study medicine at a university, and in an answer to prayer to know which he should choose was directed to Strasburg. In order to attend that school he required a thousand dollars, and he had only forty-six; yet with this he started on his journey, freely relying on heavenly aid. On reaching Frankfort, he had only a dollar left. He made his case known by prayer. Walking on the street he met a merchant, who, learning his purpose of attending the university, asked where the money was to come from. Stilling replied that he had only one dollar, but his Heavenly Father was rich and would provide for him. “Well, I am one of your Father’s stewards,” said the merchant, and handed him thirty-three dollars. Settled at Strasburg, his fee to the lectures became due and must be paid by Thursday evening, or his name stricken from the roll. He spent the day in prayer, and at five o’clock nothing had come. His anxiety became unbearable, when a knock was heard at his door, and his landlord entered and inquired how he liked the room, and if he had money. “No, I have no money,” cried Stilling in despair. “I see how it is,” replied the landlord; “God has sent me to help you,” and handed him forty dollars. Stilling threw himself on the floor and thanked God, while the tears rained from his eyes. His whole life’s experience was of a like character. He prayed constantly to God, and at the last moment his necessities were supplied.

How difficult it is to suppose that God interested himself especially in one of thousands of students, overlooking the others, equally poor and needy, and as earnest in their efforts! How easy to suppose that an angel friend, foreseeing the great capabilities of Stilling, interested himself, and by influencing this or that mind smoothed the way, and furnished the means he imperatively needed. It will be remarked that at no time were his necessities exceeded. No one gave him lavishly, or more than sufficed for his urgent needs.

Rev. H. Bushnell, in his “Nature and the Supernatural,” refers to an interesting incident he learned on his visit to California. The man had hired his little house of one room, in a new trading town that was planted last year, agreeing to give a rent of ten dollars a month. When the pay day came he had nothing to meet the demand, nor could he see whence the money was to come. Consulting with his wife, they agreed that prayer, so often tried, was their only hope. They went according to prayer, and found assurance that their want would be supplied.

When the morning came the money did not. The rent owner made his appearance earlier than usual. As he entered the door their hearts began to sink, whispering that now, for once, their prayer had failed. But before the demand was made, a neighbor came and called out the untimely visitor, engaging him in conversation a few minutes at the door. Meanwhile, a stranger came in saying, “Doctor, I owe you ten dollars for attending me in a fever, and here is the money.” He could not remember either the man or the service, but was willing to be convinced, and had the money when the rent owner again entered. The same explanation applies here as to the preceding.

The following indicates not an answer to the prayer, but a direct communication. It is related by Dr. Wilson, of Philadelphia: “The packet ship, ‘Albion,’ full of passengers from America, was wrecked on the coast of Ireland, and the news was that all on board had perished. A minister near Philadelphia, reading a list of the lost, found the name of one of the members of his congregation, and went immediately to inform the wife of the sad fact. She had been earnestly praying during the voyage of her husband, and had received assurance of his safety amid great danger. Hence, to the astonishment of her pastor, after he had informed her of the shipwreck, and showed her the list of names of those who were lost, she told him that it was a mistake, that her husband had been in extreme peril, but was not dead. When the next tidings were received it proved that her husband was among the passengers, and had been in great peril, but that he had escaped, and was the only one saved.”

There could be no connection between the wife’s prayer and safety of her husband, but the state of mind induced by prayer allowed her to receive the message of his safety.

The celebrated artist, Washington Allston, refined and sensitive to a fault, had at first to struggle with great difficulties, and endure the pinchings of poverty. At one time he was reduced to the want of even a loaf of bread for himself and wife. In despair he locked himself in his studio and earnestly prayed for assistance. While thus engaged, there was a knock at the door, and opening it a stranger appeared, who inquired if the artist still possessed the beautiful painting, “The Angel Uriel.” Mr. Allston drew it from a corner, and brushed off the dust. The stranger said he had greatly admired it when it was on exhibition, and inquired the price. The artist replied that as no one seemed to appreciate it he had ceased to offer it. “Will four hundred pounds purchase?” said the stranger. “I never dared ask one-half of that.” “Then it is mine,” exclaimed the visitor, who explained that he was the Marquis of Stafford, leaving the artist overwhelmed with gratitude.

Where the answer to prayer follows so directly the appeal, we may suppose that the intensity of thought may affect directly the individual who responds. Thus, when Allston was so despairing, his thoughts would go widely forth, and the Marquis of Stafford having seen the painting, and desiring it, might have the thought of it awakened, and be thereby drawn at the special time to the artist’s studio. Of course the case is also open to the direct intervention of angelic messengers, for all this class of facts intimately blend, and are controlled by the same general laws, and it is difficult to determine to which of the two causes they should be referred. The door that admits angelic beings makes the influence of thought waves also possible.

The cure of Melancthon by the prayers of Luther is well known to the student of the Reformation. The former had been given over to die, when Luther rushed to the death-bed of his loved friend with tears and exclamations of agony. Melancthon was aroused and said: “O Luther, is this you? Why do you not let me depart in peace?” “We can’t spare you yet, Philip,” was Luther’s answer. Then he bowed down for a long hour in prayer, until he felt he had been answered. Then he took Melancthon’s hand, who said: “Dear Luther, why do you not let me depart in peace?” “No, no, Philip, we can not spare you from the field of labor;” and added, “Philip, take this soup, or I will excommunicate you.” Melancthon took the soup, began to revive, and lived many years to assist the sturdy reformer with his facile pen. Luther went home and told his wife, in joyous triumph, that “God gave me my brother, Melancthon, in direct answer to prayer.”

Now, such a cure would be called faith cure, or magnetic healing. The state of feeling induced by long and fervent prayer was the source of magnetic power, and therein, and not through the direct intervention of God, was the prayer answered.

Bishop Bowman gives the following account of the unexpected recovery of Bishop Simpson, when he was supposed to be dying:

“I remember once, when there was a conference at Mount Vernon, Ohio, at which I was present, Bishop James was presiding one afternoon, and after reading a despatch saying that Bishop Simpson was dying in Pittsburg, asked that the conference unite in prayer, that his life might be saved. We knelt, and Taylor, the great street preacher, led. After the first few sentences, in which I joined with my whole heart, my mind seemed to be at ease, and I did not pay much attention to the rest of the prayer only to notice its beauty. When we arose from our knees, I turned to a brother and said, ‘Bishop Simpson will not die; I feel it.’ He assured me that he had received the same impression. The word was passed around, and over thirty ministers present said they had the same feelings. I took my book and made a note of the hour and circumstance. Several months afterwards, I met Bishop Simpson, and asked him what he did to recover his health. He did not know; but the physician had said it was a miracle. He said, that one afternoon, when at the point of death, the doctor left him, saying that he should be left alone (by the doctor) for half an hour. At the end of that time, the doctor returned, and noticed a great change. He was startled, and asked the family what had been done, and they replied, nothing at all. That half hour, I find, by making allowance for difference of localities, was just the time we were praying for him at Mount Vernon. From that time on he steadily improved, and has lived to bless the Church and humanity.”

Bishop Bowman adds:

“On the God who has so often answered my prayers, I will still rely, scientific men and philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding.” The “scientific man” would reply that he had no desire to dispute the fact as stated, but, instead of a personal God who had struck down Bishop Simpson with disease, changing his purpose because supplicated by the ministerial conference, the intense fervency of thought of that conference united in prayer had gone forth in a magnetic beam, and given the suffering patient the strength of a new life. If there was divine agency, it stood back of the laws of spiritual forces, in which case, prayer was only a means of preparation, unitizing, harmonizing and directing.

He was affected just the same as he would have been had he been in the conference hall, for distance, as has been repeatedly shown, is an unimportant element in the exercise of these psychic forces.

There are several charitable institutions which their founders claim to have been entirely supported by means of donations made in answer to prayer. As these are often brought forward in evidence of the direct answer to prayer, they become of interest to the student of this subject.

The Bristol Orphan Home is typical of its class. George Müller, its founder, began with no wealth, aside from his sublime faith in his appeals for divine aid. In his Thirty-sixth Annual Report, he says that in 1875 his faith was put to trial most severely. He commenced the year with $20,000 in his treasury, which in three months was reduced one-half, or only enough to meet expenses for a single month. The treasury had never been as low, and the number of orphans had doubled. He fervently prayed, as the situation became more alarming, and at the end of the month so many donations flowed in he had $48,000.

In the forty-one years this institution has been conducted, during which no appeal for charity has been made directly, except through prayer, $3,325,000 has been received. As the results of its use, 46,400 persons have been taught in schools wholly sustained, and tens of thousands in schools assisted; 96,000 Bibles, 247,000 Testaments, and 180,000 smaller portions of the Scriptures circulated; above 53,500,000 tracts and books in various languages distributed; of late years 170 missionaries annually assisted; 4,677 orphans cared for; five large edifices built, at a cost or $575,000, able to accommodate 2,050 orphans.

Such an institution may have no organized soliciting board on the earthly side, but of necessity must have on the spiritual side. It is a potent center of attraction to those who have means, and are looking about for some worthy object. The leaders, with self-abnegation, devote their lives to the unselfish work, and the angel messengers, with equal devotion, act as solicitors to those they are able to approach.

We may also regard as a potent factor, earnest prayer going out on waves of thought, and directly affecting susceptible minds, calling their attention to the great charity, and influencing them to sustain it.

This explanation of the effect of prayer, and of the causes contributing to its answering, while removing it from the realm of miracle, makes the subject one of absorbing interest. The Divine Spirit never directly answers, but there are laws and conditions through which the earnest spirit is granted the assistance it desires. It is a mistake to refer the answer directly to God, as it would be to say he supports the world in space by his extended arm. The Protestant churches hold as sacrilege the appeal to any being but God. The Catholics are more wise, and offer their prayers to their patron saints, by which comforting love and assuring affection are awakened by direct contact.

Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith
Cure—their Psychic Relations.

Charlatanism seized mesmerism, as it has everything new, and brought its healing potencies into disgrace by its ignorance and pretensions. The germ of truth was then, and from time to time has reappeared under startling names, and in some instances so changed as to appear superficially, as something entirely new. Those who scorn mesmerism received the new claimants, the only change being in name.

I propose to briefly examine some of these, and, if possible, find the rock of truth on which they rest.

Christian Science.—First, as having attracted most attention, is Christian Science. It claims to be a system for curing the sick, preserving health, and a perfect moral guide in the conduct of life.

Healing the sick is only an accidental means of testing the genuineness of the devotee’s belief. Healing is the first step on the lowest plane. It makes the proud claim of being the Science of Spirit, and as spirit is causation, Christian Science is the Science of Sciences. It aims to be a complete system of religion and morality, and demands the highest, most unselfish, devoted lives. It demands universal love, unfaltering charity; neither to think or act evil; the suppression of scorn and hate; a belief that all is good, for all is God, who is absolutely good.

It widely differs from the “faith cure,” and mind cure, as it introduces and demands the highest excellence in the conduct of life, while the faith cure calls for simple faith in the means employed, or in the power of God.

Christian Science shows the source of its inspiration when it declares healing to be a test of faith and character.

Theosophy resembles Christian Science, extending over the broadest field of morality, intellectuality, and spirit, eschewing healing as a test. The teachings of both, by appropriating all that is valuable in other doctrines, are similar. Theosophy, however, states one fundamental doctrine on which its superstructure rests. This is the pre-existence of the soul or spirit, and its repeated incarnations on earth. As this doctrine has been criticised elsewhere, the arguments against it need not be here introduced. As guides in the conduct of life they have nothing true which they can claim as new, and their distinctive features remain to be demonstrated, or are revived speculations and dreams of the world’s dawn, when nature was a riddle and life a mystery.

The Faith Cure rests on the declarations of the Bible, that faith will remove mountains, and redeem the lost. When Christ or his disciples laid hands on the sick to heal, the first and paramount question was: Have they faith? There is curative power in faith. It is half gained to have the sick confident that they will recover; and the belief that they will be sustained by certain means often has more influence than the means.

The Mental Cure asserts the superiority of the mind over the body, as a scientific fact, without appeal to God or faith. In vital essence, in making the body the servant of the mind, all these systems are identical. Christian Metaphysics and Christian Science, a difference of name, and mental cure, mind cure, etc., have the same basis. Each has enclosed a narrow field, and writes its name over the entrance. Christian Science, by making the greatest display, has become most conspicuous. Many of its propositions call forth no dissent, others are on their face too absurd to require contradiction.

The same line of argument will apply to all these systems, and they need not be taken separately.

Influence of the Mind Over the Body.—The mind has a very great influence over the body, as has been remarked by those who have investigated the subject since the time of Hippocrates. The strongest mind sometimes is found in a weak body.

Lord Brougham, with a frail physique, performed the most Herculean mental tasks. It is said that he once worked one hundred and forty-four hours, or six consecutive days, and then slept all Saturday night, Sunday, and Sunday night, and was waked Monday morning by his valet to resume his labors.

The power of mind over the body is illustrated by the annals of explorers in the frigid zone, and in the deadly regions of the tropics. The leaders of such expeditions, with all the burden and responsibilities of their position, bear up better than their men, and rarely succumb to adversities to which the latter yield. The hardships met by Dr. Kane and Lieut. Greely are fresh in the mind; and the invincible Stanley, braving the savage foes and deadly malaria of the Black Continent, is another example. Such leaders, encouraged by the honors success will yield, and dreading the shame of defeat more than death, persevere against all opposing forces, while their men, with less at stake either to win or lose, sink, apathetically, before reaching the goal. In such cases, the will sustains the body, and shows its independence of the material forces which affect it.

In no instance is the control of mind over the sensations, affecting it through the body, shown with greater force than in the terrible ordeals of martyrdom. The weak and delicate woman, as well as the strong man, was bound on the rack, or subjected to the unspeakable horrors of the thumbscrew, burning pincers, or the smouldering fagots, and yet so far from uttering moans or sighs, smiled on their tormentors, or sang hozannas amid the flames. Their minds had risen to such exaltation that physical pain was unfelt, in fact, was a relief to the mental tension.

There is no pathological phenomena more freely attested than the sudden vitiation of the secretions by intense mental disturbances. A mother subjected to intense fright, or fear, will have her milk become poisonous to her babe. Dr. A. Combe mentions an instance where a mother left her child to assist the father in combat with a drunken soldier. After the fight was over she nursed the babe, which was strong and healthy. After a few minutes it ceased nursing, and sank dead in its mother’s arms. The milk had become a virulent poison.

A lady with a violent temper was warned by her physician against indulging it while nursing her babe, and she had obeyed until the child was several months old, strong and healthy. At that time she became enraged at some trivial circumstance, and soon afterwards she nursed her babe, which became ill, and within an hour was dead. The changes wrought in the saliva by anger are well known. The bite of an enraged man is as much to be dreaded as that of a mad dog. Blood poisoning is almost a sure consequence of inoculation with the saliva of an angry man or brute.

Hydrophobia itself is probably a spontaneous production in canines subjected to starvation and ill-usage.

Great joy or grief produces secretions in the blood, which make it poisonous. The prostration by grief is only equaled by that of violent disease. The blood and all secretions therefrom become so affected that a long time is required to eliminate the morbific matter from the system. If this is not accomplished, lingering illness or death is the final result. This is distinct from sudden death, on the disclosure of some startling news, of grief or joy. The heart in these instances suddenly fails at the nervous shock. Successful labor is always invigorating, while unsuccessful is depressing. It was observed in the early mining days of California that a stranger passing the claims could readily discover those that paid and those that did not, by the manners of the men who were working them. If unsuccessful, they were depressed, ill with fevers and idle. If successful they were at work early and late, cheerful, well, and energetic.

Every pursuit that ennobles and elevates the mind, tranquilizes the system, enhances the general health, and prolongs life.

Such is the wonderful sway the mind holds over the body. On the other hand, we find the body exciting a powerful influence on the mind; so intense and complete that leading physiologists believe that the latter is a result of, and entirely dependent on, the former, and having no existence independent thereof.

The microscope has poured a flood of light on disease. In most cases, as with these epidemics and contagions, a specific germ is introduced into the blood and multiplies, feeding on the vital fluid. If taken into the system of a saint it will, by multiplication, produce the disease, just as certainly as in the system of the vilest malefactor. There would be more reasonable grounds for hoping to drive a hungry tiger away by mind cure, than the myriads of microbes that swarm in a drop of the fever patient’s blood, or the microbes in the lungs of a consumptive.

Then is the system of mental cure a sham? No! It claims too much. When millions of bacilli swarm in the lungs, or the micrococcus brings on fever, shall we say we are well, that the mind, as a part of God, can not be sick, and as the body is fathered by the mind it can not be? We may say this, but the inexorable logic of facts refute our opinions. We might as well attempt to stay the spring of the tiger by an effort of will.

But there is a consideration back of this. By the accumulation of an endless series of taints of body and of mind, by false ideas and views of life, the power of mind over the body can not be compared with what it would be in a perfect state of right living. This is a consideration of greatest value, for it shows us, not what the past has been, but what the future may be.

The limits of the power of the mind over the body are not known, but with knowledge it ever enlarges its boundaries. The class of diseases which may be regarded as essentially corporal, as the previously mentioned contagions produced by microbes, the effects of ptomaines, and the mineral and vegetable poisons, has its limits contracted by mental influences. Individuals in the most terrible contagions, although in contact with the sick and dying, physicians, nurses or companions, are often exempt. Their systems do not furnish the necessary conditions for growth of the disease germs. Such individuals are fearless; and it is said that their indifference to danger is their shield of protection; yet it is often the case that when they become exhausted by excessive care, they fall victims. This conclusion, however, may be safely drawn, that there are conditions of body or mind, or of both, invulnerable to disease. What these conditions are we may not now know, but it is possible to know.

In these cases of purely physical disease, the body reacts on the mind, and the giving way of the will is the first indication of the approach of the malady. It is folly to talk of the will overcoming a disease that has insidiously sapped its foundation. This is not saying that were the wrong conditions of living righted, and the taints of heredity eliminated, the power of the will would not be able to maintain the body against all succeeding influences. But to reach that perfect state will require many generations of rightly directed culture.

If grief, anger, or excessive joy are able to vitiate secretions, and cause sickness and death, a happy frame of mind, intellectual exertion and moral excellence tend to the perfect health of these secretions. Health is a condition to be gained and kept by careful observance of its laws, and these laws are of the physical as well as mental being.

Whatever truth there is in these newly named theories of healing, is identically the same as that claimed by the mesmerists and magnetists. The process, the cause and effect, are the same under the name of Christian Science as that of mesmerism. In the large class of diseases called nervous, the soothing influence of another mind is of unmeasured benefit. Even the hope aroused that some mind is exciting its will to relieve, is beneficial. The strengthened will and imagination are wonderfully healing agencies. While the influence of the mind over the body is admitted without contradiction so long as the former is connected with the latter, the limitations of the physical world must be felt. There is a sickness of the mind, and of the body, and over the latter the mind has not full control. Yet with a race freed from hereditary taint, having for generations obeyed the laws of health until its conditions are fixed by heredity, it may not be said what the power of the mind may be.

If the mother can stamp her unborn child with the monstrosity she fancies in her fright; if she can impart the insane thirst for stimulants and the fiendish hate and cruelty of savages, might she not by glorified conditions, exalted motives, and the over-shadowing consciousness that her mind is divine, the creator of an immortal being, endow the child with angelic qualities and make it a divine being? The children of many generations of such mothers, what exalted spiritual and intellectual attainment would be their inheritance!

Nor should the mother alone be held responsible, as has been the custom. Divine motherhood is linked with divine fatherhood, the opposite element, but of equal value. The germinal impulse carries with it all that has entered into the lives of remotest parental ancestors, and the recipient mother acts upon it, and is reacted on, until her entire being, physical and spiritual, is modified. However grand the ideal excellence of the future, it is not realized in the present, and may not be for ages to come. The present race of men are born with the sins of all the past stamped into their constitutions. It is folly to teach that there is no sickness except in the mind; idle to teach faith can cure disease, the seeds of which were planted unnumbered generations ago, and grown rankly from parent to child. Purity, true nobility of life, spiritual culture, devotion to right, and obedience to the laws of health may be accepted and the ideal attempted, but not fully realized now.

Meanwhile, old methods must not be wholly discarded. Old remedies can not be safely cast aside. The lame must have their staff and crutch until strong enough to walk alone.

Conclusion.—The Ideal may be sketched in our fond fancy, and the attempt to realize it began by living a higher, nobler, purer life. Know we what this means? It means more than simple living. There is everything beyond that. What this means will be best comprehended by referring to the preceding pages, where it is taught that there is a thought-atmosphere, from which sensitive minds receive a glorious flood of inspiration. Magnetism, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, or the states of healing by Faith or Christian Science are but the temporary approaches to that one condition of sensitiveness. In that condition great changes may be affected in the vital forces promotive of the normal functions of the various organs, as fear, grief, remorse, etc., may disturb their healthy action, and induce pathological changes in them.

Death will come to all physical forms sooner or later, for it is as necessary to the fulfillment of our destiny as to the transformation of the caterpillar to the butterfly; but disease and all the sufferings, losses, and disappointments in its train, may be, and will be, eliminated, when mortal life is so ordered that it will constantly walk in the shadow of spiritual forces.

Then sickness will be regarded as a mark of ignorance, if not a crime.

What the Immortal State Must Be.

The continuance of existence beyond the grave has been made to depend on belief in certain dogmas, or at least the condition of that life has been made thus dependent by the religious systems of the world. Now that science encroaches on the realm of faith, and these dogmas are questioned, and immortality which seemingly rests on and is supported by them, becomes doubtful; yet, if it be a fact that man has a spirit, which is immortal, this is the most over-shadowing fact in the universe; one of profoundest interest and most consonant with the desires of the human heart. Around it gather our fondest hopes and brightest dreams; by it the seeming disparity and injustice of this life are compensated; the tearful eye is dried; the broken heart finds balm, and the burdens of time and place cast aside, and the possibilities of the aspiring spirit may be realized. It is an unfailing staff in the hands of those who mourn the loved and lost, offering the only adequate consolation in the cruel hour when we stand by the couch of death, feeling that, beyond, darkness gathers thick and broods over a sea of eternal silence, from which only echo responds to our call of the name of the departed. Then it is that hope lifts our hearts from despair, and a positive assurance of the continuity of life is worth all else in the world.

The Belief in Immortality has been made a Curse.—This belief, so full of delight and rainbowed with anticipations, has been made, from the dawn of man’s religious nature, the means of inflicting unspeakable tortures, both of mind and body. Selfishness thrust the priest between man and the invisible world of spirit, and made immortality the instrument wherewith it could rule with diabolical despotism over mankind. Even when the rain-maker shook his rattling calabash at the sky, and beseeched the moisture-giving clouds to send down rain, the priestly order had fast hold on the superstitious savage; and in all the transformations of history, surging with the coming and going of countless generations and the ebb and flow of empires, never for a moment has this grip been loosened. The power of the temporal ruler has been second to that of the class who held the keys of life beyond the grave. What if the king could cast into a dungeon, condemn to the cross or the flames? That were pain for a moment, or, at most, for the few years of this life; and of what insignificance these short years, or the most terrible tortures human ingenuity could invent, to the infinite tortures extending through an eternal existence? Pharaoh might command Egypt to-day, but, to-night, his spirit would be summoned before the tribunal of the Dead; and those austere priestly judges would decide whether he be cast to the crocodiles of the Nile to become extinct, or again, clad in his mummified body, resurrected and purified, a companion of the gods.

What a position for an ignorant man! Immortality is the Promethean curse, enabling the vultures to inflict never-ending torments. The sweetest boon is oblivion, and that is denied. The sun may fade from the heavens and the stars cease to shine; but the spirit can not escape its doom, and will not have experienced even then the first pangs of its sufferings. Is it strange that men went wild with this dreadful belief? Ignorant men, who feared the unseen, intangible spirits of the air more than the accumulated tortures that human ruler might inflict, saw in the priests who claimed the power to control this intangible world, who held the keys of the Great Unseen, the only hope of escape. How well that order has seized its vantage, and, fanning the flames of superstition, stifled reason and led poor Humanity over the quaking bog-lands and reeking marshes of myth-theology!

This life is nothing compared with that which is to come. Its most innocent pleasures are sins; for the body itself is sinful, and by sin man came into the world. Pressed down beneath the weight of universal disaster, the doctrine of Jesus was the wail of despair. Take no heed of the morrow. Live only for to-day. Give all to the poor. Resist not the tyrant wrong. This life is a vale of tears, and the eye that weeps most shall be the brightest in glory in the life which is to come. O Jesus, on thy cross, what infinite misery has come from this misconception of thy teachings! Men, believing that their immortal spirits were chained to sinful bodies, rushed in herds to the mountain cave or lonely desert, and, by fasting and thirst, by hair-cloth garments wearing through the flesh to the bone, by flagellation and daily crucifixion, sought to expiate the sins of the body, and enter the next life purified.

Believing in an immortal life, they sought to force their belief on others, and proselyte by sword and torture. Dogmatism grew rankly luxuriant in this hot-bed of ignorance and superstition. Humanity was bound to the wheel; and ingenuity exhausted its skill in demoniacal inventions whereby severer pangs might be evoked, that through physical suffering the spirit might gain purification. Poor humanity might well exclaim, “Blessed be oblivion to this curse of Immortality!”

Not to lead a happy and perfect life, but to avoid the pangs of hell, to escape the consequences of original sin, was the object to which all energies were directed. And there was obligation to propagate this belief until received by all the world. Out of this doctrine came centuries of persecution, such as the heathen world never dreamed of. If your relative or friend accepted what you regarded erroneous dogmas, which would send him to eternal torment would it not be plain duty for you to use every means to persuade and convince him, even if necessary, by force? For should you, in last extremity, destroy his body, what fleeting consequence, if you saved thereby his soul!

The savage, having killed his enemy, trembles at the thought that the spirit has escaped, and may work untold mischief. He sits down at the cannibal feast, that, by eating the body, he may absorb the spirit, and thus be doubly avenged, by blotting out his foe, by making his body and spirit a part of himself.

Noble and spotless lives have grown out of Christianity, as out of other systems of religion, as beautiful lilies grow out of the slime; but they grew in defiance of its teachings, which make this life of no value compared with the next. As all religions rest on the foundation of belief in a future life, so all the religious wars which have cursed mankind are referable to it; all persecutions; all the unutterable sufferings, physical and spiritual, which have made the centuries one long night of agony. It has blotted the star of hope from the heavens, and filled the vaulted darkness with the bitter wails of despair.

Humanity rolling onward in a vast river, to plunge over the crags of death into a bottomless pit of eternal agony, and the best that Christianity has offered, or can offer, is eternal psalm-singing to golden harps. “Saving souls” has been the theme of the Christian world for nearly two thousand years, and various have been the means employed. Dungeon, rack, the flames, social ostracism—how shall I find space to catalogue the endless names of methods which curdle the blood at bare mention! The cannibal, feasting on his foe, is engaged in the honorable effort of saving a soul, and the priestly torturer is doing the same. The Brunos were chained amid the fagots’ flame, to save their souls and the souls of others led astray by their doctrines. Go down into the dimly lighted tribunal hall, where God’s vicegerents sit in judgment. Before them stands one gone astray in belief. There is no argument of words. On the table is a little thimble with a screw at one side. The heretic places his fingers therein, and the judges turn the screws down into the tender nails. The compressed lips grow white, the veins knot on the temples, beaded sweat gathers on the brow, as slowly down pierces the relentless steel, until at last, human endurance yields, and the trembling lips gasp, “Dear Christ, I believe!” Then turn back the screws, ring the bells, and rejoice with great joy; for a soul is saved!

From that hall, go down a flight of stone steps to another in the bowels of the earth, where the walls are reeking with mold, and the lamp darkens in the foul vapor. Tread with care on the slippery floors, for the slime of years has gathered; and now we have reached a great stone, which we can turn back like a trap-door, and reach an opening. Lower your lamp, feebly burning in the fetid atmosphere. There are walls of stone, there is stone for a floor. It is like a jug without an outlet, except at the top. At the bottom is something moving, living! Hush! It moans and has speech! An iron ring wears the bleeding ankle to the bone, to the ring is a chain, and the other end of the chain is fastened to the floor. What monstrous crime has this man committed that he should thus suffer? Nothing, except he has thought for himself—is lost; and his judges are making the desperate attempt to save his soul!

Saving souls, not the life here, but that which is to come, has been the blight and curse of mankind. The doctrine of “one world at a time,” and the present supreme, is a reaction against this essentially vicious dogma. Neither extreme may be true; for the truth is the “golden mean,” which makes the future life a continuity of this, carrying forward all its ideals to full realization, and making the spiritual realm held in abeyance to as fixed and unchangeable laws as the material world.

By knowledge, man has been led out of the fogs to the highlands of free thought, and aroused from the nightmare of theology, which for ages held him in thraldom. Those were the ages when God and Christ were inwrought into the Constitution of the State, and the Holy Bible was the foundation of the law. Those were the ages of St. Bartholomew massacres, of autos-da-fé, of the rack and the fagot. Those were the ages when the day was darkened by the smoke of burning cities, and the fair fields gleamed white with the bones of the slain. Those were the ages when the whole Christian world engaged itself in saving souls!

A Jesus may suffer on the cross; not only one, but ten thousand may die, admirable in self-sacrifice and examples of firm adhesion to their sense of duty; but, for saving souls, their sacrifice is lost; for they suffer for a misconception of the plan of the world. Man has never been lost, and can not be lost, and hence can not be saved by the blood of one or ten thousand sacrifices.

If the future life is a continuity of this, then the perfection of religion is the making of this life perfect. Not by crucifixion of the body, not by suffering or disappointment, but by complete and harmonious culture, can this be accomplished.

The New Method.—To solve the problem of immortality by the methods of Science, to bring it up from the marshlands of conjecture to the region of absolute knowledge, belongs to the present age and generation. It is a task they can and must accomplish. It has for so many ages been the fertile field of superstition, that it seems impossible to disentangle it from its unsatisfactory wrappings. The investigation must commence with the physical man as the basis of the spiritual, as through and by means of the body he is related to the physical world. He is the superlative being; the last, greatest and yet incomplete effort of creative energy. All departments of science gather around him as a center, and to have perfect knowledge of him is to comprehend the universe.

In the earliest ages; in the very childhood of the race, the momentous question was asked: What am I? The solution was felt to be fraught with momentous consequences not only in this life but the interminable future which was vaguely shadowed in the mind of savage man. The answers given became the foundations of the great religious systems of the world. The conjecture of untutored minds was received as the true system of causation, and growing hoary with age arrogated to itself infallible authority, and required implicit faith, and the exercise of reason, only, in making palatable the requirements of that faith. Conceived in an age when nature was an unknown realm, when science opened her mysteries to the understanding, and one by one, dogmas claiming infallibility were shown to be false, there of necessity was antagonism and conflict. I do not propose to enlarge on the theological aspect of this subject more than incidentally. That treatment has grown “stale, flat and unprofitable,” for every drop of vital juice it contained has been extracted long ago. The interminable sects, wrangling over the dogmatic solution of this vital question of man’s origin and destiny, arriving at nothing determinate, wrangling with each other and themselves, are not incentives to beguile the earnest truth-seeker to follow their paths. If metaphysical theology contained the germ of a truthful solution, satisfaction would have resulted ages ago, and the mind, reposing contented with the answer, would have employed its energies in other directions. Instead, there is restlessness, turmoil, conflict and indecision, and never has been an answer so broad and deep in Catholicity of truth as to meet the demand. If science fails also, it can not retrieve its failure by assumed infallibility. Its teachings are ever tentative and prophecies of final triumph, as the grandest study of mankind is man, the crowning work of science is the solution of this vexed question.

Physical Man.—First, as most tangible and obvious in this investigation, is the physical man, the body, the temple of the psyche. The student, even when imbued with the doctrine of materialism, arises from the study of the physical machine with wonder and surprise akin to awe, declaring man to be fearfully and wonderfully made.

It is not surprising that we die, but that we live. The rupture of a nerve fiber, the obstruction of a valve, the momentary cessation of breath, the introduction of a mote at some vital point, brings this most complex structure to eternal rest. By what constant oversight, by what persistency of reparation is it preserved from ruin!

This physical man is an animal, amenable to the laws of animal growth. His body is the type of which theirs are imperfect copies. From two or three mineral substances his bones are crystalized, and articulated as the bones of all vertebrate animals, and over them the muscles are extended. From the amphioxus, too low in the scale of being to be called a fish; a being without organs, without a brain; little more than an elongated sack of gelatinous substance, through which a white line marks the position of the spinal cord and the future spinal axis; there is a slow and steady evolution to the perfected skeleton of man. His osseous structure is the type of all. The fin of the fish, the huge paddle of the whale, the cruel paw of the tiger, the hoof of the horse, the wing of the bird, and the wonderfully flexible hand of man, so exquisite in adaptations to be taken as an unqualified evidence of design, are all fashioned out of the same elementary bones, after one model. The change of form to meet the wants of their possessors, results from the relative enlargement or atrophy of one or more of these elements. When the fleshy envelope is stripped away, it is astonishing how alike these apparently divergent forms really are. In the whale the flesh unites the huge bones of the fingers and produces a broad, oar-like fin; in the tiger the nails become retractile talons; in the bird some of the fingers are atrophied, while others are elongated to support the feathers which are to offer resistance to the air in flight; in the horse the bones of the fingers are consolidated, and the united nails appear in the hoof.

If there exists such perfect similarity in the bony structure of man to the animal world, the muscular system for which it furnishes support offers the same likeness. Trace any muscle in the human body from its origin to its termination, mark the points where it seizes the bones, the function it performs, and then dissect the most obscure or disreputable member of the vertebrate kingdom, and you will find the same muscle performing the same function. The talons of the tiger are extended and flexed by muscles, similar to those which give flexibility to the human hand, and the same elements are traceable in the ponderous paddle of the whale.

More vital than the bony framework, or the muscles to which it gives support, is the nervous system, seemingly not only the central source of vital power, but the means of union and sympathetic relation of every cell and fiber of the entire body.

The brain has been aptly compared to a central telegraphic office, and the nerves to the extended wires, which hold in communication and direct relation all the organs, and from which the functions of each are directed.

The nervous system is the bridge which spans the chasm between matter and spirit, and the battle between Materialism and Spiritualism must be fought not only with brain, but in the province of brain. However we may regard the spiritual being as an independent entity, when we study this subject from the physical side, we are compelled to accept the intricate blending of the influence of the brain on the expression of that being, during its connection therewith. The issue directly stated is this: Does the brain yield mind as a result of organic changes in its cells and fibers, or is mind a manifestation through and by means of the brain of something beyond and superior?

It is admitted by profound thinkers that the brain and its functions is an unfathomed mystery, and that investigators must be content with what may be called secondary causes and effects. Phosphorus and sulphur may be essential for the activity of brain tissue, yet it is absurd to claim that a super-abundance of these elements wrote an Iliad, or solved the problem of gravitation. It is not phosphorus, or carbon, or nitrogen, however vigorously oxidized, which pulsates in the emotions of friendship or love; that feels and thinks and knows; that recollects the past, anticipates the future, and reaches out in infinite aspirations for perfection.

The actions of thought on the brain, the effort compelling the body to serve the bidding of the spirit, may consume this element and many others, as the movement of an engine consumes the coal and wastes the steam; but the coal and the steam are only the means whereby mind impresses itself on matter.

The physicist studies the brain as one wholly unacquainted with an engine would study that machine, and mistaking it for a living being, might be supposed to do. He would observe its motion, and, weighing the coal consumed and the products of combustion, would say that they appeared in steam, which after propelling the piston was waste. The design of the engine, the effect of these combinations and this waste, this observer would claim to be the guiding intelligence. And he would further argue that so much coal in the grate, so much water in the boiler and there appears an equivalent of intelligence, and the waste may be predetermined by chemical formulæ.

Until the threshold of the functional activity of the brain and the nervous system have been passed, conclusions should be modestly expressed.

If it be claimed that man is a natural being, originated and sustained by natural laws, that he came without miracle, then do we unite the margins of the human and animal kingdoms, and are satisfied with placing man at the head of the animal world? An interminable and unbroken series of beings extends in a gradual gradation downwards, until the organs by which the phenomena of life are manifested are lost one by one, the senses disappear, until we arrive at what has been aptly termed “protoplasm,” not an organized form, but simply organizable matter, or matter from which organic forms can be produced.

If, in reviewing this chain of beings, slowly arising by constant evolution, we closely examine several of its consecutive links, we shall find that while each ascending link is apparently complete, yet it is only the germ out of which the next is evolved in superior forms. Each link is prophecy of future superiority. The fulfillment of one age can be traced until man appears as the last term in the physical series.

They who teach this doctrine of evolution, which is to life what the law of gravitation is to worlds, also teach that united with the doctrine of “conservation of force,” the hope of immortality becomes a dream.

What a sham they make of creation! What a turmoil for no result! Infinite ages of progress and evolution, during which elemental matter, by force of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and incarnate its forces in living beings; ages of struggle upwards from low to high, from sensitive to sentient, from sentient to intellectual, from zoöphyte to man! And now, having accomplished this, and given man exquisite susceptibility of thought, of love, of affection; making him the last factor in the series, he is doomed to perish! What is gained by this travail of the ages? Would it not have been as well had the series stopped with the huge saurians of the primeval slime, or the mastodon and mammoth of the pre-historic times, as with the man. As each factor in the series prophecies future forms, so does man read in the same light, prophecy-forms beyond. They can not be in the line of greater physical perfection, for in the days of Greece and Rome, man was as perfect physically, as is seen by their sculptures, as to-day. Ages ago, this exceeding beauty was attained. It cannot be in the evolution of a being superior to man, for as in each lower animal imperfect organs or structures, or partially employed functions, are improvable and perfected by succeeding forms, in man the archetype is complete, and no partially developed organ indicates the possibility of future change.

Progress having arrived at its limits with the body, changes its direction, and appears in the advancement of mind. Death closes the career of individuality, and we live only in thoughts—our selfhood is absorbed in the ocean of being. Mankind perfects as a whole, and the sighed-for millenium is coming bye-and-bye.

Of what avail is it to us if future generations are wise and noble, if we pass into nonentity? Of what avail to them to be wise and noble, if life is only the fleeting hour? Not yet can we believe Nature to be such a sham—such a cruel failure. The spirit rebels against the supposition of its mortality. The body is its habiliment. Shall the coat be claimed to be the entire man? Shall the garments ignore the wearer?

This is the animal side of man. Physically composed of the same elements, and having passed through these innumerable changes, he is an epitome of the universe. As man was foreshadowed in remotest ages as the crowning type in the series of organic life, so man foreshadows superior excellence. Springing out of his physical perfectibility, arises a new world of spiritual wants and aspirations, unanswered and unanswerable in mortal life.

Man a Dual Being.—While Theology, Brahminical, Buddhistical or Christian, teaches that man is an incarnate spirit, independent of the physical body, created by miracle, supported by a succession of miracles, and saved by a miracle from eternal death, material science, as at present taught by its leading exponents, wholly ignores his spiritual life, and declares him to be a physical being only. It is not my purpose to reconcile these conflicting views. Truths never require reconciliation. They never conflict; and if the results of two different methods of investigation are at variance, one or the other is in error, or both, perchance, and the only reconciliation is the elimination of that error. The egotisms of theology and the pride of science array their votaries in opposition, while the truth remains unquestioned in the unexplored middle ground. Man is neither a spirit nor a body; he is the intimate union of both. In and through his physical being, the spiritual nature is evolved from the forces of the elements and is expressed. There is somewhat more enduring than the resultants of chemical unions, action and reactions in his physical body. Beneath this organic construction is that which remains, to which it is the scaffolding which assists, while it conceals the development of the real edifice.

Paul, the most profound thinker of all the founders of Christianity, very forcibly and clearly expresses this duality when he makes the distinction between “the celestial body” and the “terrestrial.” In mortal life these are united, and death is simply their separation. His disciples have grossly misunderstood and mistaught his explanation. The terrestrial body cannot inherit eternal life, which is the birthright of the celestial. Death is the severance of the cord which unites these bodies in the seemingly indivisible web of earth-life. The terrestrial returns to the elements from which it came; the celestial remains individualized. It is unusual for writers on science at the present day to quote the Bible in support of their theories; but no author before Paul’s time or since has given a more complete philosophy of life, and a key wherewith to unlock the secrets of the grave.

Definitions.—The comparison of terms has led to the strangest processes of reasoning, and the classifications in which some writers delight, have served as a means of intellectual gymnastics, rather than data for clear reasoning. In the threefold division of body, soul and spirit, by using the two last terms, at times as meaning something essentially distinct, and at others, as synonymous with intelligence, and each other; and again making soul and body the same, a most admirable means for the jugglery of disputation is furnished, which has not been left unused, and by which the discussion of this subject has been befogged.

There is the physical body, and the spirit to which the manifestations of mind belong. The term soul has no meaning, except as synonymous with body or spirit, and hence is discarded in this discussion.

Pre-existence.—It has been taught that the ego, the immortal part, is from God, and at death returns to God who gave it. The eternal existence in the past of spirits, is presupposed, and that they await the development of bodies for them to enter, and earth-life, therefore, to them is a probationary state. The history of this theory is of profound interest, as it is wrought into the tissue of received theology, and its beginning traced to the conjectures of primitive man. It ignores the rule of law, and makes the birth of every child a miracle. The ancient doctrine of re-incarnation, lately revived, meets the same objection. A spirit, perfect in its individuality, through a germ becomes clad in flesh. It does not do this because the mortal state is preferable; for the spirit constantly desires to escape from its thraldom. It is compelled by a direct mandate of God to undergo this metamorphosis as a punishment, and means of atonement. According to this view, the development of man becomes entirely different from that of animals. There is no law, order or unity of organic forms. Creation is an ever-enacting miracle. When this scheme is referred to fixed laws in the spirit realm, the known causes acting in the physical world are but transferred to the spiritual, where they at once pass beyond recognition.

It is needless to say that with such speculations, an explanation having any claim to scientific accuracy has nothing in common.

Origin of Spirit.—If there is an immortal spirit, whether its duration be eternal or measured by time, as we can not go beyond the realm of law—by which we mean the fixed order of causation—it must date its beginning with that of the body. The history of the development of the germ is a correspondence of that of the spirit. If the parents have immortal spirits as well as mortal bodies, then while their physical bodies support the corporeal being, their spiritual natures must in an equal measure support the spirit of the fetus, and the growth of its dual nature be similar, both receiving nourishment from the mother. The two forms mature together; one pervading and being the exact copy of the other.

Objections.—As the processes of life and that lower order of intelligence known as instinct, are manifested in animals, identically the same as they are in man, and by the wonderful interrelationship existing between all the members of the animal world, from protozoa to man, what is true of one must be true of all, it follows that if it is necessary to evoke the aid of the spirit for the explanation of the phenomena connected with man, it is equally necessary in the case of animals. Granting this, the next step is to show the absurdity of the idea that all the infinitude of beings, from microbes to leviathans, have a life beyond the evening of their brief day. The issue is fairly stated, but the claim regarded as absurd is not made. All may have spirits, from the lowest to the highest, holding the same relations to the body in which it is gestated as the spirit of man holds to his physical form. That such should be the case is a necessity of the position taken by this work. It is not, however, held, nor is it necessary that it should be, that the spirit of animals is immortal, or exist after the death of the body. They have not attained the requisite development, which has been likened to an arch which requires the finish, by putting in place of the keystone before the staging on which it rests can be removed, leaving the arch permanent. If this staging is removed before the keystone is put in place, the entire structure falls in ruins. In man, the arch is completed. Yet, as the animal merges into man through intermediate forms—and the infant knows less than the perfect animal—the line of demarkation is drawn with difficulty. It is like the boundary between the hill and its valley: both meet somewhere; but no one can say where the valley begins and the hill ends. A certain degree of development is essential, below which spirit cannot exist independently of the physical body, and above which this is possible. Any theory which of necessity advocates the immortal life of animals as well as of man, fails by maintaining that which may readily be proved an absurdity. For if the intelligent dog or elephant have existence in the future, so may the fish, the mollusk, the monad, and even the speck of protoplasm, which loses itself in unorganic matter. This was put forth as an unanswerable objection to the immortality of the human spirit, for it was said one or the other horn of the dilemma must be taken; for as there is no break in the chain of beings, between man and animals, even to the monad, if a future life belongs to him, equally is it an inheritance of theirs; and if it be denied them, so must it be lost to him. In mental and spiritual attainment there is a gulf between man and the animal world, vastly broader and more profound than is required to give him the inheritance of immortality which is also theirs.

In time this gulf is as wide as from the present to several millions of years previous to the glacial period. Prof. Wallace is so astonished at the difference between the brain of the most savage man and the highest animal, that he declares the theory of evolution, which he was first to promulgate, while it accounts for all the forms of life, here fails, and that man stands alone, the creature of another creation. While he says that man “May even have lived in the miocene or eocene period, when not a single mammal was identical in form with any existing species,” yet he does not place the origin of man at a sufficiently remote era in those receding æons of time.

In the primitive human being, thought began its conquest of the world, and the man of to-day represents the accumulation of all experiences since his ancestors fought with cunning craft the huge megatherium, and disputed for supremacy of the tertiary forests with palæotherium, and other monsters of that age.