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fabric of society and government, and that complicated scheme of duties, responsibilities, usages and laws which constitute order; but how few remember that all this has its deep foundation in the measured march of cerebral transformations. We point to the inventions, arts, sciences and literatures which form the swelling tide of civilization; but were they not all originated in that laboratory of wonders, the human brain? Geological revelations carry us back through durations so boundless that imagination is bewildered, and reason reels under the grandeur of the demonstration; but through the measureless series of advancing periods, we discover a stupendous plan. Infinite Power, working through infinite time, converges the mighty lines of causality to the fulfillment of an eternal design, the birth of an intellectual and moral era through the development of the brain of man, which thus appears as the final term of an unfolding world.

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The scientific method of studying human nature, important as may be its relation to the management of the insane and feeble-minded, and valuable as is its service in establishing the limits of mental effort, must find its fullest application to the broad subject of education. A knowledge of the being to be trained, as it is the basis of all intelligent culture, must be the first necessity of the teacher.-E. L. Youmans.

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GROWTH AND SELF-SACRIFICE.

There is a perpetual circle of beneficent change—of dissolution and reproduction. Such is the work of the year from summer to winter, from seed-time to harvest. Such is the revolution of ages and cyles of being. Descend into the recesses of the earth, into those immense catacombs where huge monsters lie packed away, each in its strong sarcophagus, like dead barbaric kings, with the wrecks of their dynasties around them.

There, in original fossil forms, behold the seeds of human civilization, and admire the process through which these things

enriched the great economy by their death more than by their life. And thus it is everywhere. Loss, defeat, sacrifice, are the terms of reward and obedience, of growth and advancement

But the law of the natural (or material) is in this respect the law of the moral world. Let me then ask you to consider especially this process of growth and adornment as it appears. in human affairs; in history and individual experience. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." See how the inmost principle of this fact appears in human action and the discipline of character.

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Is it not true that increase of good, not only for others, but for ourselves, comes exactly in proportion as we extirpate selfishness? In this element, which, of course, I refer to in its mean and bad sense, all sin has its own roots; while on the other hand all virtue, all religious life, springs up in the denial of it, and the victory over it. Except man loves something, and lives for something besides himself, he does indeed “abide alone;" and his life is barren. He has wealth of blessedness and imparts none to others.

To be alone one need not go into a desert or a solitary chamber. The most gloomy, impenetrable loneliness is isolation of soul, is to live in a crowd without one pulse of sympathy or one reciprocal nerve. How lonely is a great city to such a man. Sometimes men are in such a position through no fault, but often through some inherent and haunting vice. And in this miserable sense the selfish man is alone.

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On the other hand, as we let narrow self-regard fall into the ground and die, as starting from the basis of lawful self-appreciation we go forward to help and bless others, and become part of the living world around us, not only does there spring up additional fruitage of good for humanity at large, but we, too, are made richer. A man feels that not only has he helped others, but that into himself has passed a joy and a power that abide forever.

Thus, in proportion as our action is broad and human, we

never die.

We become identified with mankind at large, and are incorporated with all past efforts of nobleness and beneficence. Thus we go forth in the boundless light and free air of coming ages.

See how good and true men have lived in all ages and lands. Whose names are repeated from heart to heart and from lip to lip? Whose names stir the fresh blood of Liberty and the pulses of Virtue? Men in whom the contracted kernel of self has died! Others who have won a selfish glory, and cut a sword-path to fame, may linger for a time to blaze and astonish.

But these alone stand serene and beautiful, like stars, to attract the world's admiration and sway its best influences forever. It has well been said by another, "No great benefit, no extensive emancipation, whether from mental slavery, from political bondage, or from social evil, is ever wrought by humanity, unless the benevolent heart that undertakes the task has the strength of self-sacrifice and is content to lay its account with long-continued endurance and bitter agony. It is to such that the thoughts turn. When politicians express their allegiance to the cause of freedom, they pledge the memories of those who died on the field or on the scaffold. When the energies of nations awake, their minds first turn, not to those who have conquered, but to those who have fallen.”

But the more closely the cause is connected with the spiritual, which is the permanent welfare of men, the more noble is the sacrifice made in its behalf, even to the wondrous death on the Cross.

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It is only to an limited and faithless eyesight that any righteous cause falling into the ground seems to perish. Scaffolds, despotisms, ruinous battle-fields-these are all conditions of the harvest. Truth, or justice, or liberty, swathe it with parchment cerements; dig its grave with bayonets; press it down with thorns, bastiles or slave-blocks; sprinkle it all over with the venerable dust of despotism, and in that dust trace the lines of its epitaph. It may be buried, but has it perished?

Can you bury the spirit of Christ? The earth rolls, the sun shines, the spring-winds blow, God's truth flows into the soul of men, and not a kernel of the righteous seed will fail to ripen at the last.

"God is patient for He is eternal.” Let us not be dismayed in any private or public trial of this life, because our short reeds of measurement cannot mark out His great plan.

"Verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. " What a sublime law and process does this proclaim! What vast consolation does it unfold! How pregnant with the inspiration of hope for ourselves and for the world! How calmly may we take up this truth and cling to it! Take it up and cling to it-in our trial for trust; in our action for effort; and in our survey of the general movement of things, for the indication of our faith in a just and beneficent, and advancing scheme of Providence.-E. H. Chapin.

SPIRITUAL VIEWS.

Spiritualists do not allege, or believe, that any of the phenomena in which they find proofs of immortality are miraculous. They believe in the universality of Law. They do not regard the signs and wonders that came to light in Jesus' day, as exceptions to natural law, but as phenomena which occurred under laws ever in force, but with which we are imperfectly acquainted. They see reproduced under their eyes modern types of most of these signs and wonders, and they find in such reproduction one of the strongest arguments to sustain the truth of the New Testament narative.

The general truth which is, after all, the essential; not each separate detail. Intelligent Spiritualists reject the doctrine of infallibility. They have no belief in plenary inspiration. They accept the advice of one of the Oxford Essayists, Dr. Temple, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen of Great Britain, when, speaking of two great volumes which he ascribed to the same

author-the book of Nature and the book of Revelation-he said that if discrepancy appear between them it behooved us to consider, in the first place, whether we had not incorrectly interpreted the phenomena, and, in the second, whether the message might not have come to us perverted through the messenger. This is what orthodoxy must have to come to, if she would save the essentials of her creed.

But Spiritualists go a step further. They hold that a spiritual message itself may be an error, and that of this we must judge, reverently yet freely, as by our reason we test any earthly allegation, let it come from a source however accredited. This conviction is derived from another item in the Spiritual creed. We believe that there are the same varieties of character in the next world as in this. We believe that when we cast off the natural body there is, indeed, a potent change from the lower to the higher, yet no instantaneous transformation of the soul; no apotheosis of some, and degradation to demon-life of others. When death calls, he neither deprives us of the virtues, nor suddenly relieves us of the vices, of which he finds us possessed. Both go with us. The moral, social and intellectual qualities which may have distinguished us in this world, will be ours in another, there constituting our identity and deciding our position. So also of the evil. That dark vestment of sin with which, in a man's journey through life, he may have become endued, clings to him through the death-change, close as the tunic of Nessus. He too retains his identity; his earthly short-comings determine his spiritual state.

We believe, then, that the spirit of man passes the ordeal without other metamorphosis than that which its release from the fleshy envelope and its acquisition of clearer perceptions effect a great gainer, too, by this, that through the agency of the spiritual senses there is opened up a wider and more luminous horoscope; and thus drawn closer to the great Source of Wisdom; yet essentially the same spirit still. It changes, even as now it does, by the intervention of motive presented, by the agency of will, by the influence of surroundings better and

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