modern Spiritualism in its organic and working phase is not indeed, “a house divided against itself;" and whether it really contains a rallying cry worthy of the name “religion." It does not tend to organization and unity, but its mission seems to be merely provisional, as the great disintegrator of the old order, and it is effecting that with marvelous speed! The majority of its advocates are iconoclasts. It is an imagebreaker rather than a spiritual builder. Its societies are declining. It is in the " feet and toes" of the old order, and its symbol is division! When that order is finally dissolved, we may seriously ask if the mission of spiritism will not then have been accomplished? Yet there is a precious something in Spiritualism that will never die, and we heartily indorse the sentiment expressed by our brother in a letter under date of Jan. 15, 1901:

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God and the angel world did not permit this wave of Spiritualism to come to this earth over fifty years ago as a curse. It had its divine mission. The truth it has taught will never die. It was demanded to startle the atheist, the agnostic and the cold materialistic scientist, and open the way for them to know of the finer invisible forces of a future conscious life. Saying all of this, I have not a particle of sympathy with the frauds, imposters, agnostic Spiritists, materialistic Spiritists, brawling atheistic Spiritists, and this continual egotistic antagonism on Spiritualistic platforms. In none of these senses am I a Spiritualist, nor will I be called one. I said the same last summer in several of the camp meetings, and wrote it recently in the Spiritualist journals. Man is not as pseudo-scientists say, an evolved monkey. His soul did not originally float in primitive fire-mist, wriggle in a tadpole, howl in a wolf, nor grin in an African baboon. No! Regal-souled men and women are not the children of anthropoid apes but the children of God, and legitimate heirs of his immortality. And now, as of old, God "maketh his angels ministering spirits." The more startling phenomena are largely the work of demons or earth-bound spirits, and yet God has not barred away from our earth the higher spirits the angels of love and truth.

They come from the spirit realms with messages of sympathy and peace."

In his January Temple of Health, (1901) Dr. Peebles published a statement of "Aims and Principles," from which we append a few extracts:

"As the past molded the present; as the wisdom of the ages was not born to-day; and as an inspired apostle once wrote: Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant,' so I would not have Spiritists, sectarists, and secularists longer ignorant of the Church of Divine Truth, with its gifts and manifold graces, the doors of which swing invitingly inward, and over which is inscribed in letters of flaming light, 'Come with us and we will do you good.'

"Freely entering this church, or sympathizing assembly of souls, anyone dissatisfied-if so choosing-may just as freely depart from us, with a hearty God bless you in the pursuance of all that is good, and true, and right.'

"This church is not instituted for saints, for the aristocratic rich adorned in silks and satins, nor for any particular class, or caste, but for the people, regarding the rich, the poor, and the unfortunate alike, as brothers brothers and sisters all.

"Truth being the eternal fitness of laws and principles, and the ideal to be attained,-is divine and unchangeable. It recognizes Infinite Spirit as the embodiment of all energy, life, consciousness, purpose, love, wisdom, and will. And while in loving, trustful reverence, we invoke the presence of angels, we worship this Infinite Spirit of wisdom and love, manifest throughout the measureless universe.

"Conscious of our individuality and innate divinity, we believe in the continuity of life, the necessity of obedience to the principles of right, and in a just, yet disciplinary retribution for the violation of all law. We believe in right generation in a high moral education, and in love, guided by wisdom as the great redemptive force for the reclamation of souls in all worlds. We believe in the uplifting energy of evolution-in arbitration, and in all the reforms under whatever name, in whatever land, and by whomsoever advocated, that educate and

morally benefit humanity. We believe in that pure and undefiled religion which visits the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions and keeps one unspotted from the world. And while it is vastly, if not infinitely better, to repent and reform to-day, we believe in the opportunity for progress for each and all in that more ethereal realm of spirit beyond the change called death, for through all time, God is love, and the door of mercy is never shut."

It will be seen that the form of labor which Dr. Peebles has mapped out for the present summer 1901 - is largely along the lines above mapped out. We God-speed him in the work he feels impulsed to perform, but we can not avoid the conviction that the church above outlined is essentially of the old order, and will at best serve only as a provisional haven for aspiring and restless souls until the church of the new dispensation shall materialize on earth. We now seem to be passing through a great transition from petrified tyrannies to a new freedom; from the misery and want of the Iron Age to the joy and gladness of the new Golden Age; from the era of strife and doubt to an era of love and saving knowledge. Hence, when the builders began to erect on earth the solid masonry of the New, we conceive there will be a cleancut division between the edifice constructed from the one "Mountain Rock," and the rotten, moth-eaten fabrics of the old. Those builders will restore,—

The long lost scepter of a righteous rule,

Bring heaven below, and lift earth to heaven,
And make it one with the brotherhood of suns.

A new heart will be beating in humanity;

Brother will turn to brother, and a world-wide comradeship

Will knit soul to soul and race to race, until a

Song shall rise and fill the world with excess of joy.
Again the "solar language " will move the lips of men,
Again the noble arts will live,

Again the melodies will rise and

Fill the earth with poesy and song.

XLVII

BIRTHDAY MUSINGS AND MISCELLANEOUS

ITEMS

(TO DR. J. M. PEEBLES, BATTLE CREEK.)

To-day in all the vales are seen

The glossy leaves of laurels green,
With glimpses of April snow between.
But soon the spring with warmth replete,
Presaging summer's hastening feet,
Will work a transformation sweet.

Those pearly snows will disappear.
The fairest flowers of all the year
Will bloom in winsome beauty here;
And so, good friend, upon thy brow,
Mid chaplets from the laurel bow,
The snow of time is drifting now.

But still the glad eternal spring
Shall o'er thy path new glories fling,
And to thy heart new treasures bring.
Though great thine earthly life and grand,
The noblest still remains unscanned,

In fairest realms of morning land.

So shall sweet peace abide with thee,
Of brighter dawn yet to be.

Creation rings with prophecy,

Though snows among the laurels lie,
Thy day of endless night is nigh,
Where love and glory can not die.

Sarah W. Keen.

Life abounds in unfathomable mysteries. With some, dangers and mishaps seem to be ever present, encountering

tragic scenes at every turn. Others lead a charmed life, walking in the midst of stirring events all their days the wide earth over, and never receive a scar. Though our brother has crossed the Atlantic Ocean thirteen times, thrice circumnavigated the globe, clasping the hands of kings, dining with princes and tenting under the open sky at night with savages; though traveling by steamers and railways, and lecturing in nearly every civilized country abroad, and in every American State in the Union except one, never has he been the unfortunate subject of an accident by sea or land. Is he indeed, within the charmed circle of the gods? Do guides unseen, and guardians from realms invisible protect? Are mortal pilgrimages mapped out and automatically fixed by the stars, or are they purposed, outlined and impressionally directed by those grand old souls that graced the elder ages of antiquity? Some there are whom it would almost seem are paying a penalty and expiating sins committed in past careers, thus balancing accounts with the Karmic law; lives which exhibit one unbroken series of tragedies, never knowing aught but sorrow and struggle, continually bearing the heavy crosses of life— lives which, from our human point of view, are failures. Others there are who seem to have the way prepared for them by guardian powers; lives who come to perform a distinct mission in the world, to whom consecration and opportunity are given equal to the successful performance of their task. This is not a chance world. Every unit in the race series has a long antecedent history and prospective fulfillment, and the present is an essential link in the chain of lives.

Like most men of mark, the Doctor is a man of moods. Sometimes he is quick and impulsive, and then so solidly deliberate as to border upon a rigid conservatism. May not these in part result from invisible influences, of which he is often concsious? This matter of moods may be applied to his writings, which run the scale from the most fraternal and tender spirit down to the satire of a Juvenal, or the invective of a Pitt; and yet, I never heard him speak an ill, malicious word of an opponent. As a controversialist, he is never averse to