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recognize. There have been times in which, I declare to you, heaven was more real than earth; in which my children that were gone spoke more plainly to me than my children that were with me; in which the blessed estate of the just man in heaven seemed more real and near to me than the estate of any just man upon earth.

There are experiences that link one with another and higher life.-Henry Ward Beecher.

HOW IDEAS GET SPOKEN-REFORMERS.

There is this singular peculiarity about the men who first receive ideas, they cannot keep them. When the rising sun gilded the face of the Egyptian Memnon he answered the light with songs; so, when the light of truth gilds our mental horizon, we cry out at the beautiful vision. No sooner does the man perceive that he has a new idea, than he becomes impressed that he has a mission. It is not egotism; it is not a desire for notoriety. The same power which gave him the idea filled him with an irresistible impulse to reveal it. He cannot conceal it; he rushes forth to light the lamp of his neighbors. He cannot be diverted. Wealth, ease, comfort, home, wife, children, friends, the gentle amenities of life, may plead; and poverty, disgrace, ruin, and martyrdom with rod, fire, and dungeon may menace,—he rushes on to promulgate the idea. He has gained an insight into the everlasting, the inscrutable; and his lips glow with the words with which he sets it forth. He controlled by the soft pleasures of this life? They are ephemeral. He proselyted? Never. In him an idea, for the first time since creation, has found a tongue of flame. It is no fault of his that he becomes fanatical, and overestimates the importance of his treasure. The world gains by the equilibrium resulting from a thousand such. Stand aloof, men of the world, who cannot understand anything unless it is set down in dollars and cents, quarts and bushels. Stand aside! you are the dead freight which such fanatics are to carry through; and the

only possible use you serve is a retarding influence which, out of kindness, we call conservatism, by which you keep them in sight.

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The world to-day has outgrown its yesterday's thoughts. Each year adds growth to the moral and intellectual world, as the circling sun adds a new layer to the tree. Each year's growth encircles all others; or in other words, the ideas of the race are higher, its attainments more noble, and it basks in a brighter light. Each year adds to the moral and intellectual temperature of mind; makes it glow with superior truth and wisdom. This growth, slow but visible, is a progress as uncontrollable as the movement of the heavenly bodies around their central suns.

Grown toward manhood, and the infant garments cannot be strained on. * * Creeds and dogmas are such garments to the spirit. When the expanding mind is forced to take up its abode in the habiliments of the past, its best motives are crushed; its feelings are stifled; its holiest emotions dried up; and it becomes barren as the desert sands of Sahara, cold and frigid as the icebergs around the frozen poles.

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It matters little whether born on a throne or in a manger; when reformers arise in their manhood all conventionalities crumble away, and king and peasant stand in the same light. When sublime intuitions fill their overflowing souls and they reveal man's relations to the universe and to his fellow man, distinctions vanish in the rapturous glow of eloquence, as the frostwork of night vanishes in the rays of the rising sun. Confucius was nobly born; Zoroaster stated his ideas from a throne; Mohammed was a noble; their converts count by the hundred million. Eighteen centuries ago a poor carpenter's son was cradled in a manger, and arose and with a breath overturned all the cherished idols of his time, and founded a system of transcendental purity, which is the ideal, even now, of the civilized world.-Hudson Tuttle.

TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS.

We believe that in the treatment of criminals, the first and paramount object, should be to reform them, and that the best interests of society would be promoted by the means best adapted to secure this end. It is necessary to restrain offenders against the laws of morality, but care should be taken to bring them under such moral influences as will tend to develop in them the power of self-government. The prisoner should be made to feel that the discipline to which he is subjected is dictated by love to him no less than by a regard for the welfare of the community; and he should be encouraged by the assurance that the government will gladly restore him to liberty just as soon as it can do so with safety to himself and to society. Prisons should be under the control of persons of the highest moral qualifications, and their inmates should be visited by those who feel a tender concern for their welfare.-Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, Longwood, Pa., 1860.

FRIENDS OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

Yearly meetings at Collins, Erie County, at Waterloo, Seneca County, New York, and at Sturgis, Michigan; for free and orderly discussion.

Resolved, That while we renew and emphasize our testimony, and keep up our efforts in behalf of the practical Reforms of the day, we deem it of high importance as foundation work for character, and attainment of true manhood and womanhood, that freedom of the soul be asserted and maintained inviolate; such freedom as is loyal to the truths of the spirit within us, truths which shall grow in power and beauty, as superstitions decay, as creeds are put aside, and as books are used as helpers, and not accepted as masters.

Resolved, That we urge as an important part of true religion, what may be termed the religion of the body; that reverence for its delicate offices and sacred functions which shall lead

to purity of thought and of personal habits, to control over appetite and passion, to abstinence from all that is injurious, and temperance in all that is healthful, and shall put aside all filthy and degrading practices and defilements, and make our common food and drink a daily sacrament of health and purity, fitting the body for the uses of life, and making it a consecrated temple for the immortal spirit.

Resolved, That over every Judge's bench and over the doors of every prison should be written, "Justice, Safety, Reform, uplifting of the weak and the depraved, but no vengeance." And that we would aid every change in prison discipline, and every step in the treatment of criminals that reaches above vengeance, and has in view that more perfect safety that comes with the reform of the erring.

Resolved, That we favor equal suffrage and equality of rights for woman, because it is just and therefore full of benefit.— These resolutions were passed at all the meetings.

DOGMA VS. TRUTH.

If we deny that God had revealed himself to all mankind, our creed is little better than open atheism, for we deny the original gift of his free grace to the human soul.

But the reverent and enlightened mind, who receives Him in the way of his coming, can read the ancient conceptions of mankind, whether in the Scriptures of the Jews, the Christians, the Vedas, the Avestas, the writings of Seneca or Plato, or the monuments of Egypt or Babylon, with a grateful interest that they have been preserved from the tooth of time. He will not, however, build his faith upon these for then his faith becomes a superstition, which in the end will but blind his spiritual vision and blunt the perceptions of his soul.

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In a recent address a Hindoo convert said: "I go to India to preach a universal faith; I shall not tell the people our Scriptures are all right, and yours all a delusion and folly, but I shall appeal to the beautiful and true in both to demonstrate the universality of God's love."

This is the frame of mind in which man should approach his brother. * * * And we will be willing to apply the same rule of common sense and just. criticism to the Writings we have received from our Fathers, that we apply to the Scriptures of the Hindoos, or the Wisdom of Confucius. The golden rule will be ours-we will mete out unto others that which we would have them measure to us.

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As Dr. Arnold says, "Faith without reason is not properly faith, but mere power-worship; and power-worship may be devil-worship, for it is reason which entertains the idea of God, an idea essentially made up of truth and goodness no less than power."

This was the great thought of Jesus; and yet to-day how much of that which is taught in his name is but mere powerworship! The truthful mind, therefore, has no other alternative but to accept the language of Dr. Arnold, and "to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no sign of power, in confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be of God."

Dogma cannot establish the immortality of our nature to the satisfaction of a single mind. It is the soul that speaks, and the reason which listens to the knowledge which God himself conveys. Providence has granted to all men this voice. The avenues or channels through which divine information flows to the soul can be closed or obstructed by sin or superstition; and spiritual darkness thus intervenes. The only means by which the obstruction can be removed is by removing the cause.

Popular Christianity holds up the idea of belief or dogma as the constituent or first principle in religion; hence the degraded condition of the Christian world, and hence the assertion that all communication from God is confined to a book written many hundreds of years ago. * *

Evangelical Christianity is to-day seeking to engraft upon the Constitution of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, its narrow, unphilosophical, untenable, and uncharitable creed. To correct this tendency of the Church let enlightened views be disseminated in men's minds; and the time may come, in

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