"Education, justice, equality, are the watchwords of all advanced thinkers. Education should be not merely the learning of words, but integral,-a cultivation of the intellect, of the affections, of the emotions, of the moral nature, of the higher intuitive powers,- all those qualities that make the good man, the good woman. The sexes should be educated together, each assisting in the mental and moral development of the other. The education of the future, if in accordance with the genius of the age, will popularize hygiene, art, music, industry, integrity, peace, freedom, and sanitary reforms. "Science, though not infallible, is sifting theologies. Buried Asiatic cities are being exhumed; the Oriental seas are giving up their dead; Central Africa is being explored; cables are girding the globe; and the Rocky Mountains have dwindled almost to sand-hills for the laying of the iron trail, along which schoolboys will soon fly their kites, and over which graceful summer swallows will sing their vesper praise. With steam for breath, and lightning for brain, the winds and seas conquered, the rock-ribbed mountains at our feet, now who will give us an air-ship, some aerial velocipede, that, swiftly cutting those clear atmospheric strata that look down upon northern ice-belts, shall land explorers upon the inner shores that fringe the polar seas? Is not the Columbus born, that, leading the way, will enable us to clasp the hands of those inhabitants, who, in isolation, have so long summered and wintered in the frigid regions of the north pole? Every acre explored, the whole earth is to become the servant of man, with palms and dates flourishing in deserts, flowers blooming along the highways, and fruit trees bending with matured sustenance, wide and extended as the avenues of travel. The living Christ is on the way. There is a coming millennium for humanity. It will be a practical age. Men and women will be kings and queens, exact equals, and laws unto themselves. The principle of love will link heart to heart, hearth to hearth, hamlet to hamlet, and nation to nation,- a banded brotherhood and sisterhood of interests, restoring the poet's Eden. . . . Heaven on earth! "It is grand to contemplate optimism from the standpoint of the deep thinker; but any loose, illogical, illy-explained system of optimism-that lumps moral qualities and immoral tendencies into one conglomerated mass, that seeks the destruction of all distinctions between vice and virtue, and inferentially says, that pirates, murderers, thieves, sensualists, vampires, impostors, are doing their work,' thus implying that their work is legitimate, orderly, beautiful, and divine—is deserving of little consideration. The advocates and adherents of such a theory are entitled only to pity. 'That pirates, impostors, and all such characters, are doing a' work' is very evident; and so is the inebriate doing a work, when he pours into his body poisoned liquors. This work fruits out in blotches, diseases, poverty, wretchedness, and a general dwarfing of the moral nature. Had not all such work better be left undone? Is there no way to the enjoyment of the heaven of temperance, purity, and harmony, save through the winding way of drunkenness and debauchery? Such a dogma is,— 'A monster of such frightful mien, That to be hated needs but to be seen.' It is quite time for Spiritualists to sift the chaff from the wheat, the sense from the nonsense, afloat in their name, and, gathering up their precious truths, now lying around loosely,' put them into shape and system, into a declaration of principles, for acceptance and practice. "The organizing of harmonial associations - banded brotherhoods and sisterhoods, based upon equality would, while destroying all antagonisms between stolen capital and daily toil, make labor attractive. Furthermore, sinking selfishness into self-sacrifice, they would do away with isolation, and this crushing poverty that so fearfully obtains in the great cities. Those united societies termed Shakers' have no poor; and, on the day of Pentecost, those baptized from the heavens were inspired to hold all things in common.' "Three important needs are constantly pressing themselves upon the masses. They are necessities, and may be denomi nated by the common terms, physical, social, spiritual. As legitimate, looking to the supply of these needs so universally felt, why not organize associations, thus reducing the better theories upon this subject to practical life? Of what avail the ideal, unless it fruits into the real? 'Under physical needs may be classed home, food, clothing, labor, amusements; under social necessities may be mentioned families, friendship, sympathies, music, art, literature. "Under the head of spiritual needs may be designated moral culture, education, progress, spirit communion, unselfish angelic ministries, and such inspirations as shall help each and all to near the heavenly life on earth. How many sweet associations cluster around the endearing word 'home,'- a home possessing all the foregoing comforts and requirements, a home ever vernal with heart flowers of beauty, a home with cordial hands to clasp our own, a home where wisdom guides, and love is law! "These homes, with agricultural products for a physical basis, would afford the choicest opportunities for mental and moral culture. Manufactures would express the forms of use connected with such progressive movements. Commerce would be a means of supply, or, rather, a transfer of commodities, upon the basis of equivalents. Certain homes of the brotherhood would necessarily be mostly agricultural; others, horticultural; others, manufacturing; and others still would combine these in connection with the educational. A chain of sympathy and common interest, looking to the good of all, would thus grow up between these homes, whether located in this or foreign countries. "A social order, possessing these and other beneficial tendencies relating to the equality of the sexes and the strict administration of justice, will ultimately prevail throughout the world. God so wills; the angels so teach; and those who have tasted the first-fruits of the kingdom, or rather the republic, of heaven, actualized on earth, so believe. The Shakers, Essenians of the nineteenth century, are already in the vestibule of this temple. They are the only practical Christians. "Such homes should have one common and elegant building in the center, for lectures, music, educational pursuits, gymnasium exercises, amusements, etc. Around, and branching outward from this, there might be a system of cottage buildings, all in form and order. Purity the reigning principle, and culture the common aim, the interests of one should be felt to be the highest interests of all. Each should seek' another's wealth,' - that is, another's good,- and find supreme delight in serving all; and those entering into such an enterprise should do it with a life consecrated to human good and happiness. LIBRARY XXVI APPOINTED CONSUL "Watchman, tell us of the night, Higher yet that star ascends." Having been for years in connection with spirits who once lived and wrought in Oriental lands, Mr. Peebles felt an unquenchable longing to travel thither in quest of truth. In this but partially explored theater of historic and prehistoric cycles, he felt there were mines of truth yet to be opened up - mines of which scarcely a hint may be found in modern literature. To traverse the lands where the old civilizations enacted a unique chapter in the general race movement became the supreme aim of his life. His whole soul burned with a flame of love for classic lands, for the mosaics of ancient art, for the poesy and song that arose under Oriental skies. This purpose so saturated his psychic sphere that whenever he came in contact with mediums or clairvoyants, they would reflect it back to him. They saw him going over the "wide waters" to visit other lands. While lecturing in Detroit, he met Mrs. R. G. Murray, wife of a Presbyterian clergyman, who, becoming entranced by an Indian spirit calling himself "Big Thunder," said: "A bright pale-face spirit tells me to say to you, brother, you are to go over the wide waters before the leaves become many times green and sere again. You are to go in a great |