sympathies which made them so beautiful on earth-higher, and deeper, and broader there, making them still more beautiful. No heart could retain its best and loveliest element in a home of delight from which it knew a fellow-heart was excluded; and to be ignorant of a brother's fate were a loss, and to souls of a higher order, an impossibility. I pray that I may not forget erring and wandering souls in the brightest hour that ever dawns upon my spirit.

The revelations of these last years show us how to reconcile the beatified soul's completeness with the fact of souls in gloom and misery. In bringing the wanderer back to light, in breathing hope and cheer into hearts yet repining in their clay, in pouring promise down the dark abysses of despair and pain— in this work the souls of the redeemed find their best delight, and deeds of mercy make the heaven they people with all renovated lives.

Have you not seen how a most beautiful face grows more intensely beautiful with deep thought? How even conquered suffering, and the soul's hard-earned victory over loss, desolation, and woe, can make the calm eye like a spirit's, and the pale cheek radiant with more than earthly physical beauty? With a far more prevailing power, the soul in light shapes the obedient features of its vesture, the spirit-body which encumbers it not. Every sweet thought is a line of beauty to the form. Every noble impulse shapes the dilated figure to a grander expression of its strength, beauty, and grace.

This beautiful life speaks no fear, no crouching vassalage of soul, but a deep, natural, filial love, that so involves and permeates all the being, that existence with them can be nothing less than "worship”—an expression meaning naught else but high aspiration and unceasing praise to the all-loving Father. They do his work on earth, and in the nether spheres ; and this is joy, this is life; this is the immortal heaven of souls who have gone up from suffering to delight. And in the joy of their great ransom, knowing how grateful is unexpected kindness, how inexpressibly dear is guardian love, they can

never forget from whence they came, nor the pained struggling souls that lift their eyes to the blank heaven with such hushed agony of mute beseeching, where, thanks to the new light, they find the heavens no longer brass over their heads. They come ! the beautiful ones, the shining angels, in their love and light!

Oh! beautiful upon the mountains are their feet, as they come laden with glad tidings. The mourner, though he sees not their transparent glory, hears not the mellow music of their love-breathing voices, nor even feels the quiet presence hallowing the spot, and the tender touch that smooths the throbbing head, yet feels that the hot tear has been swept away-the heart's strained pulses softened to a gentler flow-and blessed glimpses of a clearer faith come in upon the night of his grief. O look to these realms of light and love, when care, and pain, and doubt, make life a weariness. Let not dark unbelief put away the promise of "the light" which comes only to bless.Charlotte B. Wilbour.

BIRTH TO THE HIGHER LIFE-AS SEEN CLAIRVOYANTLY.

Death is but a door which opens into a new and more perfect existence, and there is really nothing more painful or repulsive in the natural process of dying (that not induced by disease or accident) than in passing into a quiet, dreamless slumber. The truthfulness of this is illustrated and confirmed by the observation and investigation into the physiological and psychological phenomena of death, which my spirit was qualified to make at the moment of the physical dissolution of a personal friend.

She was a woman about sixty years of age, who had consulted me as a physician eight months before her death. When the hour arrived, being an inmate of her house, I was fortunately in a proper state of mind and body to induce the. Superior Condition, and previously sought a position where I might make my observations unnoticed and undisturbed. They were these:

I saw that the physical organization could no longer subserve the many purposes and requirements of the Spiritual Principle. But the various internal organs of the body appeared to resist the withdrawal of the animating soul. The muscular system struggled to retain the element of Motion; the vascular system strove to retain the element of Life; the nervous system put forth all its power to retain the element of Sensation; and the cerebral system labored to retain the principle of Intelligence. The body and soul, like two friends, resisted the circumstances which made their eternal separation imperative. These internal conflicts gave rise to manifestations of what seemed, to the material senses, to be most painful and thrilling sensations; but I was unspeakably thankful when I perceived and realized the fact that those physical manifestations were indications, not of pain or unhappiness, but simply that the Spirit was dissolving its partnership with the material organism.

Now the head of the dying person became suddenly enveloped in a fine, soft, mellow, luminous atmosphere; and as instantly, I saw the cerebrum and cerebellum expand their most interior portions; I saw them discontinue their appropriate galvanic functions; and then I saw that they became highly charged with the vital electricity and vital magnetism which permeate subordinate structures and systems. That is to say, the brain, as a whole, suddenly declared itself to be tenfold more positive over the lesser portions of the body than it ever was in health. This invariably precedes physical dissolution.

Now the process of dying, or the spirit's departure from the body, was fully commenced. The brain began to attract the elements of electricity, magnetism, motion, life, and sensation, into its various and numerous departments. The head became intensely brilliant; and I remarked that just in proportion as the extremities of the body grew dark and cold, the brain appeared light and glowing.

Now I saw, in the mellow spiritual atmosphere, which emanated from and encircled her head, the indistinct outlines of the formation of another head! The reader should remem

ber that these super-sensuous processes are not visible to any one, except the spiritual perceptions be unfolded; for material eyes can only behold material things, and spiritual eyes can only behold spiritual things. This is a law of Nature. This new head unfolded more and more distinctly; and so indescribably compact and intensely brilliant did it become, that I could neither see through it, nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired. While this spiritual head was being eliminated and organized from out of and above the material head, I saw that the surrounding aromal atmosphere, which had emanated from the material head, was in great commotion; but, as the new head became more distinct and perfect, this brilliant atmosphere gradually disappeared. This taught me that those aromal elements, which were, in the beginning of the metamorphosis, attracted from the system into the brain, and thence eliminated in the form of an atmosphere, were indissolubly united, in accordance with the divine principle of affinity in the universe, which pervades and destinates every particle of matter, and that they developed the spiritual head which I beheld.

With inexpressible wonder, and a heavenly reverence, I gazed on these holy processes. In the same manner in which the spiritual head was eliminated and unchangeably organized, I saw unfolding in their natural progressive order, the harmonious development of the neck, the shoulders, and the entire spiritual organization. It appeared from this that the innumerable particles of what might be called unparticled matter, which constitute a man's spiritual principle, are constitutionally endowed with certain elective affinities, analogous to an immortal friendship. The innate tendencies which the elements and essences of her soul manifested, by uniting and organizing themselves, were the efficient and imminent causes which unfolded and perfected her spiritual organization. The defects and deformities of the physical body were almost removed in this spiritual body. In other words, it seemed that those hereditary obstructions and influences, which had arrested the full and proper development of her physical constitution, were now

removed; and therefore, that her spiritual constitution, being elevated above those obstructions, was enabled to unfold and perfect itself, in accordance with the universal tendencies of all created things.

While this spiritual formation was going on, perfectly visible to my spiritual perceptions, the material body manifested, to the outer vision of her friends around her bed, many symptoms of uneasiness and pain; but they were wholly caused by the departure of vital or spiritual forces from the extremities and the viscera into the brain, and thence into the ascending organism.

The spirit rose at right angles over the head of the deserted body. But immediately previous to the final dissolution of the relationship which had so long existed between the two, I saw, playing between the feet of the elevated spiritual body and the head of the prostrate physical form, a bright stream or current of vital electricity. This taught me that what is termed Death is but a Birth of the spirit from a lower to a higher state; that an inferior body and mode of existence are exchanged for a superior body and corresponding endowments and capabilities of happiness. I learned that the correspondence between the birth of a child into this world, and the birth of a spirit into the higher world, is absolute and complete, even to the umbilical cord, represented by the thread of vital electricity, which, for a few minutes, subsisted between and connected the two organisms. And here I saw that a small portion of this vital electrical element returned to the deserted body, just before the separation of this thread, and instantly diffused itself through the entire structure, to prevent an immediate decomposition.

As soon as the spirit, whose departing hour I thus watched, was disengaged from the tenacious physical body, I directed my attention to the movements and emotions of the former; and I saw her begin to breathe the most interior or spiritual portions of the surrounding terrestrial atmosphere, which at first was done with difficulty, but soon with ease and delight.