of his character some of the features of both, but more particularly the Scotch, he very prominently exhibits peculiarities that belong to neither. The more we see of American mediums and Spiritualists, and the deeper we dive into their psychological experiences, the more are we impressed by the fact, that the unsectarian, natural, free influence of Indian spirits has much to do with the broad liberality and untrammeled love of spiritual truth which characterizes advanced Americans; and the work is yet going on, intensifying from year to year. And, as new means of communication open up between the various countries of the earth, we shall behold a wider extension of this great principle of psychological action, which we believe is the great modifier of humanity. "Your brain [speaking of Mr. Peebles] is exceedingly active. The organs are sharply developed, and few of them are in a dormant state. Your body is eminently fitted for action. It is the servant of the brain in every particular; and your bodily organs and passions are entirely under the control of the mind, and subservient to its highest behests. You are lacking in vitality: you do not love life sufficiently for its own sake. Physical wants and animal necessities are disregarded by you; and you are entirely removed from the sphere of sensuous pleasure and animal indulgence. You have scarcely sufficient lung power, or arterial blood; but your peculiar temperament enables you to derive more from spiritual than physical sources. You do not feel the want of these deficiencies of the vital apparatus in the same degree as others would, of a grosser temperament. Your nervous system is excellently harmonized and balanced by your locomotive apparatus, which is long in development, and exercises much power of equilibrium over your exceedingly excitable nervous system; hence you can expend all your nerve-power in useful acts, and are inclined to be busy, continually carrying your thoughts into action, and doing a great deal of work with a very little wear and tear. "The social organs are very fully marked. This region of the brain is indicative of the feminine type. You have all the feelings of a mother, and, as it were, take a maternal interest in those with whom you come in contact. Your affections are more of the domestic than social type; hence you take everybody with whom you sympathize into the close relationship of brotherhood, and take a real interest in all with whom you become acquainted. "You are very considerate towards woman. You harmonize with her spirit very truly, and can influence the female mind quite favorably, if it is on the same plane as your own. You are capable of making many female friends. "Industry and promptness are striking characteristics. You are always busy, and can not waste time, or take sufficient rest. You would be better with more hardness and aggressiveness of character, to resist encroachments and protect self. Were it not for the fact that you have very little fear and restraining power generally, you would not have sufficient resolution to accomplish the work of your life; but your mind is free from apprehension or fear: hence you can advance with very little friction. "You are exceedingly deficient in that which leads to policy, equivocation, and suspicion. You are too open and unguarded. You have moral forethought, which keeps you straight with your conscience. You likewise manifest that quality of reserve and depth of mind which keeps you from opening up your character at once to the greater number of those you meet with; hence, though familiar with many, they may not know you thoroughly, because of a certain delicacy which restrains you from manifesting yourself beyond the limits of strict propriety. "You are naturally proud and elevated, and conduct yourself with dignity and manliness; but you are somewhat deficient in self-reliance, and like to have a positive companion with whom you can associate and take counsel. "The summit of your character culminates in your great integrity and stability of moral principle, perseverance, and sense of duty; though you may, for a moment, feel absorbed in individuals, and apparently succumb to their opinions, yet you maintain a fixed inflexibility of purpose. "You are not one of those circumspect people, who make every day of their life accord with the others; but you are ready to renounce every thing you profess, if your discoveries of truth indicate such a course. "You feel as if too much of the success of the world's struggles depended upon yourself and upon your works. Thus you do not enjoy so much spiritual beatitude and divine fellowship as you find pleasure in doing the work and promoting the interests of humanity. Your benevolence is exceedingly large and active: your sympathies are susceptible, almost to an abnormal extent. You can not come within the sphere of necessity without feeling it as your own. Yours is the spirit of the true philanthropist. "You have a prophetic and intuitive perception of the course of things, which leads you on when your want of faith and hope would cause you to flag, and give up the contest. Your mind is looking forward and backward at the same time. You see very clearly the relations between the past and the future; and the present is to you a sphere of progressive activity. "Ingenious and versatile, you can readily turn your attention to a great variety of subjects. You have much taste and literary ability; and, as the inspirational faculty is very active, you readily find material to cover the necessities of your case. You gather knowledge accurately and to the purpose; and, having great power of recollection, you have an inexhaustible fund of literary matter to fall back upon. You readily distinguish special features of thought, and can make your selections according to your require ments. "Your love of music and desire for harmony is intense. "You are a great chronologist. Your sense of time, and your ability to determine the relative dates of events, is good. Thus you are historical, and can mark epochs and the lapse of eras almost intuitively. You are also a traveler: you love to peregrinate, and visit the various parts of the world to collect their mental products. You do not notice so much the phenomena of nature as you do those of mind. Your mechanical skill takes a mental form; and you readily sketch out a subject as a builder would a house, and see all the adjustments of your work. Your sense of perspective, order, and arrangement are very good; and there is an exquisiteness and artistic beauty about your speeches and: literary works. "Your command of language is moderately good; but there is a greater fund of matter than there is a specialty of words in which to clothe it. "Feminine and eminently spiritual in temperament, you are, from brain development, constituted to view spiritual and religious subjects from the secular or humanitarian side. Thus, while your inspirations are intensely religious and spiritual, your method is for . truth against priestly devices, and favorable to the unity of all human interests." Buffon says, "Style is the man himself." In a man's writings do we discover his fiber and ring of genius. In 1859, Mr. Peebles wrote a popular pamphlet, entitled, "Signs of the Times," in which he defends Parker and Beecher, contrasts the "old with the new," with a scalpel opens the sore of Orthodoxy, to "cleanse the body politic." These extracts show the pith of his thought: "As well hush the winds of heaven as bid the currents of free thought cease circulating 'mong the inquiring masses that walk 'neath the noonday sun of the nineteenth century. 'Light, more light!' is humanity's motto. And yet every newly-conceived truth, whether scientific, philosophic, or spiritual, must not merely be cradled in a manger, but baptized in tears, and crucified between the two thieves, authority and popularity, ere it can become an acknowledged power in the world. An ancient conservatism gave Socrates hemlock, and crowned Jesus with thorns. And the same spirit of intolerance that burned Huss, Servetus, and Latimer, in the name of Christianity, persecuted and hung the Quakers, accused and mobbed the Wesleys, stoned Murray, and dragged Garrison through the streets, still lives, lives to vilify and slander Spiritualists, Reformers, and all those liberal-minded Christians who are laboring for the redemption of humanity. "There is nothing more evident than the immutability of God's laws; and, if it were ever possible or ever permitted spiritual beings to communicate, the same law permits them now. This principle is admitted by the inspired preacher: Eccl. iii. 15. — 'That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been: and God requires that which is past.' Not only is it possible, but probable; for the spirit, relieved of its gross earth garments, retains all its faculties, forces, mental characteristics, and moral qualities. It is a substantial, organized, individualized, and conscious entity, living, thinking, reasoning, and loving the same as before the transition. Pure love is imperishable, and can not cease; immortal, and can not die: and would not the mother, freighted with those warm, gushing emotions peculiar to her affectionate nature, delight, though in spirit-spheres, to watch over her children? Would she be herself, or would heaven be such to her in reality, if she could not? Would not the good father rejoice in being a counselor to his sons in earth-land? and, free to roam the universe, would not the wiselyordained law of parental attraction oft call him into their presence? The spirit-world is not located afar, in some infinitely remote region. It is all around us, as is the atmosphere we breathe; and intercourse between spirits in the body and out of it is just as probable and natural also, as the oceanic commerce between America and the isles of the Pacific." CHAPTER VII. 66 THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN THEE!" "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. . .. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and, if they eat any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."-JESUS. "I have heard of a mystic organ, which God's own hand has sealed: Not a single note from its silent keys through the dim years has pealed. NIGHT reveals the stars. Mud is the mother-bosom of the lily. The slime of a damp, over-trodden path in the outskirts of a neighboring town, composed of clay, sand, and soot, by the process of individualization and co-operation, when left free to follow its own instinct, becomes in time a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, "set in the midst of a star of snow." About twenty-five years ago, a horde of bandits stole a bright-eyed lad of obscure birth, and carried him to their retreat in "Black Swamp," Ohio, to serve as their spy and chore-boy. Their business was to steal horses, forge money, and pillage the country generally. Active and clownish, intelligent and shrewd, he soon learned and excelled all their tricks. Twining vines around the daggers of the robbers, he was the youthful Bacchus, whose waving spear cowed all the game of the woods into silence. Satyrs, nymphs, and demons were his guards, holding nightly orgies in the bandits' den. He was frequently shot at by citizens, whose marks are indelible. schooled in the arts of profanity, gambling, and forgery. boy! he was not responsible for his early associations. When these fierce men scattered, he connected himself a while with a band of traveling minstrels, and was a perfect adept in exciting the crowd, and procuring money. For two summers after, he was a circus-boy He was Poor and ventriloquist. Educated at these popular colleges of vice, he became a "wild, gay, rollicking, good-hearted, demoniac, affectionate, fast young man." Having served such an apprenticeship, satiated with wandering, he settled down in Battle Creek, a companion of the dissipating classes, of which he was an acknowledged leader. No man attracted his attention like Mr. Peebles, nor was so often the subject of satire. Seeing him on horseback, riding to his appointments, noticing his towering, gaunt form, he would dance a jig at the door of the saloon, and, with a low chuckle to the "boys," shout, "See old grandsir long legs!" The English language was never before so tortured into ludicrous blackguardism as against this "longhaired Spiritualist," and in so harmless, mimicking way too. Some time in the winter of 1858, Prof. I. Stearns visited Battle Creek, and commenced a series of popular lectures on Psychology. The interest increasing, this quizzing youngster, taking the world to be "a grand humbug," proposed to his coadjutors, that, the pending evening, he would "explode the whole thing;" and the programme was mapped out accordingly. He was to go on to the stand, the boys backing him, and feign magnetic sleep for a while, and then betray the professor. When all was ready, he stepped to the platform with an air of resolution, and, facing the vast crowd, gave the boys the wink. The professor scanned him a moment, and ordered him off, stating that he wanted to experiment with his old subjects, whom he required to be immediately seated. Young Dunn gave the wink, so well understood, and took a seat with the rest. The professor ignored him entirely. "Why not me, sir?" "Because I have enough without you: leave the stand.” "Just as I expected: you dare not try me; you are a humbug, a humbug!" chimed in the youngster, glancing significantly towards his chuckling companions in the secret. 66 Perhaps not, sir; perhaps not! I'll try you sit down here, sir!" That was what the young man wanted, negatively yielding. The operator made a few passes, and ordered him to close his eyes, exclaiming, "You can't open them!" The subject thought he would just slyly peep out of one, and, making the effort, behold, they were sealed! He was then caused to hunt, fish, dance, &c. Soon he |