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Spiritual manifestations are the avenues through which you are led to this inner kingdom. Be sure you do not make light of them. Make a fact essential, for it is as valuable as the stars that shine. Neither should you over-rate them. You love to be astonished, to be terrified, but most you should like to know what message your friend brings. It is more important that your soul should be awakened to a consciousness of itself than all else. Hail with gladness all that can do that.

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The spiritual kingdom is not limited or confined to any period or epoch. You bear it with you wherever you go. It is to you at once prophecy and fulfillment. Without it the poet's song were a dream of despair; without its love the heart would grow sere; death, that mystery and fulfillment, would be the demon's mockery to humanity. This kingdom is not born of Christ, nor of any time or any religion, but of the soul's consciousness. It is not born of states or powers, but these are born of it. Man would stand a mad idiot, a wild thing, without this supernal kingdom within.

You that have heard its voice, that have watched your own inner consciousness, know that your soul is greater than time, death and all that comes to you. The soul is greater than the body, because in it every possibilty is enshrined; within it are the silent manifestations of the Deity. There are your Franklins, your Kanes, and many more that will risk everything to find out what open sea lies near the north pole. Livingston has been dead many times in Africa, and is not afraid of the many deaths, that he may know what lies in that unknown land and what people inhabit its unexplored countries. Man lives on earth to-day to conquer; to wrest from her bosom, scarred by the fierce contests of nature, the secret of life. The time shall come when every force shall be subjected to man.

Does this prove the soul's empire is only in matter? It is because the soul is supreme, the spirit greater than matter, that is not afraid of heat or cold, of summer or winter. This soul that is afraid of nothing-shall it be afraid of immortality? Nothing less than a universe will satisfy its longings. As

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the poet calls not all his soul out in one song, as he that is inspired breathes not out all his life in one inspiration, but says till eternity there shall be more songs, more inspirations, so the soul can only sing the supreme song and yet know diviner ones still are to be breathed out. The song that is in you to sing, sing it, and the work that is in you to do, do it. Bind up the broken heart, and to-morrow there comes a bird fluttering at your window, and brings back your song with a diviner note. Yonder is a spirit well-nigh dead by sadness; comfort it, lift it up, strengthen it, and next year more sad souls shall come to you and you shall be glad that you were born. This is what the spiritual kingdom can do within you. In the center of your kingdom sits your soul. There will abide those sacred prayers and saintly thoughts that have come from the minds within your kingdom. There will be your fellows in love and hope, and aspiration, and all around shall be the families of your kingdom, and the bond between you shall be love, and the law shall be love, and the kingdom shall be to you greater than all the world, with its principalities and powers.-Cora L. V. Tappan.

LIBERTY.

The aim of the people is liberty.

In every corner of the known earth, at this day, the cry is "liberty." Liberty for the body; liberty for the soul. The cry has gone forth. That thought stimulates every brain and every heart. Hence, from before every pulpit, around the desk of every writer, the cry comes, "Liberty for the soul.”

Oh, Mystery! thou art indeed the mother of the abominations of the earth. Can there be truth and mystery together? Is it a possibility that God's works, if he be our Father, shall be a mystery to us, his children? There is no mystery save your own ignorance, and your submission or tyranny one to another. All the wonders of the Almighty's gospel have

unrolled themselves in the light of knowledge, or are now becoming manifest to the investigating spirit of man.

The vail of mystery being lifted discloses the fact that the Almighty is the God of the living, not the God of the dead ; that the living are his ministering spirits; that they can and do come to earth; that they are the ministers of light and knowledge, who, in all ages of the world, have gone forth to minister to the heirs of salvation.

Progress is a portion of the eternal gospel of nature, which the ages tell; which the history of all nations teaches; which the advance of every art and every science indicates; which the history of the planets, suns, and stars proclaims; which man himself spells out from the cradle to the grave, in a perpetual series of progressive experiments, each one leading to the culminating point when his spirit is set free, to put in practice the results of the follies, the trespasses, the hopes, the wishes, the aspirations which he has gained in his earthly career.—Emma Hardinge.

SANCTITY OF MATERNITY.

The Romish Church has acted upon a true instinct in making Mary illustrious among women. Art, a far truer system than Papacy, has done the same thing. She has been one of the grandest and most fruitful Inspirations—the typical mother and child multiplied in various forms for the eyes and souls of all women, saying to them, "Go thou and do likewise." And the universal human heart, even though blind and cold, pays a certain involuntary homage to the mothers whose children have acted the Christ-part in their generation.

Spirituality magnifies maternity, sees its real glory, and rejoices in it, as never other sovereign rejoiced in her earthly crown and scepter. It gives the mother at once pride and humility-pride, in her great office, though a manger be its cradle-humility, in herself as an instrument in the Divine hand. for its accomplishment. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord;

be it unto me according to thy law. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour. For hẹ hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden; for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.” This is the language of every true spiritual mother.

We acknowledge with unstinted speech and feeling, the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the mother; and have a worshipful feeling toward her, as its pure, responsive recipient; a feeling which all mothers command in the degree that they are pure, divine, and aspiring, in maternity.-Eliza W. Farnham.

WISE REVERENCE FOR MOTHERHOOD.

The Christian Church, considering the birth of Jesus exceptional in all respects, has never discovered the philosophy of the fact that Joseph "knew not" Mary from the hour when the announcement of the new life was made till the birth of the child; nor has the medical profession discovered, or, if discovered, has not taught the imperative necessity of such condition to secure to motherhood that undisturbed operation of the forces within her body, and the passivity of mind which are vitally important to her own well-being and that of her offspring. When "the harp of a thousand strings" is attuned to a new key by the unfoldment of a new life within itself, every string is thrilled with exquisite vibration, either of delight or torture. Shall any soul save the owner dictate what hands shall sweep its chords? Whether they shall receive impulse from any? Or whether, like the Æolian harp, it shall, all untouched by mortal hands, vibrate only to the celestial harmonies which ever wait upon the incarnation of the soul in human form? * *

The fundamental truth of the duty of motherhood to make itself an intelligent instrument of creative power, and to provide. suitable ante-natal conditions, and suitable provisions for the rearing of offspring after birth, and to subordinate every form of selfishness to its demands, is hardly thought of, still less appreciated.

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We cannot behold the grandeur of manhood till it is born of and through an enlightened, self-poised motherhood. I desire and shall labor to extricate woman from a deeper mire of helplessness than legal disability. From that she should also be freed, to secure freedom in all relations; but she wants, first, courage to assert the right to her own body as the instrument of reason and conscience, and the fulfilment of the function of motherhood, subject to no authority but the voice of God in her soul.

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O Christian mothers! who look for the coming of that state of peace and good-will which was heralded by the earthly advent of Jesus, can you hope for its consummation so long as mother-souls stamp upon unborn offsping the impulse of murder? That undisturbed maternity which brought into fleshly existence the Prince of Peace, must obtain in human society before it can be free from the polluting tendencies, the discordant and warring elements, which deform and blight humanity. All the traditions of the past, before Jesus, enforce the same idea of the office of undisturbed maternity. The saviours of different forms of religion, preceding Christianity, were also immaculate conceptions, born of God and motherhood. This is a truth of deeper than theological import—a vital and indispensable necessity for the salvation of humanity. Motherhood should be a shrine unpolluted by one touch of selfishness and lust. O woman! this would and will be thy recompense for all the sufferings and agonies which pertain to physical womanhood and motherhood.

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Now, if by reason of irresistable desire, the body can be stamped ineffaceably, and the powers of mentality be developed so wonderfully, can it be a question that upon the moral nature, the more highly spiritual tablet, impressions as deeply graven and ineffaceable will be recorded? Such being the fact, what is the first duty of motherhood? Where has God written a law more clearly or imperatively than in the power of maternity over offspring? A power which cannot be hindered in its operation, either for good or ill. Where, then, does any

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