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oping them to be "chosen vessels " of truth to the famishing world.

From the many testimonials we quote from a private letter of Cephas B. Lynn's:

"His kindness toward young media, more especially those struggling for usefulness on the rostrum, has been a marked feature in his career as a teacher of the Spiritual Philosophy. In fact, he is looked up to with the utmost reverence, and loved most tenderly, by scores of young lecturers in our ranks. I could name ten or twelve who acknowledge that Mr. Peebles has been the leading instrumentality in advancing them in Spiritual graces, and inducting them into active public labors. Blessings upon him for this! I gladly affirm my indebtedness to him in this respect; and my prayer is, that the Spiritualists of the country will see the wisdom of placing funds at his command; so that through him young media suited for the Spiritual ministry may receive that discipline and culture so essential to success."

Seemingly he sometimes errs on the side of charity. To encourage a beginner, or a luckless brother or sister, amid the poverties and perils of mediumship, victors at last, he has spoken words through the voice and pen higher sometimes than just merit would sanction, merit as viewed from the world's angle of criticism. Like the Nazarene, he has so often taken others' sins upon his shoulders; and with his "stripes were we healed." He has always been sure to see the angel side of human nature, and clothed it with deserving garments, that the world might feel the heart of the crushed and fallen to be as pure and heavenly as his own. His errors are errors of charity; and are they not virtues? In the judgment every day acting, how large are the credits in the life-book of his soul! Listen to his testimony again:

"Beautiful in effect is the medium of love to the morally diseased. It works by an infinitude of methods, but always to redemptive ends. When fires, fagots, clanking chains, and gloomy penitentiaries had all failed to reform, the 'still, small voice' of love and sympathy has touched the heart-strings, opened a new fountain, and redeemed the most obdurate. Says a European writer, 'Love is the instrument that the Almighty reserved to conquer rebellious man when all the rest had failed. Reason he parries; fear he answers blow for blow: but love iş the sun against whose melting beams winter cannot stand. This soft, subduing influence wrestles down the giant: there is not one human being in a million, not a thousand in all earth's huge quintillion, whose stony heart can withstand the power of love.' This principle, wielded by William Penn, tamed the Indian's soul, and tuned his heart to throb alone in kindness; wielded by the benignant Howard, it made prisons in Europe schools of reform; by the great-hearted Oberlin, it transformed many by-corners of pollution in the old world into gardens of beauty; and, by and through Elizabeth Fry, it filled the inmates in houses of refuge and 'asylums of outcasts' with those higher thoughts and purer ideas, as sure to produce those elevating influences as are the lightnings to do their missioned work.

Physical force may override, and powerful nations may conquer weaker ones; but love as a motive power combined with wisdom can alone subdue, promoting that harmony so indispensable to spiritual growth. It is all the power ever employed by God, Christ, or angels in the divine order of subjugating; being the deepest, divinest, and mightiest principle in the universe."

Wherever he goes, he is in the habit of taking little children into his arms, laying his hands upon their heads in blessing, as did the Nazarene, conscious that" of such is the kingdom of heaven;" and long he holds them to his bosom to catch the glow of their innocent hearts, when he rises refreshed for work again, like a bird that has slept in a bower of sunlight to be inspired with the loves of a sweeter song. In Battle Creek, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, he has christened children in the name of the angels by the laying-on of hands, and sometimes by sprinkling pure water; and such occasions are most hallowed and melting, scorned, of course, by the croakers, but approved by all who love the envelopment of spiritual spheres.

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Walking the streets of Boston with him, locked arm in arm, he humming a tune as we elbowed our way through the jostling crowd, we met a youth, just in his teens, pale, nervous, and emaciated. 'Boy," he said, with a piercing look and a tender tone of voice, eat coarse bread, drink pure water, bathe in it every night, sleep on a hard bed, rise early, and work temperately. Remember, boy! for I love you." Going a few steps farther, we met a humbly-dressed woman, with her basket of fruit in her hand, passing to her marketstand for sales. "Well, my sister," he exclaimed, patting her gently on the shoulder, now for business." She turned and met his gaze; and the feeling of rebuke changed to a blushing courtesy, and, determined not to be outdone on short acquaintance, seized him by the arm, and laughingly said, "Yes: come on; I need your help, come, my brother;" and he had to tear away with a kind shout back, "I will risk you alone in your honorable fruit business." Walking the streets of St. Louis, he met a bright-eyed little girl, tripping along at a dancing pace, humming a tune and swinging her arms. Though a stranger, he stopped her, spoke a tender word, lifted her to his lips, pressed a sweet kiss, and bid her "Be good; for you are an angel of love." The girl was so happy! and he moved thence with a free, buoyant step.

In a Portland audience, 1869, where Mr. Peebles was lecturing,

sat a negro contraband, John N. Still, listening most earnestly. At evening, the sable brother timidly introduced himself, stating that he saw him in a vision three years ago as the "Horace Greeley of Spiritualism;" that he was a school-teacher of Virginia; was ordered by the Spirit to "Go North, go North!" His spiritual experiences were most remarkable. After hearing them, and delivering his lecture, Mr. Peebles brought the Southerner to the stand, briefly telling his story for him, saying, "The Indian is my brother, the white man is my brother, the Negro is my brother;" and then he appealed to his auditors with a pathos that probed the very fountains of their hearts, raising for him a generous contribution; when Mr. Peebles bade him go on his way again to the South, rejoicing to "sow the seed of this gospel among the freed blacks." The good brother wept with joy, made a happy speech, and, under that light, returned to his task.

Here are some of the word-seeds sown in the bosoms of true friends, which we have found in forgotten letters. The clergyman referred to below is Rev.

"PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 6, 1869.

His education in the EngSpirits are trying now to un

"Bitter were the tears I saw him shed more than once. lish Church, and then as a Baptist, made him what he is. make him, for the purpose of making him over in part; but I believe him a truthful, honest, sincere man, having about him streaks of vanity and other follies. Who is perfect? If the laziest devil in hell should roll over in his brimstone bed, and ask for help, I should help him. The public might not approve; but I know of no 'dear public' not constituted of individuals.

"It may be a weakness in me, but everybody must be aided, saved, by somebody; and then I have a deep sympathy for clergymen leaving the old shells of theology."

Our Pilgrim has passed into that degree of love which Jesus actualized: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." Beyond the family circle, beyond church, sect, party, nationality, he enspheres humanity in his spiritual fellowship; and yet the fountains of this oceanic love are to him more sacred than ever, and cherished with a deeper retrospective reverence. Visiting his native home in Vermont, that old framed house, that running brook, that forest and rocky height, where the silver cord of life first pulsed the latent music of his soul,he mused and dreamed awake, and penned the poesy of his thought thus:

To-day I sit 'neath the paternal roof, and, in shadowy memories and quickly-shifting kaleidoscopic presentations, re-live the past, all gemmed in those earlier years with the dewy freshness of childhood's sunny morning. How mystic life's web! How strange the voyage, freighted with flowers and thorns, smiles and tears, defeats and victories, making it rich in experiences! A divinity truly shapes our ends,' a certain destiny overshadows each of us, and fate proves to be a mighty wrestler. The pathway may be crimsoned with bleeding feet, or baptized in tides of tears: yet beyond this mortal realm the star of eve shines, and the Queen of Morn' pours forth celestial harmonies, making 'music over all the starry floor;' and there earth's divinest ideals become the soul's eternal realities.

“Oh, how many pleasant associations cluster around that word mother! Some one has said that 'mother, home, and heaven' are the most beautiful words in the English language. I almost venerate my parents."

CHAPTER XXI.

ASCENSION INTO THE CELESTIAL HEAVENS.

"I think of that city; for oh! how oft

My heart has been wrung at parting
With friends all pale, who with footfalls soft
To its airy heights were starting!

I see them again in their raiment white
In the blue, blue distance dwelling;
And I hear their praises in calm delight
Come down, on the breezes swelling,
As I dream of the city I have not seen,

Where the feet of mortals have never been."- EMMA TUTTLE.

Ir a plant or dew-drop is dusted and quickened by a sunbeam, it has virtually been to the sun. What matters it whether we have spiritual experiences through our own organism, or that of another through whom we derive a greater fullness of angelic truth? Spherally the medium we love is ourself conjoined with spirits. Where every interest is mutual, and magnetic touch responsive, our medium is the telescope through which we look at heavenly worlds.

Dr. Dunn the medium, Mr. Peebles the spiritual astronomer: these brothers attended vast conventions of angels and archangels, heard discussions upon the best methods of mediumistic control, ate by imbibation of the fruit that grows in those upper paradises till nourished in the substantial vitalities of spirit-life. Always the pre-requisite for these interviews was temperance, fasting, purity of habit. At one time Aaron Nite informed them of his home, "Pear-Grove Cottage," in the spirit-world; and Mr. Peebles expressed an earnest wish for the medium to visit it.

"Comply, then, with conditions," replied Aaron: "temperance in all things, fasting, and purity; read inspired poetry; attune your affections to the music of angel spheres."

In due time, obeying the request, the medium visited that heavenly residence, whose first forms of beauty were budded in the scenes of

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